Weaving Fun Stuff

Rigid Heddle Looms by Travis Meinolf

I have been watching the post daily anticipating the small package that arrived today. Two rigid heddle looms that I got from Travis Meinolf. He calls himself an Action Weaver and I read about some projects he did with the public where he had people weave strips of cloth on these looms. He makes the rigid heddles with a lasar cutter--and I was entranced by the bright colors and energy of bringing weaving into the streets. So I wrote to see if I could purchase some, and he said he would trade if I had something to trade (he "doesn't believe in money" is the way he put it; I thought, "I was young once too.") I knew he was going to be teaching at SAIC this summer, so I suggested I bake cookies and send them. After I sent the email I wondered if that was a bit too homebody, but he wrote back and said GREAT--and please send enough for the class. That was easy. Apparently he sent me two looms from Germany (he lives in Berlin) but they never arrived. Wonder who the lucky person is who has my package. I can't imagine some custom officer wanted these looms. Fortunately, Travis had two with him in Chicago, and those are what arrived today.


They are very clever. The flat wooden parts are ways to hold your warp at both ends, and attach them to a stationery something and around your back. Another words, a very sweet backstrap loom. I can't wait to try. And my part of the exchange--I made the madeline recipe from my Laduree cookbook and also their apricotines which are almond cookies with apricot jam sandwiched between two of them.

Book by Marion Tuttle Marzolf

Another fun weaving-related item that is by my bedside is this book, Shuttle in Her Hand by Marion Tuttle Marzolf, which my friend Toni King lent me a couple of days ago. Clicking on the title leads you to a nice review of the book online by Daryl Lancaster. Toni, who is a writer herself, knows Marzolf from Michigan where they were in a writers group together. When she read the book she thought I would be interested--and she is right. I enjoy reading about shuttles and threads and patterns and things that are familiar to me playing a leading role in a novel. I have just started but I know it is going to lead me to places and people that I know too.


I am not doing much in my studio these days. I rationalize it this way. Winter is nine months long in Vermont, summer is a brief three months. We (Mark and I) are painting the exterior of our house (I will post an image when one side is complete) and three brief months will probably not complete it--so this is the time to be outside scraping and painting, and sooner than I like it will be cold and I will have lots of time up in my studio.

Dance Performance Directed by Hannah Dennison

The other fun thing was going to see an amazing dance performance held in the Breeding Barn at Shelburne Farms. I think I wrote about seeing the movie Pina on this blog--and if not, I should have. It was so profound, and most nights one of us is watching some video clip of Pina Bausch and her group. I find the music as mesmerizing as the movement. So when a friend told me about this dance performance directed by Hannah Dennison called Dear Pina, the name alone inspired me to buy tickets. Clicking on the title brings you to Dennison's website about the dance. You can see parts of the dance, images of the barn, and you can see the costumes. If you look carefully at the brochure above you will see that I tried to sketch one of the dresses. I even asked the costume designer, Marz Black aka Leslie Anderson, if she had a pattern I could buy but she said she doesn't use patterns and besides each dress was made specifically for each dancer. Maybe I should have offered to barter cookies for a pattern specific for me.

Art and Food

Before any of our trips to NYC I always spend time on the computer doing research. I make lists of all the museums and galleries, their locations and what is showing. It doesn't matter that I have copies of the gallery guide, or I have done this before, or even that I think I can find most of them blindfolded, I still make my lists. I also make lists of potential restaurants--and the top item I look for are dim sum restaurants. It is nice to see that Nom Wah Tea Parlor, the first place my mother took me for dim sum when I was a child, is still open and recently getting good press, after a period of some questionable reports. Sadly three trips to NYC and I still haven't fit dim sum into the equation. I think it was easier when galleries were in Soho, but Chelsea is just a bit off the route to Chinatown.

Laduree, Madison Avenue and 71st Street, NYC

We did get to Laduree though. Be sure to click HERE and see their website--the animation just seems so perfect for their product and image. It's located just south of the Whitney Museum, and the Biennial was definitely on our to do list. It was pouring rain and as we approached the store we heard one man say to his companion, "The line would be winding around the corner if it wasn't raining so hard." So we lucked out.

Cookbook with Macaron Recipe

I purchased their cookbook, Sucre, after reading about it on the Not So Humble Pie blog. It came packaged in a box that looked like it was full of sweets, and when you open the box you find this softly colored tissue paper and small book with gold paper edges and a velvet cover. The pictures are scrumptous and I remember that Mark, my friend Marianne, and I just sat there and turned every page in the book--oohing and ahhing the whole time.

A variety of Laduree Macarons--a bit weary from being hauled around all day but still delicious.

I got a selection of different macarons for dessert that night. We cut them into quarters and critiqued them with our friends as we ate them. The raspberry one just seemed like regular jam inside, and the vanilla one (I think) had a sort of marshmellow-like filling that I didn't like at all (and I like marshmellow), but all the rest were delicious. It was so much fun to actually buy and taste them but I think in the future I will just make my own.

Images from the Whitney Biennial: Werner Herzog (top), Lutz Bacher (left middle top), Elaine Reichek (right middle top), Statement by Forrest Bess (left middle bottom), weaving by Travis Meinolf for installation by Kai Althoff (right middle bottom), Forrest Bess (bottom)

The Whitney Biennial 2012 is closed now but we managed to get there during the final week. I thought it was a relatively quiet show. Textiles are definitely a popular medium now and Elaine Reichek's room and the shroud woven by Travis Meinolf were both prominent. I have been a fan of Werner Herzog since seeing his Nosferatu in 1979, and as I approached the space where his installation was located, the music coming out of it let me know I had arrived. If you click on his name in the previous sentence, you can listen to a discussion he had with the curators of the Biennial on May 17th. Does anyone else have such a wonderful hypnotic mesmerizing enthusiastic voice? He opens my heart to wonder.

Opening of Silence at Masters & Pelavin, curator Jaanika Peerna (left), Anne Lindberg (second from left) and other artists in the exhibition; "Sleep" by Anne Lindberg (below)

We timed this trip so we could attend an opening of the exhibition Silence at Masters & Pelavin, which included work by our friend Anne Lindberg. It was packed, so the title Silence was like an oxymoron--but then the curator, Jaanika Peerna, asked for a moment of silence and a sense of peace took over the room. Mostly I get to encourage and applaud my friends these days through Facebook and email--we are all so spread out in space--so it was really meaningful to be able to see Anne (and her husband) and share her success in person.


On the way home we spent hours at DIA Beacon. No pictures are allowed so you will just have to go in person and experience the work, the place, the ambiance. My advice: GO! To me it was definitely a holy pilgrimage. This is the art that I understand as "Art." Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Blinky Palermo, Walter De Maria...and the list goes on. GO!     

Already Memories

Raining in NYC

We came home from NYC with more than the Pisco Brandy that we bought. Not surprising since it rained the whole time we were there and we walked around with wet feet for days. We live a very isolated life in Vermont, so the crowds in the museums, galleries and buses must have given us some germ that has caused constant coughing, sneezing and hacking since May 25. Finally we both went to doctors and are on the mend.

Why the Pisco Brandy? Well I made a Bobby Flay dinner for a party a month or so ago that included his Pisco Sour Sangria. I had gotten all the ingredients and then discovered that none of the liquor stores in NH or VT (state-run) sell Pisco. I substituted Grappa, and it was delicious, but I put Pisco on my NYC list. Every store I went in had several choices. I haven't tried it yet but it is something to look forward to later this summer.

We went across the Tappan Zee Bridge into Westchester, then the Bronx, over another two bridges into Brooklyn and later that day through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel into Manhattan. We must have paid every toll possible in just a few days, and it did feel like we were hemorrhaging money. We went to Brooklyn so I could have a discussion/critique of my work with the curator of the Drawing Center's Viewing Program. It feels like perk enough to have my work included in the Viewing Program (if you click HERE it takes you to the home page where you can enter my name in the "Name or Keyword Search" area and go to my page), but I was thrilled to have an opportunity to meet with Nina Katchadourian. You may have seen The New Yorker blog article on her work, which was going around the Internet recently. I don't feel ready to discuss the generous conversation I had with Nina; I am still digesting and distilling it, seeing where it takes me and holding it close. But I will share my thoughts when I am ready. Meanwhile please go to my page, which I feel very good about, and give me some feedback.

Row Houses in Windsor Terrace area of Brooklyn
(unknown photographer)

We were just blocks away from the Windsor Place house we called home from 1983-1987, so of course we took a drive down nostalgia lane. The street is a facade of connected row houses. Every house on the block has been upgraded with vinyl siding in every pastel color imaginable, except the house where we lived. It had its familiar asphalt-siding (I always called it linoleum siding) and door with peeling paint and general air of weariness. It is our fish that got away. But if we had bought it when we could, I would never have gone to graduate school, or become a college professor, or lived in as many states as we have tried.

Ernesto Neto (above); Richard Avedon (below)

We headed for Chelsea galleries after Brooklyn. This trip we only had a chance to go there two afternoons, so we didn't see everything, but a little inspiration can go a long way. Nina recommended the Ernesto Neto show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and the Richard Avedon which was showing across the street at one of the Gagosian spaces. I like Neto's work, have watched it for years, but I am not so crazy about the recent spate of "gallery as amusement park" exhibitions. Bonakdar does have the kindest, friendliest staff that I have encountered in years, and I guess they need this attitude to deal with all the families with small children that I saw climbing all over the Neto's (as he intended). I loved the Avedon's because, like Patti Smith's "Just Kids", it brought me right back to my formative years. Ginsburg was always a hero of mine (first time I heard him read was in NYC around the time some of these photos were taken [he was so young!]) and it is amazing to stand in front of these huge images and study the people. Big art is so impressive and I am still struggling with the idea of how I can make my work big, bigger, biggest and still make it myself (which I want to do) and not physically destroy myself while making it.

Well, I am not done with the trip, but will stop for today. Have to go outside and scrape paint from our enormous house which just feels bigger with every scraping motion. 

Anchor Point

New York Happiness

While thinking about moving again (nomadic to the core), I heard myself saying about one possibility, "but it's too far away." So then I had to ask, "too far from what?" and realized that New York City is still my anchor point. I was born in the city, and though raised on Long Island, I always knew it was where I would go when I finished college. It is the only place where I have my bearings. I know north, south, east and west when I am on those streets. A trip to New York is always anticipated with excitement, and savored afterwards. This past week we went there, though most of the trip involved activities near the city rather than in the city. It's too much to share in one post, so I will begin here, and try to return in a timely manner to tell the rest.

Gail Hovey and Pat Hickman in front of a work by Lillian Elliot

We spent the first night overlooking the Hudson River in Rockland County with Pat Hickman and Gail Hovey. Their home is full of textiles, ethnographic and contemporary. It confirms a kinship I feel with them and with their curiosity and creativity. Their move from Hawaii to here has brought them back into the thick of a cultural pulse that I long for. Before finding their house, they found Pat's studio, which we visited the next morning. Gail has dedicated writing space in their home. Clearly they have their priorities right.

GAGA Arts Center
Pat Hickman (top left); Step Gorin (top right);
Eric David Laxman and Pat Hickman (bottom right)

Pat's studio is in an old calico mill, now called the Garner Arts Center (GAGA). In the short time we were there we met several other artists who have space in the buildings. Steph Gorin, owner of Loop, is just down the hall from Pat. She was just back from the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival where she was selling her fiber and yarn. (Someday I am going to make it to that event.) She has a wonderful smile and enthusiasm for what she does, and allowed me to photograph her equipment. As an owner of a high tech loom (my beloved TC-1), I could really appreciate her equipment and the unique yarns she creates for others to use. (By the way, did you know the TC-2 is launched and that Vibeke Vestby will be bringing them to Convergence this July?) We also met Eric David Laxman, a sculptor whose studio was badly damaged from Hurricane Irene. He was actually clearing it out for a move to a new home studio, but he still has a gallery at GAGA. We were also introduced to several other artists, and left appreciating the support community gives to each other, and at the same time what dedicated studio space opens up for creative work.

National Basketry Organization Quarterly Review
Spring 2012
Pat Hickman article by Catharine K. Hunter

When I was a student in the late 1970s, the collaborative baskets of Pat Hickman and Lillian Elliot were very prominent in the fiber world. I think it is one of the great things about this field that people have always been approachable and friendly. I'm not embarrassed to say that I feel awe when I realize that I have become friends with Pat; that she and Gail welcomed us to their home and the conversations reminded me of why I am a weaver and how much I love textiles (some of them). We all have changed over the years, just as the field has changed, and I certainly see textiles being used by artists everywhere--but the identity with this material is not the same today as it used to be. We have changed too, but there is some fundamental devotion to the lineage of textiles that is essential for me--and I am glad to find this devotion alive and well in Pat, even though fiber is too narrow a definition to describe her work. She gave me a copy of the National Basketry Organization (NBO) Quarterly Journal with an excellent article on her work written by Catharine K. Hunter. The image above shows the magazine article, with one of my favorite sculptures by her, Garlic.


In the fall when I went to NYC, I also intended to do several posts about the trip, and instead I only did one, and then stopped posting for months and months. This time I promise to continue in a day or two.

Circles and Grids

The other day I was mesmerized by the raindrops in street puddles but I didn't have my camera with me. Its been drizzling for days but today the weather finally cooperated and created some puddles.

It turns out it isn't easy to capture raindrops on "film."

They might become the basis of some weavings. Which will contrast with what I am currently working on--grid lines that come and go. Very simple but it fascinates me.

Weaving in Progress by Bhakti Ziek, 2012

Bloom

My favorite tree is in bloom.

Just when I think winter will never end, the buds start showing up and there is hope. This year the buds appeared, then there was a freeze and I panicked--maybe they wouldn't bloom. But here they are.

Their beauty so strong that they get me out of the house to look closer, and to share with you.

This bloom reminds me of the incredible painting by Van Gogh that is on display at the Philadelphia Art Museum in the exhibition Van Gogh Up Close. It closes tomorrow but moves on to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottowa, May 25 to September 3, 2012. The painting comes right at the end of the exhibition, and clearly the curators also feel the power of this painting since they put it as the first illustration in the catalog and as a two-page detail at the end. Almond Blossom, from 1890, shows a branch of the flowering tree silhouetted against a fantastic blue-green sky. When I saw it I almost burst into tears. It has nothing contrived about it. It's not cleaver, or witty, or conceptually smart--it simply conveys an absolutely present communication between the artist and the tree--so honest that anyone looking at the painting must feel the exhilaration of being alive. It is what I wish of my work, and why I appreciate the tree outside my window.

Thank you for the encouragement to continue writing this blog that came in emails and online. It makes me happy to share my thoughts with you; keeps me connected from my corner of the world. I do post in facebook fairly often, so if you aren't my friend there, please send a request. You can like my professional page (bhakti ziek weaver) or ask to be friends on my personal page (bhakti ziek). Or do both--why not?

Spring Post

My Roof: West by Bhakti Ziek, 2012

Detail of My Roof: West by Bhakti Ziek

Although I haven't written in this blog for many months, I certainly have thought about it. Too bad you can't read my mind, some of the posts were intelligent and interesting. On the other hand, maybe it is a good idea you can't read my mind.

I wanted you to know that I finished my six panel weaving My Roof and have shown three of the panels in Philadelphia at the Art Alliance (My Roof: East) and tomorrow the other three panels (My Roof: West) debut at the Durango Arts Center in the exhibition Textiles Today: Redefining the Medium, curated by Ilze Aviks. The exhibition will run from April 24 - June 2, 2012. 

Pat dipaula Klein preparing Chocolate Tart from Lovin'Oven in Fenchtown, NJ

But I admit the thing that really got me excited about posting was the chocolate caramel sea salt tart shown above. Pat dipaula Klein is a wonderful artist who lives near Philadelphia. We were colleagues together at Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science, but our friendship really developed through the connection to BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vermont, where we both show. She and her husband come to Vermont each year to visit good friends and we have gotten to know each other, which has also blossomed into a wonderful email exchange. Pat's daughter Julie owns the Lovin' Oven in Frenchtown, NJ and she was featured on the Food Channel's The Best Thing I Ever Ate. I saw the program and have lusted after her salted chocolate caramel tart ever since. We even stopped at the restaurant on our last trip home from Philadelphia but forgot to check days and hours ahead of time and pulled up to find it closed. So when Pat said she would bring dessert to dinner this week ("something from Julie"), of course I requested THE Tart. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful evening of friendship, laughter and buzzing energy. I can still taste the burst of salt mixed with the chocolate and caramel. Next trip to Philadelphia we will time it for a full meal at the Lovin' Oven with Pat and Phil. I know what I will have for dessert.