sweetgeorgia

Inspi(red)*

Now that we’re pretty much exactly halfway through 2007 now, tell me, what’s the most inspiring thing you’ve seen or experienced in the past six months?

Maybe it’s because today is my loom’s one-year anniversary, I’m feeling all sentimental and wondering what I’ve been doing all year and what I’ll be doing on this day next year. Between now and next June, I’ll be attending a month of lectures and workshops at Maiwa’s symposium. So far, I’ve registered for Michelle Wipplinger’s Colour Institute II, Dabu Mud Printing, Ajrakh Blockprinting (including the masterclass) and the Working Traveller. I wonder if Charllotte will let me just pay rent and live at Maiwa East for the month of October… the place is already furnished.

Charllotte is also looking at arranging a Maiwa trip to India in February 2008 and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to participate in that. They’ll be travelling to a number of different villages where the dyeing and textiles are made for Maiwa. I’m not sure how long the trip is for, but if it’s only a couple weeks, I may choose to stay a few weeks longer on my own. Who knows.

Also, I’ve been looking at the Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto and possibly spending some time there weaving, dyeing and studying. This is the same school that Chisako Hisamatsu attended to get a more in-depth education in Kasuri (an ikat technique). You could live, weave, eat, sleep, and dye there for anywhere from a few days to a few years. Dreamy. Possible? Impossible? Who knows.

Where else can I go? Indonesia? Thailand? Sweden? Denmark? Hmm… My desire to live someplace warmer (seriously, I’m sitting next to my heater and it’s nearly JULY) has me thinking about the textile/fashion program at CCAC in California too (although San Francisco is not much warmer than Vancouver, bleh). Hmm…

My time in London was WAY too short and I’ll have to find my way back somehow. I didn’t, unfortunately, get to meet up with Amelia and her friends and would love to do that next time. There was a knitting exhibition at South Wimbledon that I missed because I was running around quite a bit (even though I was at Wimbledon for a couple days, grr) and of course the one day I picked to visit the V&A is the one day the textiles room was closed. What did I see…

The “New York Fashion Now” exhibition at the V&A. The DOBAG rug woven for the British Museum. Some of Preeti Gilani’s textile work… hand-dyed silk and Jacquard weaving. The room full of massive Mark Rothko paintings at the Tate Modern (I went to see this TWICE, I loved it so much). Helio Oiticica’s Body of Colour exhibition at the Tate Modern as well. And something I wish I had seen for real:

Ptolemy Mann completely floors me. I’m absolutely in love with her work. What are you absolutely in love with these days? What inspires you now?

Okay, never thought I’d name a post after a GAP product, but hey, it’s all good. One of the only things I bought in London was a product Red t-shirt… african cotton made in Lesotho. It would make Jen proud.

Starting again.

It’s been months and months… and finally, I feel like I’m getting back to it. I’ve started weaving the blanket now, and it’s pretty slow going since I need a proper shuttle (I need a ski shuttle, asap). I’m using a stick shuttle at the moment and it’s clumsy for this width of fabric to say the least. But any progress is good progress.

Now, if I could just keep from passing out in the late afternoons. Jet lag bites.

I owe you.

I’m in Vancouver for another four nights and then I’m off again (this time to traipse around London). In the meantime, I owe you so many things starting with my photography presentation from WAY back in March… so here are the bits and pieces:

• Photography for Textiles 2007 Notes (1.18 MB)
• The photos that accompanied the presentation (Quicktime | 2.2 MB). Some of these are awful, awful photos meant to illustrate the evils of on-camera flash, incandescent lighting, bad composition, etc. The series starts off with a few shots I took during studio classes including some food photography shots… and ends with a few photos from my favourite snap-happy bloggers: Jared at Brooklyn Tweed, Cara at January One, and Adrian at HelloYarn.
• The photos that ran on a loop during the Q&A (Quicktime | 2.6 MB). These photos are all mine and all yummy.

The cute little mention of my stilettos and weaving in this past issue of Handwoven magazine reminded me that I was supposed to blog about Catharine Ellis’ woven shibori workshops. Ooops. Now I’m hanging my head on that one… I ended up coming home from Fiji without enough time to do the preparation work for the workshops… so I didn’t attend. I did, however, carry Catharine’s book all over Fiji with me in preparation for the workshop… but attending the workshops meant weaving actual yardage or warping up a table loom beforehand. Ahh well. Her lecture at Heritage Hall was quite inspiring, as she showed photos and projects from the last 30 years of her weaving career. Experimenting with one variable at a time in a very scientific way, it’s like a do-it-yourself PhD in weaving. I know for certain that I can’t be that methodical. No PhD for me.

Check it out, Louisa wrote up her experiences at Catharine’s workshop…

Speaking of Fiji, I did take notes of the teeny bit of weaving I found in Sigatoka… these are the notes that I just re-discovered on my laptop:

2007-04-19

We got in the car and just started driving… our destination was Pacific Harbour, about 2 hours drive away from Nadi town. The closest town centre to Nadi is Sigatoka, about 45 minutes south. We stopped just to look for water and snacks, but ended up wandering into La’s shop. La has been weaving professionally for the last ten years, weaving mats. When I told her I was a weaver too, a smile spread across her face with understanding and appreciation, saying simply “when you find something you enjoy, you just have to do it.”

For the mats, she determines how wide she wants the mats to be and then begins weaving down the length. At the very end, she finishes the two short ends of the mat, sometimes incorporating different colours in a variety of patterns. The mats take at least a day to weave.

Tapa cloth is made from pounding mulberry bark into flat sheets. The sheets are then screenprinted with a dye made by boiling the mulberry bark and mixing it with the red earth/clay that seems to be so readily available. The darker colours have soot added to the mix to deepen the colours. For tapa cloth intended for village chiefs, the mulberry bark is dyed first with the mulberry juice so that it takes on a dark amber colour before it is flattened out into sheets. The Fijian tapa are screenprinted while the Tongan tapa are handpainted. The tapa made in Tonga are also backed with synthetic, fusible interfacing for strength.