Happy New Year to everyone, and I do hope that 2014 will be really wonderful in your weaving/textile lives whatever else life throws at us in the coming year!
A big thank you to everyone who has sent messages hoping everything is well with me and mine, especially as I haven’t been active online for much of the year. I have to confess that it was a mixture of things with both my family and my masters degree. Happily, the family is all back together safe and sound and my masters is nearly finished. Just two weeks to go and my final assessment and mini exhibition will be over with just the results to come. There isn’t much more I can do to influence the outcome other than deliver a knock-out assessment presentation!! As my son says – “no pressure, then!”
It’s been a crazy year with lots of weaving, research, dissertation writing, and exhibition planning! Yes, the joint exhibition with Agnes Hauptli that I announced in a blog post last Christmas is nearly upon us! I am the luckiest person as I get to go with my work to New Zealand for two whole months and tour round the two main islands, teaching and lecturing as I go, meeting some wonderful new people, staying with fellow weavers and experiencing the magic that everyone promises New Zealand is!! Then later in the year it all moves house to Tacoma, Washington State, US, where Complex Weavers Seminars is being held. It will be a privilege to share the work with so many people who have watched both Agnes and me grow in our weaving capabilities and dreams over the last 6 years.
Complex Weavers Seminars is where it all starts, as Agnes and I go off on a road trip during our biennial visits to the US. The first time we travelled together, CW Seminars was in Albuquerque and we visited the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon and Bryce Canyon, as well as Monument Valley and the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. Then last year, when the Seminars was in Washington DC, we took ourselves off to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Mountain Range in Virginia and buried ourselves in caves and caverns. It is these natural history sites that have inspired our exhibition work. I have been focussing on three-dimensional texture pieces that I call Growth Forms, and a few off-the-wall pieces (in all senses of the word!!) related to canyons. Agnes meanwhile has been working on some stunning jacquard-woven pieces with her amazing colour sense, so between us we hope to put on a show that will be a treat for both eye and hand.
This coming summer, we hope to visit some of the spectacular sights and sounds around Washington State. Suggestions would be most welcome!!
I hope to be posting much more regularly now, and plan to do a regular blog during my travels around New Zealand. I’m hoping some of you may read along for the ride! Until next time – Happy New Year and Happy Weaving!!