American Tapestry Biennial 14 New Dimensions at the Appalachian Center for Crafts

Rena Wood, the juror for this exhibition, received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Craft/Material Studies. From 214 entries, Ms Wood selected works from these 50 artists:

* Patricia Armour * Elizabeth Buckley * Nicole Bunting * Barbara Burns
* Martha Christian * Deborah Corsini * Liliana Crespi * Deborah Davis * Molly Elkind * Alex Friedman * Joan Griffin * Judy Harcus * Joyce Hayes * Barbara Heller * Susan Iverson

* Laura Kamian McDermott * Cameron Kashani * Maureen Kenney * Lialia Kuchma * Annie Landry * Mary Lane * Sally Larrick * Heather Larsen * Fannie Lee * Mary Jane Lord * Lindsey Marshall

* Susan Martin Maffei * Cynthia Martinez * Ulrikka Mokdad * Judy Ness * Anna Olsson * Linda Porte *Candace Pratt * Ellen Ramsey * Millicent Reed * Michael Rohde * Minna Rothman * Jennifer Sargent

* Tommye Scanlin * Rowen Schussheim-Anderson * Lena Ruth Schwartz * Kathy Spoering

* Care Standley * Nancy Taylor * Kathe Todd-Hooker * David van Buskirk * Jeane Vogel * Sue Weil

* Jay Yan * Mary Zicafoose

With 50 works through three gallery spaces, it’s a wonderful exhibition of current work by tapestry artists from across the USA as well as from other countries including Canada and Australia. I was also delighted to see three dimensional works as well as the reference to the silhouettes of pottery shapes. I have an equal passion for working with clay as well as a variety of textile techniques. This made for a wonderful afternoon with my partner Gary, best friend Nancie and my golden retriever Hayden.

Many thanks to Bradley Silk for their advise and expertise with installing this exhibition. And many thanks to Charlene Lachicotte, Gallery Operations Coordinator, for all the “nuts and bolts” work around the exhibition.

Many people may think of the large scale tapestries along the interior walls of European castles. I was recently in London and able to see the tapestries at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court. They are totally impressive and also mind boggling when thinking of the amount of time they took to weave. Quite often, these works for castle walls were commissioned by one king and completed/delivered to the castle to his successor. Time is still a key factor in weaving a tapestry, but in contemporary tapestry artists are exploring scale, finding their own voice as well as innovative techniques and ways to present tapestry to audiences around the world.

These images and the video allows you to see the diverse approaches to tapestry weaving. Many of these artists have been committed to weaving through their entire art career and others are newer to the medium. It’s my pleasure and honor to share this exhibit with you through this blog post.

The American Tapestry Alliance publishes a printed color catalog for the Biennial Exhibitions and you can order one from their website at https://americantapestryalliance.org. I did not go through every image and identify each artist, title, etc here in this post. My intention is to share with you this experience of seeing the exhibition on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in middle Tennessee.

Studying Tapestry in Peru

In 2019 I learned about Maximo Laura, his tapestries, and his tapestry workshops in Peru. An image search and information on the web let me know that this was quite possibly the workshop for me. I immediately got ”to work” on registering for a workshop scheduled for May 2020. By this I mean that I also pulled together some professional development funds form work, booked my airline tickets, hotels and AirBnB, planned for the high altitude meds, had a health review for traveling broad and of course researched the food of Peru, etc. Then Covid arrived….

For two years I (along with others that planned the same trip) waited out the virus and the vaccine. I knew I would get there eventually. In 2022, fully vaccinated and with borders open for travel, I set out in late September for my first excursion to South America and Peru. Rebooking air travel, hotels and AirBnB fell in to place very easily and I set out to meet 20 other workshop participants, Maximo Laura and his family, and the people of Peru. My itinerary: 3 nights in Lima, 4 nights in Cusco and 12 days in Urubamba and the Sacred Valley where the workshop would be held.

Close up of a fragment of embroidered fabric from the Amano Pre-Columbian Textile Museum

I set out on my own and flew from Nashville to Miami and from there to Lima, Peru. In Lima, I stayed in the home of Peruvian artist/sculptor Victor Delfin. Victor still lives and creates in his studio on the property, but the house has been turned in to a boutique style getaway and gallery for his work. Second Home Peru turned out to be a great retreat after a full day of flying and a great neighborhood of restaurants, markets and shops to introduce me to Lima and Peru. I had a wonderful experience staying here, the staff is wonderful, the home sits on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the rooms are wonderful. You can learn more about Second Home Peru at https://www.secondhomeperu.com. The experience was so wonderful that I booked the final night in Peru at this hotel before flying out early the last morning.

While visiting Lima, I headed over to both Pre- Columbian museums in the city. The first stop was the Amano Pre-Columbian Textile Museum. Traveling alone and with no schedule to follow at this part of the trip, I relaxed and spent a good two hours, maybe longer, looking through the museum and taking photos. Yes! They allow photographs! I had a little experience with Pre-Columbian art, but I have to admit to being blown away by the history and the work presented in this museum. The museum is set up as a self guided tour with lots of information and so many textiles to view I have no other words but “This is Amazing!” The Amano Museum is online at https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/museo-textil-precolombino-amano. I spent another 2 hours at Museo Larco which has an enormous collection of Pre-Colombian pottery, ritual vessels, more textiles, metal and jewelry including the knives used to sacrifice human offerings to the gods. Creepy right? In a low lit museum that is fairly quiet and walking alone, I felt like I took a step back in time for a moment. And I remembered that what I was learning also happened all over the world in one way or another. Creativity has certainly been around all of these centuries and so has different approaches to dealing with the gods or spirit realm. Interesting two facts: early civilizations in Peru held weaving and fiber art in such high esteem that they actually burnt offerings of their finest woven textiles, 2) it wasn’t slaves or the prisoners that were offered as human sacrifices but often some of their most outstanding citizens found themselves on the losing team and were therefor sacrificed to the gods. There was actually a game or sporting event between two teams and the losing team members were sacrificed. Museo Larco is also one of the few museums in the world to have their collection vault open to the public. So after my curated museum experience I took the time too walk through room after room of very high shelving units holding stacks and stacks of Pre-Colombian pottery and effigies. It’s a collection that spans centuries, but I was still blown away that a society was so productive in the clay works. https://www.museolarco.org/en/

I took tons of photos everywhere I went, over 1000 pics actually. From the food or snack of the moment to all the art in the museums and at Second Home Peru, I took pictures. But I’m not a travel or food writer, at least not yet, and this blog is about the tapestry workshop with Maximo Laura.

So after 3 nights in Lima I flew up to Cusco. Here I spent 4 nights still relaxing, adjusting to the highest altitude I’ve ever experienced, enjoying a restaurant in the same courtyard of my AirBnB and of course sightseeing and shopping. I also started to meet up with different people coming in for the workshop. The first person I met is the delightful Anne Martin from the UK. In Cusco, Maximo Laura has a two story gallery and museum of his work as well as a floor loom with a work in progress. I visited the gallery three times in that visit and the first time I had a private tour (because no one else was visiting at the time) with the gallery director. The second time with new friend Anne and we met Maximo that trip. The third visit was on a tour with the workshop cohort and I was still amazed at all that I was seeing.

We also made several visits to the Centro De Textiles Tradicionales Del Cusco. This center has a small museum, really wonderful gift shop of handwoven items and to our delight the hands-on and dyed yarns created by artisans from 10 different communities. And they have women from each community come in daily to demonstrate weaving on a back strap loom.

The loom in the Maximo Gallery and Museum

Maximo Laura speaking with the workshop group and yes in front of one of his award winning tapestries.

The workshop was held in Yucay which is in the Sacred Valley about an hour outside of Cusco. Our first day was a walking tour back in Cusco with an amazing tour guide, Nilo, and his sister. With a wonderful sense of humor and a tremendous respect for the history of Peru, Nilo led us through Cusco to see ancient sites, shopping the Laura Museum and more.

Yucay is also home to the Museo Yucay. This little gem is almost like walking into a living and breathing village as your guide/host takes through around a courtyard of rooms with various parts of the process a village goes through to raise the alpaca and llamas, spin the wool, dye it and then weave it into cloth. We also saw examples of village style crafts including jewelry. And we stepped back in to reality once inside the large and contemporary gift shop.

A sign says it all.

In traditional clothing of her village, our Yucay Museo tour guide is showing us about the drop spindle.

An assortment of the natural dye colors that can be achieved with plants and mordants typically gathered in the region. Part of the display at the Museo.

Now begins the workshop….

The Sacred Valley is surrounded by these mountains. Imagine waking up everyday to views like this!

Soooo much yarn!! These are the “packages” of yarn with blended color bundles of super fine alpaca for us to use in our tapestries.

Maximo Laura speaking with a student after his talk about the weaving and the color blending.

The workshop was made o up of 20 people from the USA, other countries in South America, the UK, Crete and Australia. Experience levels ranged from beginner to professional. This was quite a wonderful and supportive group of people which was greatly appreciated as we all had new challenges in weaving to face. Each student had a pipe loom, a color pattern or cartoon to follow, and of course all that wonderful alpaca yarn. We were given 1:1 lessons on each section of our cartoon which were technique based and also about following the color gradations in the design we were given. Each section was a different technique and I think mine held 10 - 12 techniques. Instructors from the Laura studio were patient and kind and worked the room beautifully. Every student worked at their own pace and at times there was some negotiating around the design someone was given. The cartoons varied and even two similar designs could have a different color wave. Some techniques in my cartoon included basket, twill, and double weave. Some techniques came from embroidery, others were variations on sumac, and there was a great technique on dealing with slits. Everything was done on the loom so even embroidery found a way to become part of the actual weaving process and not a post weaving task. My brain “hurt” some days with all that I was learning.

My cartoon and the color wave of yarn just for the border of the tapestry.

Maximo Laura’s samples for each of the cartoons shared in the workshop.

The start of my tapestry. Sections are marked out in ink and the cartoon is a guide to the side.

After 9 days of weaving, everyone cut their tapestry off the pipe loom and these were loosely basted together to create one large tapestry. Which was an amazing end goal for a workshop like this!

Team Laura! from left to right: Giancarlo, Billy, Paola, Maximo and Jimmy. Not only a great team but a wonderful family as well.

So much learning and so much unweaving and reweaving to try to get new techniques learned in a short period of time. There weren’t any handouts and I tried taking notes. But upon returning home I set about to get a few samples done and decided to work more on technique and not color.
So many possibilities and I am excited to see what my hands learned and how some of this is going to find it’s way into my own work.

An embroidery technique in turquoise, twill variations at top, and basket weave in the black/white sample.

American Tapestry Biennial at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles

This summer, I had the pleasure of visiting the American Tapestry Alliance’s (ATA) Biennial Exhibit at the San Jose Museum of quilts and Textiles in sunny San Jose, CA. Thanks to Siri and GPS we did know our way to San Jose and the museum was very easy to find in the downtown area. We arrived early and scouted the area to find restaurants and other art venues in walking distance. The museum is quite nice and the staff person working the admissions desk was very friendly. The museum is not very large, so it’s not an all day event like Chicago Art Institute or MoMA in NYC. (I remember dedicating half a day to see the Art Institute and we were basically running towards the end of our time trying to see everything).There were three exhibits open this past weekend; the tapestry exhibit presented by ATA and two solo exhibits as well. The museum is a very nice space, well lit, and easy to maneuver through and I enjoyed my time there. The staff person did tell me that the museum has an extensive quilt/textile collection and a few of these were installed in the hallway leading to the galleries.

The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose CA

A view of the works in the gallery.

Uvedenrode by Gabriela Cristu Sgarbura

Fractures by Suzanne Paquette

This is my first blog post on this web site, and actually my first blog post ever. This post is not a critique of the works in the exhibit, just a way to share some of the images as well as basic information about the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and The American Tapestry Alliance. There are 37 tapestries in the exhibit and these were selected out of a pool of entries from 189 artists. I want to share a few photos with you here and hope you see what a powerful and expressive art form that is tapestry. There’s a bit of misuse of this word, tapestry, out in the world. And there are lots of ways to create art through textiles/fibers. So just to be clear, tapestry is an art form where the artist is weaving the images by hand on a loom. Any type of loom will basically work to create a tapestry, but the rules are that 1) the weft that is woven over the warp must cover the warp and that 2) the weft that is used is discontinuous. What that means is that you have a weft faced woven fabric and that none of the wefts went directly from one side to the other and then back again. Instead the wefts are woven in sections across the warp. Images, patterns, words, and designs are typically woven with the structure of plain weave (over, under, over under) but a variety of weave structures can be used at any time during the weaving. It’s all up to the individual artist and his/her approach to tapestry weaving. As you can see from the gallery views, tapestries can range in size, hang vertically or horizontally, can be framed or hang on the wall as they are.

AMERICAN TAPESTRY BIENNIAL 13
JUNE 11 – SEPTEMBER 12, 2021
TURNER AND GILLILAND GALLERIES, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles

A view of the gallery using the pano setting on my iPhone.

1. American Tapestry Biennial 13 showcases the very best in international contemporary tapestry. The works selected for the exhibition by juror Nick DeFord, Program Director at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, highlight the variety of artistic expression practiced today in this hand woven medium. The pieces range from the subtle to the visually complex, and even break new ground in shape and surface texture. Tapestry's rich history and its unique ability to render images in the tactile medium of cloth offer contemporary artists a powerful vehicle for expressing both aesthetic and conceptual concerns. The two gallery spaces combine together to create a spacious exhibit with room to view the tapestries up close and personal or take a few steps back and see some very powerfully impressive works. Photos are allowed in the gallery as long as no flash is used. And you can get as close to the works, without touching, as you’d like. I really enjoyed the freedom to move through the space as I wanted that afternoon. We did have the galleries to ourselves for about 20 minutes and then more visitors started to arrive.

Breaking Apart by Janette Gross

A view of the gallery with my amazing Hadley hanging out by the bench!

Five Leaves for Miss Lillian, by Tommye McClure Scanlin

Founded in 1982, the American Tapestry Alliance is a non-profit educational organization that offers support and exposure for contemporary tapestry artists around the world. If you’d like to know more about ATA, please visit the web site at https://americantapestryalliance.org

And to know more about the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, please visit https://www.sjquiltmuseum.org. Currently the museum is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday and time reservations are needed due to Covid-19 restrictions/protocols. You pay for admission once you arrive at the museum.

Kudos to ATA Biennial exhibit chair, Ama Wertz, for a wonderful job in organizing this exhibit. And many congrats and thanks to the artists that exhibited their works. There is a beautiful catalog of the exhibit that is available for sale through the ATA website.

Detail; from On The Full Moon of February 3, 2015
(The Flu In Yalapa, Mexico) by Patricia Q. Williams

Noise by Lialia Kuchma

Another view of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles gallery using the Plano setting on my iphone

Declarative by Michael F. Rhode

Another gallery view.

Building Night by Susan Iverson

A detail pic of Rye by Lis Korsgren

And it’s not a trip to California without a picture of a palm tree :).