Tribute to a master fiberist, my grandma.
Last week I started to tell you how I got started with wet & nuno felting and the familial connection I have with fiber arts. I’m part of my family’s artistic circle but to every circle there is a center point. That point was grandma to me and to my mother as well. For me she creates a strong gravitational pull to the art form. I think that will be reflected in my work. Understanding my grandmother and me, gives more depth and understanding to my work. I am influenced and inspired by the family connection I have to fiber. Today’s post is going to weave together my grandmother and mother’s connection to my first show with a few special memories of my grandmother included.
Mom and I on opening night next to an exhibit piece.
Familial Connection to My First Show
To explain the connection between the show, my grandmother and my mother, I will give some background. My grandmother was a past president of the Weavers Guild of Buffalo. She was an active member of the group and valued the friendships she made with her fellow crafters. My mother joined the guild when my grandmother went into the nursing home at Fox Run of Orchard Park. She would take my grandmother to her old spinning group meetings and they bonded as my mother began her own exploration of weaving and spinning. The guild my mother and grandmother were members of turned 50-years-old this year and as part of their celebration they held a juried show titled The Golden Web Show which was held at Fox Run of Orchard Park. When my mother told me, they were not only having a show, but having it where my grandmother lived, I had to be part of it. So, I became a member of the guild and started planning my pieces. I so desperately wanted her to see my work, but unfortunately, she was ready to move on. But for her to die right before the show was devastating to me. Not that it wouldn’t have been devastating regardless.
Grandma’s remembrance on the past presidents table.
Woven pieces created by my grandmother, displayed next to past presidents table, including my inspiration for Grandma’s Butterflies in the center.
Little bit About my Grandma and Me
When I became an adult, it was clear that my grandmother and I had very different views of the world. Our politics clashed and she was always scared for me living in a big city. But that’s part of growing up. She was also the women who sat in the chair by my bed until I fell asleep, which was at the foot of her own bed because I was so scared of the dark. She worked tirelessly to make me feel loved and safe. To me grandma was invincible therefore my world was safe. She was also incredibly good at entertaining this little girl. In the morning we waited for the bus to pick me up for elementary school, but it was also very cold in Buffalo. So, we would do the bunny hop together at the end of her driveway to keep warm and have a little fun. I’m sure you can imagine the giggles that were involved.
Paper clipping of an article in the Orchard Park Bee (local newspaper) about my grandmother in 1987. As a small child I played next to her sitting in her loom as pictured above.
My grandmother has a very interesting start to her own art practice. When her children, my mother is the eldest of the four, were grown she went back to school and received a degree in Textile Arts at Buffalo State College. All my memories of her involve her having something in her hands. She might be spinning yarn or knitting or carding wool while watching TV in the family room with me and grandpa. My parents divorced when I was small, and my mother went back to school for a graphic arts degree. My mother needed help with a small, scared little girl and my grandmother was there to assist. I spent much of my growing years watching and learning from my grandmother. She had two angora rabbits in pens outside the house that I helped her care for each day. I learned that you could brush them and collect their soft fur. My grandmother received her master’s in spinning from a school in Canada and did her thesis on spinning angora rabbit fur into blended yarn mixes.
Grandma’s Butterflies on display at the front of the show.
She was a fiber artist who was a master at weaving and spinning. She enriched my life by exposing me to these crafts when I was a small child. Although my entry to the show was intended to be seen by her it ended up being in her honor. My final project in Fiona Duthie’s surface design class was Grandma’s Butterflies and it was a tribute to her legacy as a master fiberist.
Start of the warm color wing.
Opening Night of the Golden Web Show
As detailed in my last post, I had recently started wet and nuno felting after taking a trip with my mom to a fiber arts conference two years before the show. I had come home and built a fiber arts studio and was teaching myself the craft. I had bought different instruction books and from there I designed two bags. My mother gave me a gentle nudge to enter those also into the show as well. They were early pieces, but she challenged me, so I also submitted two small bags. But Grandma’s Butterflies was my tribute to my grandma and was inspired by a woven wall hanging of a butterfly wing hung in my studio.
Mom next to Chain of Diamonds, her piece that won best small woven home textile - she used the Bhutanese Kushutara stitch Sapma technique.
It was so exciting to be part of the show, but I didn’t think any of my work would be awarded. I thought my mom was just being nice (even though she kept telling me that was not the case). When the awards started, they announced my mother won an award for her woven piece using the Bhutanese Kushutara stitch Sapma (very complicated weave and I knew she would win). But to my surprise after my mother I was called for the novice award for my wool marble bag. My mother loves that bag and I also like it, but it wasn’t my favorite bag. The jurist though is looking for techniques and skill when judging and that bag had some very interesting edge work done with curly wool locks. I thought ok great I got noticed for being a novice with potential, that makes it a good night right there. But I almost fell over when my name was called out again towards the end. I thought at first, I must have misheard that until my mother was nudging me to go up to collect the award. Grandma’s Butterflies won for the best felt item. That really made the night for me. How proud my grandmother would have been that her tribute piece won an award.
My mom’s scarf and hat piece hanging next to my marble wool bag in the warm colors section of the show.
In looking back, this show was about more than just my tribute to my grandmother, my mother and I bonded around the legacy of the fiberists before us. Together we are continuing the exploration of fiber arts with some of the knowledge that was passed onto us. My grandmother was taught by her grandmother and my grandmother taught my mother. Now my mother is helping me find the artist in me. The first picture in this post is a member of the Weavers Guild of Buffalo viewing Grandma’s Butterflies on opening night. My grandmother focused on crafting the design on a butterfly wing using the Moorman technique, as discussed last week, but my focus was on how to form the shape of a butterfly using various surface design techniques. More on that in the in the weeks to come.
My pointy flap bag hanging in the cool colors of the show.
Housekeeping
So, to bring this post to a close let’s talk about how the remaining posts of this season will come together. I’m now going to push into discussion on actual techniques. You will find Behind the Scenes posts on my Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram pages. My mother tells me don’t point out the mistakes, only you can see them. But I’m going to tell you the good and bad. I have spent days on a piece to have it all fall apart (not literally) at the end.
The next four posts will go into the design of each square of Grandma’s Butterflies. Each of them has multiple techniques used. Fiona told me that the beauty of my project was I could just keep making squares and pick the best four for the show. Although that isn’t exactly what happened in the end it was close enough. I had a series of three that came out as I planned but it was the fourth square that gave me all the problems. I had to create four additional squares that did not make the show. I realized at the end that the fourth square needed to be simpler to balance the piece. The butterfly squares include techniques in inclusion, prefelt raised, adornment of gems, surface stitching, exotic fibers, and more. I will go through each individually because each on them were their own exhibit piece in and of itself. To be honest I hated each square when I finished it but that was because I only saw what didn’t work. I have yet to have a felt project look like what I thought it would in my head. That is not because I’m doing it wrong its just part of working with wool and other fibers. I can have all the best plans, but the true plan happens when I have the wool in my hands, I’m laying it out and I see how it fulled. That’s when you see what you created.
Beautiful piece made by another member of the guild.
After the four squares I will do two more posts on the bags. Although the pointy flap bag did not win an award, it is my personal favorite. I will be discussing the use of a blending board to mix together leftover scraps I had. There will be a whole line of pieces just from that mix because I have so much of it. As you saw last week, I have a folded hat made from that mix. The final post will be about the brown marble bag. It is last because I did not take many pictures of it as I crafted it. It was an early piece which is what makes it so crazy to me that it won. I will be recreating that piece so I can take pictures of it. It will not be the same wool mix, but it will include the edge design. Plus, I just want to make a bag, so this is a great excuse for felting.
Check back next week for the start of my series on felting techniques. I encourage people to post comments or ask questions on my website, Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram. I am not a professional artist with fancy pieces, rather I’m looking to find people who want to engage in playing around with felting. Or just people who find my blog funny and entertaining.
Local News Coverage of The Golden Web Show
“Weavers' Guild exhibit shows how gallery became part of Fox Run fabric” - The Buffalo News, March 29, 2019
