Landscape in Minnesota

Tapestry in a day?

We did it in Minneapolis last week where I spent my birthday weekend at the welcoming Textile Center in Minneapolis. Thirteen enthusiastic weavers came for a one day workshop to weave a landscape.

It was intensive and non stop, but Traudi still found time for coffee.

I stress values and surface textures when I do this workshop so hand spinners have the advantage. Not interested in spinning? Look at some of the hand painted roving available on the market.

In a one day workshop I prefer a design as you go attitude, letting the weaving determine where the landscape is and what the details might be.

Discoveries were made and as always I made some along with my students. I only hope this taste of tapestry leads some to explore further.

Stay tuned for part 2 , Face Expressions, a 2 1/2 day workshop there.....it was a big birthday bash!

Sketchbook Update

I visited Florida last week for the first time and I didn't bring my camera. Well ok, my daughter did. But still, what fun it is to sketch  your way through the wonders of Miami.


What glorious weather - we WI folks appreciate something like this in January, I had a hard time remembering it wasn't summer. Here you see me working on a quick sketch of the Cape Florida Lighthouse at Key Biscayne.

Drawing helps you slow down and really look at your surroundings. I can completely understand how people get excited about painting palm trees now. When we walked past a street of houses days later I realized there was my painted house, I knew it instantly.



Who knows what ideas will emerge from all this, I don't try to quantify, I'm just glad I had the chance.

Value, Word of the Year

I ran across several references during 2014 to an important artist concept, something to the effect of "value does the work, color gets all the credit". Years of art work have helped me understand the truth of those words and so I decided to choose value as my woven word of 2015 and I hope to explore it's meaning in several ways.

Value in art refers to how light or how dark something is, but it is a word rich with multiple meanings. Thank goodness for context and sometimes that doesn't even help you. Are you talking lights and darks or how much it's worth? Apparently with value, it's worth a lot.

Take the values of these wonderful little balls of yarn my friend Debbie sent me for Christmas. They've already been fun to arrange in different combinations. It almost doesn't matter what the color is if the values are the same. Of course brightness jumps in on occasion, not to mention the surface quality of the yarn.

So much to know.

Which is why I continue to think more about value each passing year.

My first woven strip of 2015 will be 2 simple neutral values, woven on the horizontal.

Stay tuned.