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It Takes Both to Tango
By Lany Eila
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…the soul of art, I believe, is to communicate, be it a feeling, a concept, a story, or some twining of these... art… also offers a sense of why such a thing matters enough to inspire the creative effort…. I know the ‘here’ or ‘this’ long before I ever figure out the ‘why,’ … the process of making art and living with it is the only path to the ‘why.”.… only through wrestling with the tangible... can [I] access the intangible web that holds and gives meaning to it. Abstraction and representation are part of this dance….
The way I’m using these terms here is that ‘representational’ means the extent to which a work of art consciously references places or things in the physical world, and ‘abstract’ means the extent to which a work consciously deviates from or disregards such references to the physical world….
For many years, all of my tapestries were abstract... In recent years, I have also felt a growing need to depict faces and bodies in tapestry…. The pixilated grid of tapestry resists both the flowing lines of figure drawing and the telling details of photographs... weaving faces and bodies... has been forcing me to learn a new dance.
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below: Lany Eila, “Haley At 10,” 6”x6”; 2008
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Distillation of Concept
By Maria R. Kovacs
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…. The definitions of abstraction used initially challenge me to clarify why I use this form of communication…. I am passionately interested in the environment and consider myself an eco artist. I research an issue… distill the concept with my feelings... and refine the concept of the place or thing with emotion to its abstract essentiality….
A concept is developed into its essential, fundamental visual form.… in a recent tapestry "Hope, Solitude and Dedication Joined," I considered Tide Mill Farm’s responsible stewardship of the land.… In the tapestry, the farm is abstracted into four views of the essential, primal shapes of the land and water. Smooth, shaped tapestry landforms are appliquéd topographically to the main landforms…. the four views are bisected with a zigzag red join. The family, the views, the land and water were joined together through personal sacrifice: clearly not a smooth join…. I needed to distill the essentials of concept with form, design and color into the visual abstract.
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below: Maria R. Kovacs, “Hope, Solitude and Dedication Joined,” 29” x 37”; 2007
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Abstraction Preferred
By Joyce Hayes
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…. after four years of college and countless hours of figure drawing and painting classes… faithful representation of the figure and my surroundings held no fascination for me…. I needed more freedom to interpret my world. Printmaking and abstraction offered these possibilities….
For me, music... inspires me the most…. Rhythm, patterns, and repetition have been imprinted on my brain.... The dynamics of a musical piece influence how I think about a tapestry and help me determine if a piece will have a lot of open space or be very dense, be quiet or loud, or a crescendo that quietly fades away. Will the rhythm of the piece be a precise allegro or a subtle legato?...
My most recent series is subtle and what I call compulsive. By combining stripes and hatching with a grey scale of weft threads, I am able to develop the patterns of infinite repetition that I am drawn to in both music and abstraction. Throughout my creative process I take care to make tapestries that are not only abstract and pared down to their essence, but also interesting to weave and look at.
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below: Joyce Hayes, “Bach 2 Part Invention #2,” 12 1/2"x16 3/4"; 2007; Art and Soul
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Book review: Artists’ Tapestries from Australia 1976-2005
Review by Debbie Herd
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Sue Walker has given to the world of art a rich, detailed and intimate account of the history of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop (VTW)….
Walker describes in detail the lengthy process of establishing the proposed workshop…. the early, courageous first years of the VTW…. visually rich images of production, early works and commissions are discussed…. In a chapter titled "The Great Turning Point," the book provides an overview of the International Tapestry Symposium convened and hosted by the VTW, held in Melbourne, Australia in 1988…
The book progresses with commentary about ongoing commissioned works, successful Artist in Residency programs… along with international commissions and exhibitions. Leonie Bessant’s sumptuously rich suite of six tapestries for Melbourne Airport, "Paradise in Trust," are shown in full color imagery along with numerous other grand scale works…. The book ends with a unique new suite of contemporary tapestry…. From humble beginnings the workshop has progressively grown into an artistic enterprise that would change the profile of tapestry worldwide with the production and public installation of contemporary Australian tapestry.
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below: Leonie Bessant, woven by Victoria Tapestry Workshop, “Paradise in Trust,”
one of a suite of 6 tapestries, each 1.80 m x 4.00 m
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Workshop Review: Connecting Image to Process/ Process to Image
By Joyce Hayes and Susan Edmonds
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From October 16-18, 2007, Susan Martin Maffei conducted a workshop, “Connecting Image to Process/ Process to Image,” in New York City. Two participants in that workshop offer the following commentary:
Joyce Hayes:
…. One of our readings, “Structure as Meaning In Ancient Andean Textiles” by William J. Conklin, was helpful for understanding the importance of textiles in pre-Columbian culture. First, weaving was both a primary form of wealth and also a form of communication in a society with no written language…. understood between different regions and also from generation to generation. Second, the technical aspects of the woven structure carried as much meaning as the visual image….
Instead of using a cartoon or other image to direct what we were weaving, we tried to establish a more direct route from the image in our mind to the image we were weaving. Abstraction was not the only result of our attempts. The exercises gave us a greater understanding and appreciation for the grid of warp and weft…. pre-Columbian weavers used pattern and positive and negative space very effectively through repetition, rotation and mirroring….
Susan Edmunds:
…. Susan Maffei challenged the participants in this workshop to weave two small images of birds, one in slit tapestry with the image building from bottom to top on the warp, as the Chimu and Chancay weavers of coastal Peru worked. The second image was to be woven in the manner of the weavers in the high Andes (Wari and Tiwanaku), interlocking the wefts, and building the image side to side on the warp….
Tapestries of the two groups vary in other ways too, such as the use of cotton warps (predominantly lowland) vs. camelid fiber warps (predominantly highland), and loom types (backstrap with relatively narrow warps in the lowlands and wide frame looms in the highlands). These distinctions were apparently neither a response to practical necessity nor a lack of contact between groups, but rather a conscious cultivation of meaningful difference….
The workshop schedule coincided with the exhibit “Tapestry of the Baroque” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two other wonderful exhibitions, of Archie Brennan’s tapestries at Gail Martin Gallery, and of The Wednesday Group, Archie’s and Susan’s long-time students, at Gallery Two07, further enriched our tapestry diet.
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below: Susan Maffei’s class at the Textile Conservation Laboratory at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. L-R: Susan Edmunds, Marlene Eidelheit, Joyce Hayes, Sarah Warren, Pam Davis, Deborah Holcomb, and Susan Maffei
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