finding my drishti

Drishti -- Sanskrit for “vision or insight”. I have heard it used in yoga class during difficult balance poses when the teacher urges the class to “find your drishti”. Insight, balance, & focus are exactly what my mind has been contemplating & exploring quite seriously over the last several months. Our brief Grand Canyon trip in January, prophetically marked by a condor flying directly over our vehicle as we climbed up the Coconino Rim on the road leading up from the Painted Desert & Coconino Plateau, has deepened this reflection… I have realized that the upcoming months will effervesce quickly to bring September & my Canyon residency. The time to make ready is now. Although I have for some time held an awareness of life’s transience, my father’s recent death has metamorphosed that awareness into a quicksilver flash. Insight, balance, focus. What is necessary to make my personal & artistic life abounding & productive?  What needs to be pared away?

Perhaps this introspection & self-examination also stems from the fact that I turn 50 this year, an event I am actually looking forward to. I have decided that there are many things on the internet that I do not need, that do not enrich my experience of life or my artistic self, that suck my precious time & energy away, so I have hit the delete key on: Facebook; having e-list discussion posts sent to my inbox; going online & checking emails every day. I refuse to get into texting, twittering, or talking on my cell phone in public places or moving vehicles. Everyone & everything who is important, inspiring, & essential to me can be easily accessed via emails, blogs, websites, & actual conversations. Learning to play the cello is challenging & rewarding; it complements creativity & weaving. I want to endeavor to keep my mind focused on what is essential, & keep my physical self strong for weaving through dog walking, yoga, & pumping iron at the gym.

Dissatisfaction & unhappiness with some of my affiliations & subscriptions, I now have realized, have occurred because they have either taken a direction that is not the one I find myself headed in or because I have outgrown them. I will most likely be letting some things go, such as my Fiberarts subscription (& several others) & quite possibly my HGA membership. Thanks to recommendations from Janie Hoffman & Tommye Scanlin, I plan to join the Textile Society of America & the Surface Design Association. ATA continues to be very important to me; I will continue my volunteer duties as digest editor for the online newsletter, writing promotional text for educational events, writing articles, & will be enjoying my current task as a “think tank” member to help keep ATA dynamic & vital.

Inspiration is something I am always trying to feed & I have found two new sources that I want to share-- HAND/EYE, “an independent, international publication which explores the nexus between design and development, culture and commerce, art and craft, and environment and ethics”, which is all that & more, & a new book by a local Tucson artist, weaver, teacher, & friend, Claire Park-- Creating with Reverence: Art, Diversity, Culture and Soul, which I am eagerly anticipating in my mailbox any day now.

As my brain was busily involved in these cogitations, my hands were busily working on the latest assignment from Silvia Heyden… now delving into color with composition, but with limitations on number of colors that can be used & using specific design motifs. The structure of study again consists of value studies, sketching, & weaving; here are the results of my initial efforts…

My subject is a representation of Santa Rita prickly pear cactus, which grow & glow in decidedly un-cactus-like hues of luscious red-violet, blue-violet, & bluish-green. I worked my sketch in watercolor crayons, which allow for quick, loose sketching & help me avoid becoming engulfed in over-precision. My need for perfection is met by keeping my wet brushwork over the crayon from bleeding colors where I don’t want them to go. My first drawing started out like this…

…but I realized it just seemed to be an unorganized jumble of colors; perhaps, I realized, I could use this as an opportunity to explore color theory & relationships in my design. I have had several classes over the decades that covered these subjects, but the end result in each of those were neat little color squares & color wheels that did not continue to register principles later on when I needed them to. Here was my chance for actual application of theory, so I rummaged through my two most useful books-- Color and Fiber, & Basic Visual Concepts and Principles for Artists, Architects, and Designers (which I was fortunate enough to find used for much, much less than what Amazon has it listed for) --exploring analogous color systems, contrast of proportion, & spatial effects, resulting in much scribbling of notes to myself on my preliminary pencil sketch & finally in a rematerialized crayon sketch that will serve as my visual resource while I weave… 

Before I could weave, I had to modify the shedding system on my big Shannock. After completing the modifications, I discovered a few design flaws which have so far been easily fixed with a couple of adjustments. I based the length of the new dowel heddle bars on the length of the original wooden slat ones, knowing that they needed to be this length in order for all of them to fit side by side when the loom was warped to its width capacity. But, the original slats had the heddles glued in place clear out to the ends & my system requires screw eyes, so I had to place the screw eyes closer to the ends of the dowels than I originally planned, creating the possibility that the steel rods holding the Texsolv heddles could slip out of the end screw eyes because they only extended a mere 1/4 inch beyond the end screw eyes instead of the 1 & 3/4 inches I had originally planned. To prevent slippage, I found some small rubber washers that fit snugly over the end of the rods. Below is a list of the parts & pieces (all found at Home Depot) I used for my modifications, along with a picture of the assembly in place with warp & heddles. I have begun weaving & so far all systems are go! If you decide to try doing this for your own Shannock & have questions you think I could help you with, contact me.

1” wooden dowels, cut to same length as original heddle bars

#201 screw eyes (4 for each dowel; use a drill to make the hole & put wood glue on each screw before inserting into dowel)

3/16” round steel rods cut to same length as dowels

3/4” steel D-rings (one for each dowel)

Velcro wire wraps (the heavy ones in bright colors that come in packs of 5)

size 00 flat rubber washers to put on ends of steel rods (find them in the plumbing section)

Mirrix Texsolv heddles

And though the weaving has begun, it has been slow. I warped with 8/3 linen at 8 epi, now wishing the epi was more like 7 epi because I am using mixed weft bundles again, just as I did for the first assignment. I am still stuck on the first cactus pad, have unwoven it a couple of times now because I was unhappy first with its shape (I am not using a cartoon) & then its color. I do have a small selection of red violet & blue violet yarns on hand which I have realized needs to be supplemented, so now I have more on the way from ymm which are small enough to add in & avoid overly bulky bundles. I am now dawdling a bit hoping for them to arrive soon so I can use them.

I plan to post more often as this new tapestry, nopalita violeta, gets underway in earnest. The tapestry spawned by the first assignment, saguaro oscuro, generated high approval from Silvia & we enjoyed writing several letters to one another discussing its structure & her more obscure observations regarding tapestry design & composition in general. I feel I have set the bar quite high for myself; now I must measure up on a Grand scale with this new effort!

Comments

[tommye scanlin]

Lyn,
Another thoughtful and beautiful post.
Wonderful that a condor appeared as you traveled on the Grand Canyon trip at the beginning of the year. Yes, prophetic it must be.
I appreciate your awareness of time that you share through your writings.
And, as you very well know, yours and Kathy Spoering's blogs were my inspiration for starting mine.

[Roberta]

My thanks for the references to Hand/Eye and to YMM, from a fellow tapestry weaver and cellist.

[lyn]

Oh, Jennifer, I could never give up my blog! I have come to see it as an extension of myself. I always wanted to keep a journal, but handwriting one never worked out. The best part about my blog was that I created it to inspire myself because I didn't know any other tapestry weavers & felt so isolated. Now knowing it also inspires others has been one of its biggest gifts to me. This blog has also inspired other weavers to start blogs that have led to even more tapestry blogs through which many of us have "met" each other. It's so wonderful!

[Jennifer]

I am so glad that blogging is not one of the things you are cutting off your list! I always love hearing about your thought process, where you are going, what you are struggling through, and what you find when you get somewhere. I am excited about the links - especially the one on basic visual concepts. I know you don't blog for my sake - but thank you for sharing - I want you to know that I benefit from it! The catus concept to beautiful and I look forward to seeing the tapestry!

[lyn]

Thanks for sharing & understanding my thoughts about time, Rebecca & Sue. At first after I wrote this, I thought, oh my, I sound like an ascetic! But then I realized, hey, I've managed to live a full, wonderful life before all of this electronic yammering, why not now? It just astounds me how much time is wasted on trivial thoughts & conversations. Time to make time for meaningfulness. Happy weaving to you both!

p.s. Well, Rebecca, the Santa Ritas are not quite that flourescent, but they are pretty purplely at times & can be pretty amazing to see in the sea of desert greens!

[Sue Schwarz]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on time and creativity, a thing I seem to constantly fight. I too have found the Hand/Eye magazine on line and have decided I need to subscribe to the paper copy - I need it to be in my hands. Your Silvia Heyden work is lovely and inspires me.

[Rebecca Mezoff]

Thank you for your thoughts on cutting out the extraneous in life. I struggle with this mightily and most days still feel overwhelmed by the amount of information I am expected to take in, process, and somehow make sense of--often spitting out written information of my own in one form or another. I have made some strides in cutting down on electronic media and "social networking" sites (agreement on Facebook, twitter, and the like!). Some days it is hard for me to realize that I am just cluttering my mind and increasing my stress by all this input--and it makes me feel like I have to be able to process all of it. But the truth is, that it muddies the waters and makes things fuzzy and makes me less present with the things that are important.
I love the cactus piece. Do they really grow in those colors there?
Rebecca