Textiles, tea, life changing touches and a new mystery

Yesterday was an excellent HGA  Textiles and Tea presentation by Jessica Pinsky, one of the few people who really are dynamic in their approach to life and art. 

Originally a painter, she switched to textiles, weaving mainly, to get nearer her materials, to handle them directly rather than with a brush or other tool.  

I definitely identify with this, since spindle spinning to me is working in closer partnership to the fiber than wheel spinning, and why I prefer it. 

She's based in Cleveland, now directs Praxis Fiberarts, which she created, working with Cleveland Institute of Art, which she kept referring to as the CIA (!) and with the community. She teaches at CIA, too.Here's what she describes as heaven, the Praxis workspace

Her own weaving is mind-blowing, the kind that makes you immediately want to run and get warping. I'm far from a traditional practitioner, never interested in "real" looms, but the need is the same! 

Woven side to side, the one on the right is barely more than 12 inches a side. The left is about 45 x 36 if I remember correctly. A true painter at heart, the size isn't uppermost in her description, the concept is. She commented that the left one is the only piece she's ever made that really is what she had envisioned. Art usually changes as it comes into being.

The series above is about spaces, leaving spaces in the warp to examine how fibers, like people, are similarly made and behave differently.

This is the series on labor and delivery, and the loneliness of the body once the baby has left it. In her case, twins, long, difficult labor, emergency C-section, narrow recovery. 

During the labor she said this concept came to her, for when she would be able to execute it. The babies are now two, and she's done it.  She and her wife are very much engrossed in their family right now, and her own art is waiting a while.

Here she's talking about different behaviors of similar textiles in different circumstances.  The lower one is very much math based, Pythagorean, to he exact. She commented that her math teacher would love to know that yes, she really did use Pythagoras in later life!

And she's  fearless in her approach, probably because of her coming to it from painting rather than the occupational therapy and art therapy a lot of weavers come from. 

They tend, broad generality here, to be much more technique, planning and tool based rather than design energy  based. She has the concept then looks for the fibers that will work, including mixing commercial yarns with her own spun fibers.

The very best weavers, my biased opinion here, like Archie Brennan and Sarah Swett, are fine artists who are accomplished in easel art and like to work in textiles and continue with a wonderful painterly approach. They understand the technicalities but are never governed by them, nor interested in repeat production.

Back to Jessica. She's growing indigo now, the dye plant, partly as a practical matter, partly as a community project, partly as a political statement. 

Here's the garden she's organized in Cleveland, and artists working on it. There are many other such indigo gardens starting up, and she's eager to see other cities take part.  During lockdown, many participants, now about 200, started and grew plants in their homes, until they could transplant them into the garden.

Indigo has a long history back to Africa, where it became terribly coopted into the slave trade, and in Japan, where it's a revered ancient  traditional dye material. I trust that African American artists also get their say, and ownership,  on this developing indigo story. 

The fiber arts don't have a good track record of inclusivity and intersectionality; we have to do our bit to remedy that.

Back on the ground again, it's too hot for serious reading and viewing, so Austen is on hiatus briefly while I enjoy this

Very much along the lines of Maisie Dobbs, Bess Crawford is a WW1 nurse, who finds herself being an amateur sleuth.  Very readable to my tired mind.

And I warmly recommend this recent addition to my life

Stainless steel thermos. The answer to needing a cup of hot tea in the morning before navigating the stairs. Or in the middle of the night for that matter. It takes the contents of my teapot with milk added.

Swish boiling water around it before filling with tea, warmed milk added. Done. Still lovely and hot next morning.

Still heat waving here. And now we have a water restriction advisory. A major water main a few miles north, ruptured, affecting the whole region. Four days to repair it. So sorry for the men digging. 

It's probably more a function of our ancient pipes than weather, I suspect.  Up to now I haven't lost pressure or noticed anything off color about the water. It's always something..