Oakville Tapestry Studio

Chung Ja, new member of the oakville Tapestry Studio has now finished her first sampler, having the opportunity to experience all different kinds of textures, techniques, materials and ideas into one same piece.
Congratulations on this first sample, which only means is the first of many more to accomplish in this Studio and in her creative life. She has been member of the Burlington Guild for many years now. This time she will develope different skills to combine with her previous knowledge and level of expertise. Congratulations Chung Ja and hope to hear from your new projects!

New loom for the Studio

Well, what can I say rather than thank you Consuelo. This loom you offered to us is a beauty and I am sure we will be able to start working on it right away.
Just a note to all of you readers. Consuelo is a member of the Textile Museum of Canada. She works in the Conservation floor and she is a wonderful artist. Her house was a treat just to see all her fibre art all around her place. I was delighted to know her as a person and as an Artist. Not to mention that she is from Spain, and I have a special feeling for Madrid where we lived for a while and my heart was blown for it's beauty!
Here is a picture of Consuelo as a thank you note for her gift, and a sample of her beautiful tapestry.
Hope to see you sometime around the Tapestry Studio, my friend!

photos, forgot to upload them...

My new commission

Starting a new project it is always exciting, especially when it is a large scale one. I love the format and as many of my works I am weaving it sideways due to the technical issues.
The colours are very contrasting and once again I get to play with all the different textures the materials are offering me.

exploring volumes

Well as you see, since I am just waiting to start my new commission, which I believe will be a large scale tapestry and will demand almost all of my time and thoughts, I am exploring possibilities for adding warp into smal pieces of tapestry.

Miniature scale is always interesting because you can always come up with interesting and different ideas regarding structure, weight, texture, etc. I also enjoy the gradation of colours and textures. These particular pieces have been beautiful to work on since they are bamboo fibre, silk and wool...really nice to touch and pass throught the warp. It is almost like listening to harp and letting the music flow between the spaces.

Miniature format is also good to work because you never know when it would be just a scale proyect for a larger piece!

World of Threads

So as you all know, World of Threads is already on! andit has been an awesome experience. So much quality works, so much to see, learn and share. This piece was the winner for traditional and I must say is extraordinary the weaving and the dying of the warp and weft! The Batik shown above is from a friend from Poland who sent in her reflecting images and won a Honorable mention, and if you scroll down the images you will find Chris Palonka, owner of the b42 Gallery, who hosted one of the Common Thread international shows. He is admiring the miniature winner of the Best Contemporary. I will post the image as soon as I get the photograph, because it is such a delicate embroidery with an image of a grafitti....

I really admire the work of the judges. How did they mannage to sort out the winners? It must have been such a difficult task. More than 190 artists and all these fabulous works!..

Congratulations to all! I will continuing showing you more participants works later, but for now, keep up your fibre spirits!

Great encounter!

You can't believe how happy I am to be in contact again with a very dear friend!

You see, I can tell you a story:

"...Once upon a time, long time ago in a far far away land there was an incredible place where the people could enter and the feeling of sadness, stress or worries would immediately vanish!...a magical place where the textures and colours worked like antidotes for the everyday struggles....a place where the fibres, tapestries, batiks, dyes, good food and wine, and of course: MUSIC where entering through all your senses!......This wonderful place was called Textil Creativo, and the land existed for almost 10 years until the pressence of little fairies which started to fly around".....(I mean, my 2 little kids!...jiji)

Yes, Textil Creativo was the name of the Fibre School I opened in Mexico in 1987, and it really was our Shangri-La. I had the opportunity to meet, work, laugh and cry with wonderful friends such as this one in the photograph: My dear Georgette. She was one of my students in the University in the School of Design, and later on she continued her textile trainning in this wonderful place.

After some years she worked in this School and shared many moments.

I happened to find some of her pictures from back then, when we where celebrating the opening of our new place.

This great energy made me think about the possibility of getting together with some of my former students AND friends from back then again. Why not organize an exhibition here in Oakville,... in Toronto........

Thank you Georgette for bringing me so much good memories back to me again!

Visual Arts Award nomination

I know that I am just excited to share this moment with all of my friends and followers, but today I received this note from the Government of Ontario.

The ocasion was the Stars Among Us Award 09.

I was nominated for the Visual Arts Award last May, and eventhough I did not win out of the 3 finalists, I was so excited to have my children, my husband and my mom, who was visiting us from Mexico. I was also excited to have been able to figure in the Arts Award Cathegory representing the Fibre Arts. So Important that it has to be re-valued and positioned side by side with all the other visual arts disciplines. To envision Tapestry and Fibre Art as ART, and not only as a mere craft!

I am quite new to Canada, for I have been living her for almost 4 years, but I felt that here I can keep up my work. For a while I lost a bit of track due to moves from Mexico, then Spain, then Mexico back again....and now here...

But now, I am feeling comfortable with my life, I opened the Studio and finally, after a couple of years started weaving my tapestries and keeping up with my commissions.

Thank you for sharing this space to express just a little bit of my inner thoughts and feelings. This is an important step in my new life in Canada.

Thank you Canada for openning your arms!......

This is the tapestry .I still need to work on the mounting over the canvas. It is drying out before sweing it. It will help to stretch it a bit more. The brown lines tend to pull a little bit inside. They are very tight, and they would look better all tightly stretched.

Finishing the commission

The finished piece measures 50 X 35 in. and the mounting will be sewn to a canvas 60 X 40 in. painted in dark brown colour.I still need to owrk on the mounting. I am right now working on the back finishes.It was interesting to see the development of this piece. Tha one before was soooo textural and this , eventhough it has texture and different techniques it is quite plain on the surface.

finished commission

This is the day of the details. I still have to work on the mounting because since it is all white over white, I need to mount it to a coloured canvas in a contrast colour. In this case I selected a dark brown because the lines are brown. It makes good contrast as a background.
This is a detail of the centre part of the design. It has metallic threads and rough natural material. Again the contrast in texture is one of my main interests.

more images

On one hand I really think this proyect has movement by itself, with no textural resource....on the other hand, the original image, where I am inspiring from, is a whole bunch of fabrics all together which moved me to do this particular proyect. Let's find out during the next weeks what will become of it. It is exciting to have transformations on the way. The fibres and the textures speak for themselves and they are the ones to tell you what they want, don't they!

working on my new commission

I am still working trying to figure out how will I develop my almost 3-D tapestry. As you saw in the detail before, I was trying to have an approach with crochet, now I don't know exactly because I am enjoying the simplicity of only working in the visual volumes....let's see what comes out of this. I am almost 3/4 done the back part as you can see. Keep in touch to see the final version. I am looking forward to see this piece fully woven.

working and exploring again

well here I am again... this time trying to explore into a almost 3-D piece. I am still in the process of trying out different things to get to the idea of the waves. I tried with separate warp...no, it didn't work, I tried then with small pieces of woven strips with gradation...but it seem to be too visualy heavy and thick

so this time I am trying with crochet....let's see what comes out of it! keep in touch .

Visiting Tamara Jaworska exhibit in Toronto

Here we are, just in front of one of the beautiful and impressive large scale tapestries of Tamara Jaworska. My students and I went to see this exhibit and we were all fascinated with the format. It is not often you get to see these kinds of works in Toronto. Excellent day trip!

Remember to enjoy your time weaving

Hi to all of you spending some time in front of your looms. Remember that it doesn´t matter when you feel than some day you weave tighter than the other, or looser than the day before. I believe that weaving is part our our daily expressions, and we must learn to deal with the everyday life stress or not though our work.
We are not machines, and it does not mean you are mediocre or not so well" finished or done", it´s just that, in my personal opinion, weaving is like breathing....letting the flow of your veins run through you...explore the possibilities of our works in any dimension.
Any way, it´s just a thought. I even ejoy looking at my missplaced warps sometimes and laugh about it. It reminded me that day when I had a discussion with my daughter, or simply a bad day...ThenI turn around and see what came after that and it was beautiful and peaceful weaving. And that is what I most like.
Have a great Easter Weekend!
Ixchel

My latest commission

Here it is. My brother's commissioned tapestry. He is living in Costa Rica and, not only he is a wonderful person, he is a great photographer. He has been traveling quite a bit and he has beautiful shots. This is one night shot from the Arenal Active volcano. It was so challenging to weave black over black, and after weaving and un-weaving the background, I decided to blend a bit of grey wool into it to "melange" the contour and not loosing the intention of the impressive lava flow.
I used wool, cotton, linen, synthetic and metallic yarns.

My Studio

And now this is my turn to show a little bit of my Shangri-la... my space where we get together, weave, have a cup of coffee.

The Oakville Tapestry Studio is a small space, but I think it is just what we need.

Project for Nine lives

This is my new mini tapestry I will present for the nine lives exhibit in the World of Threads Festival 2009 next Fall.

This was inspired on one of Lyn Estall's paintings. The exhibit, since it is our seventh Festival, we wanted to relate it this time to feline-theme. I had so much fun weaving this piece.

If anyone is interested in participating the call for entry will end next May and it is open National for Canada.

www.worldofthreadsfestival.com

Yukon Fields with me before the cutting

Here I am before doing the cutting of the warp. I wove it sideways, but the darkest part goes upwards.

Yukon Fields

This is the tapestry I finished today, January 13. It is a comission for a friend from Mexico and it will be presented next Friday in Oakville's Town Hall for the exhibit

abstract Canadian Landscape. It was inspired in a photograph from the fields in Yukon. It was really attrractive weaving in Orange......I mean really bright orange. The materials go from silk, linen, cotton, metallic, synthetic....fabric...anything I found that I could use for the fields, I incorporated them in.