tapestry

>
Tomorrow I will finally get to see the tapestry exhibit at the Met. Here’s the NYTimes review. I’ve missed all the hoopla that the rest of The Wednesday Group has gotten to attend: a full weekend of symposia last weekend, and tomorrow night’s lecture on Tudor tapestries. So at least I will get to see the show!

For the most part I don’t care for this period of tapestry. There are some awesome things going on, but I think the tapestry artist himself was lost at this point and became simply the craftsman/artisan who slavishly executed a painter’s image. I miss the freedom of expression that earlier tapestry weavers had. I miss the sense of making a picture do what weaving does best.
That’s not to say that I’m not totally “blown away” by these works and the weaving ability of the unknown weavers.

Here’s a quote from the end of the article that sums it all up for me:

But the real wonder surfaces when you stand up close. Then you see how one thread, placed next to another, which is next to another of different but related color, creates the shadow under the eye of a drowning man’s face, or the sparkle of a jewel on a ribbon on a shoe, or turns an all but abstract passage of color in a Rubens design into a brilliantly nuanced approximation of its painted source, which is itself the filtering of some sensation of the world through one artist’s eye.

In focusing on such details, you realize that the tapestry — so anonymous, so enormous, so specialized — really comes down to one person performing a task: the artist drawing the design, the spinner spinning the wool thread, the weaver passing one thread past another. If you want to regain the thrill of discovery that the Met’s first tapestry show provided, intimate attention to the riches in this one may be the way to do it.

The Wednesday Group show closes this weekend as well, so I will sit in the gallery on Sunday and take the show down at closing. It will be a long day, but my head should be full of images from the show at the Met and from visiting the Cloisters on Saturday. Not a bad way to spend a weekend!

>I’m getting fixated on Buddha. He’s come a “ways” this week. For me, a long way! I spent the whole summer worrying about his eyes, and not doing any work on them. Now I’m almost done with them! As usual, he needs the 10 foot rule. I’m a little worried about his very subtle eyebrows, but I’m going to tackle that in the coming week. If I delay I know I’ll end up procrastinating for another season or more. But I do solemnly swear: NO more pictures of Buddha until he’s finished!

Hmmm…the photo is odd. He doesn’t have such a dramatic gold line under his eye, although I did put a little gold here and there near his mouth and that eye. On the original sculpture I imagined some lichen causing that coloration. The other odd thing about my photo is the sharp line of contrast between the bottom of his face and the upper section. It’s more subtle than this shot portrays. Maybe I just had the camera too close. Right now my studio is SO messy I can’t back up to take a better photo!

Something that has been bothering me the past couple of days is my Etsy listing at the side of this blog. Having those pictures seemed like shameless commercialism so I’ve taken them away. Good riddance! There’s still a link to my Etsy shop if you care to look, but I just wasn’t comfortable having the items posted there with prices. This is my blog, and it’s not about selling stuff.

Lastly for today, I took a photo of the historical piece I’m working re-interpreting (re-inventing?). It’s from one of the Devonshire tapestries. This boat is such a tiny part of an enormous tapestry, which actually has more to do with hunting than sailing. In the extreme background at the very top of the tapestry there is the shoreline with boats sailing away. This one drew my attention because of the little man onboard. You’ll have to wait to see him….

>Diane Wolf, USA

Here are two images from a group project of tapestry weavers from all over the world who responded to the events six years ago. Monique Lehman coordinated this project, and you can see all the tapestries here.

Katarzyna Kordyasz, Poland