Pages

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Leigh Square residency week 9 - The End*

*yes, that is another "Series of Unfortunate Events" reference. That's two weeks in a row now. I just realized that as much as I enjoyed the series, you might get the impression that I thought of this residency as "unfortunate". Absolutely not! The residency has been a great experience. I've enjoyed the dedicated, productive time, and many opportunities have come my way as a direct result of the residency. I'm planning to do a post reflecting on the whole experience, but for now, this will just be a regular recap of my week.

I had a visitor on Wednesday who popped in to comment on how much he liked the pieces that I had on display. Then he told me a story about a dream he had a few weeks ago. He dreamt that he was following the ancient trade routes along the coast and that while he was somewhere in Oregon (he said he didn't know why, but he was sure this took place in Oregon), he met a weaver who showed him many beautiful and finely woven goat hair blankets. He said he remembered how delicate and soft they were to touch. (I'm not entirely sure that goat hair is particularly soft and delicate. I'd describe it more as coarse and sturdy, but never-the-less, that's the fibre that people along the coast here did use to weave their blankets.) When he told me this story, I thought he had seen the weavings that I had done on the Salish loom, but he seemed confused when  I mentioned them, so we went out to see the display cabinet.


That's when I realized that I had specifically taken those two pieces out to take to the Creative Weaving Project at the Dunbar Community Centre. Oh well. I appreciated his story and I'm glad he shared it with me.

Since this was the last week of my residency, I had made a list of the things I wanted to finish up.

I wanted to get some looms warped for my workshop on Saturday. I'm really enjoying the direct warping method for shortish warps.


Because I've had several workshops and events recently, all my looms had warps on them, so I had to clear some off before I could rewarp them. I decided to play with some pick up stick patterns at the same time: They don't show up too well in this piece, I think they look better in a balanced weave, but this was a practice piece for me. After all, it's only been about 20 years since I've used these techniques.


I also wanted to finish the warp that I had put on the big floor loom.

I managed to get to the end of the warp and when I unrolled the finished piece, I realized that I had woven about 1/2 the full length by myself in the last two weeks of my residency. This piece was supposed to be woven by members of the community. There were a few community members that did some weaving, mainly at the Culture Days event at the start of my residency, and the groups of kindergarten/grade one students who came by for during their field trips. I think this was the only disappointing part to the residency. I'm not sure why, but very few people in the community were interested in weaving. I was going to be a give the finished banner to the centre for them to display, but in the end, I decided to keep it for myself as a souvenir of my time at Leigh Square.


Terri stopped by to remind me to cut the warp off the loom in front of the reed so that the next person to use the loom doesn't have to rethread the whole thing.  I really meant to, but somehow, I ended up cutting it between the heddles and the reed. Oops! It's a pain to rethread everything, but it was my mistake, so I spent the time to leave the loom the way I found it.


One of the things that I've been working on now and then during the residency is making full size patterns for some of the garments that I've designed. I finished up with rough patterns for six garments. I hope to eventually post some tutorials for making handwoven garments.


And just like that, it was time to leave. Overall, it was a really productive and useful experience. I'm glad that I did it. I've realized that I am not ready for a permanent off site studio, but I would like to do more (occasional) short term residencies like this in the future.


No comments:

Post a Comment