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!