Updates and Life Lessons

A lot has happened since my last post about migraines and red bugs. I:


- Went to Toronto for a day. It feels so much more like home than Burlington. I drank great coffee, toured through the textile museum, bought fine paper, and had fun picking out goatskin for a little side project. 


- Learned that food colouring is food-grade aniline dye. That's coal tar, baby. Coal tar in your food. That chat was actually the second-most vexing conversation I've been forced into in some time. Forced into, like when your grandmother made you talk to her friends at the supermarket when all you wanted to do was buy jam.


- Realized that a lot of people here don't take me seriously, probably because I am young. We'll come back to this in a minute.


- Made beautiful, beautiful grey from walnuts. 


- Went on a hectic one day road trip to Montreal to see the Gaultier retrospective. High fashion and chocolate mousse were well worth 14 hours in a car.    


- Got a bike! It's an old 5-speed cruiser. Heavy and gorgeous as any cruiser can be. Handles like a dream. 


- Organized a natural dye demo for this Wednesday and was subsequently embroiled in the most vexing conversation I've been forced into in some time. It was actually an email exchange that I had to step away from, even though that meant letting someone else win...




I've been feeling for a while now that I'm treated differently because of my age. To be specific, I'm treated like a kid instead of a fully capable, educated adult. It's a weird thing to think about and maddening to experience, and in almost every iteration of defining it to others I sound like an unappreciative jackass. I do value the help and guidance I'm receiving! I DO! But there's a difference between support and hand-holding, and these hands do not want or need to be held.    


I was very much looking forward to being creatively challenged during this residency, but I didn't foresee every other punch thrown my way. Being an AIR here is trying my patience, my emotional strength, my grace, my ability to adapt, my common sense, my ideas of what I want to do with my life and whom I want to do it with, my budgeting skills, my faith in the universe, my bonds with the people I love, and so much more. 


I imagine, after six months of being irked and goaded and babied, there will be nothing left to bother me. I will be as tranquil as the moon. Direct as an arrow. More resilient than stone. Slower to anger than a glacier. 

A Big Sack of Bugs

I haven't written much in the past couple of days, both for the blog and to friends and family, because I've been terribly homesick and lonely. Every time I tried to sit down and peck out anything the tears would start and then it would all go downhill from there. 


Having a migraine kind of stops you from feeling sorry for yourself and just makes you wish you were dead, so while it may only be a lateral move, I can at least say I'm not sobbing. 


Today was actually okay. Instead of sleeping in until the glorious late morning hours and prancing around dusting things and drinking tea at home, I hauled my cold and miserable ass out of bed and went in to the studio for a colour theory workshop taught by the fabulous William Hodge. 


You can never take too many colour theory classes. It's fascinating and invaluable and you always learn something new. William is, in a way, responsible for my residency. He's also blunt and hilarious and knows colour inside and out. TAKE ANY COURSE HE OFFERS BECAUSE HE IS AMAZING. Did I mention I like him? 


So I got a brutal migraine about an hour and a half into the class. Someone gave me some advil and it helped take the edge off, but it's pretty hard to work with colour when light itself is trying to kill you. There were some upsides:


1. William Hodge is awesome for a lot of reasons. One of them being he gave me a god damned bag of cochineal. Just picked it up on a trip to a cochineal plantation during a vacation, heard I liked natural dyes and thought I might like half a pound. No big deal. 


2. Spending at least half an hour in the solarium's tropical plant-filtered air does a body a world of good. Two goldfish live there whom I will name, befriend, and consider pets for the duration of my time here. 


3. Due to my raging migraine, three people took pity on me and offered to drive me home. 


Let's get back to the cochineal. I had planned on using natural dyestuffs from the neighbourhood for my colour duing this residency, but let's be honest here. When life gives you free cochineal, you grind up those bugs and dye things red. I've got unlimited access to cochineal, walnuts, horse chestnuts, rose hips, osage orange, and a number of other potential dye plants. Obviously cochineal isn't a plant, but it'll satisfy my need for red and flesh (ha!) out my palette. 


Again, I wish this was a dyeing residency and not a weaving one! I made up a couple of fine cotton warps yesterday to get the ball rolling with the weaving thing. The Christmas sale is coming up and I want to weave some scarves and colour them with natural dyes and eco-printing. I've barely done anything on cotton, so I'm very much looking forward to testing it out. 


William mentioned one of his students made a ten-step colour triangle using natural dyes. Insane? Yes. I want to do that too. 

Camilla Valley Dream

Yesterday Nancy and I took a day trip to Collingwood and the surrounding area. I popped into a tiny bookstore called the Crow's Nest and chatted up the ladies who run it (there's an art gallery on the second floor, a delightful children's section in the basement, and two beautiful afghan hounds snoozing behind the counter), and grabbed a fantastic americano from a cafe down the street. 

Don't let looks fool you, the decrepit Crow's Nest is a hidden gem.

And then we drove to Camilla Valley Farm, a famous yarn supplier and picturesque farm. It's gorgeous. We spent over two hours perusing their stock and fondling yarn. I had to put down so many lovely things. Sigh. 

This little grey building houses all your dreams. 

The most adventurous hen making sure everything's okay. 

Between my family (over the weekend I traipsed all over London and St. Thomas, saw Elton John live, ate at an incredible Italian place (Spagos. GO THERE.), and was surrounded by hectic love for three days) and the Guild members, I will see all of Ontario before Christmas. 

Hm.

The elderly women of the Burlington Art Centre are hilarious. They are masters of dry humour, thinly-veiled dirty jokes, thinly-veiled contempt, and a barely perceptible code of winks and nods that can switch the direction of conversation in a flash. They've had a lifetime to hone the perfect piercing glare and cackling laugh. They are fascinating women. 


A very high percentage of the members of both the spinning and weaving, and rug hooking guilds are elderly women. I'm the youngest in the former by at least 45 years, the latter by about 15, but the majority are in their mid 70's to late 80's. That doesn't really matter, I just thought you'd like to hear about these firecrackers. This article is actually about my first Rug Hooking Guild meeting, and some of the ideas it generated.  


During the meeting there was a brief discussion about whether or not work should be judged before being allowed into... something. Craft show or the like. A portion of the guild said yea, the other, nay. Before that though was a lengthy slide show of rugs featured at some large exhibition or tradeshow. 


The slideshow was a mix of all types of hooked delights: exquisite oriental-inspired area rugs, smaller wall hangings, and everything from kitchy Santa Clauses to the lady and the unicorn. There was a lot that made me cringe, and there was some that left me with mouth agape. The ladies of the room were all commenting on which ones they liked and didn't, and talked about technique to the newcomers (I wasn't the only one!).


In this guild, participation and community trumps aesthetic perfection. They're all perfectly great hookers, but the range in taste and ability to design is staggering. I'm torn: obviously I'm not going to say a generic row of cottages is great (unless we're talking technique, or colour choice, or something other than subject matter), but how can I bitch someone out for making a ghastly homage to their beloved golden lab when I know that rug hooking is this person's creative outlet? 


There's something very honest about the way craftspeople treat each other, here at least. They are people, getting together and sharing technique and ideas and support, who do not judge harshly what doesn't need to be judged. I struggle with that, forgetting all too often that not everyone studied colour theory or design or art history or even took a drawing class in school. I definitely grimaced at most of the rugs I saw tonight. Some people just have profoundly terrible taste. But as a fellow craftswoman and guild member, I need to support their endeavours and be happy that they've found something they love to do. 


Humbling oneself and shushing the internal design critic is tough. It actually makes me feel like I'm going crazy and I hate doing it. Certainly there are situations where thoughtful criticism is appropriate, but it can't be let loose all of the time, not in a guild where intense workshopping isn't the mandate, not when you're coming to a guild and asking for guidance and support. 


A friend of mine said something along the lines of, "I don't care what the hell they're making. They're doing something new and expressive and that's great." and it seems those words are true. 

First Day on the Job

In a couple of hours I'll have been a resident of Ontario for one whole week, and today was my first real (short) day as the Artist In Residence. Here's a little tour of the facilities:

The textiles studio and its army of 4 shaft counterbalance looms. To the left is the bank of windows looking out into the solarium, and off camera to the right is a 120" loom. Behind the camera is a large work table and a pantry. 

Some spinning wheels and a tapestry in progress. Also, the octado dobby. 

The dye kitchen! It's an oddly shaped room with tons of counter space and glass jars, and about 100 tea cups. I don't like the idea of tea cups being in a dye kitchen, but the rug hookers upstairs have a dye kitchen too and I'm hoping that's where they all go to mix their acid dyes.

The sink! Those buckets and bric-a-brac to the left need to be tidied up. 

It's a lovely space, but a wee bit lonely when there's nobody there and nothing to do. Today was a strange mix of boredom and paranoia that comes from sleep deprivation, mostly due to the fact that I have no materials and I stay up late thinking about that. I have a shuttle, some bobbins, a very small stack of silk hankies, and that's about it. You can't weave anything with that! And I forgot my notebook.


So I did what I usually do when left alone: I cleaned. Emptying the loom benches, returning the contents to their proper places, making new places for homeless items, and putting most of the harnesses back on the 16 shaft Macomber took up a good three hours. The supply room is still a wreck, but it's looking better. Another couple of hours and it'll be a pleasant thing to encounter. 

The supply room before I arrived...

That kept my hands busy for a short time, but not my mind. People keep telling me it'll take time to adjust to the new space and new people, and I hope it comes quickly. Feeling uprooted and naked (lack of supplies, folks, not clothing) is really, really uncomfortable, especially when there is no fluffy cat to greet you at the end of the day. 


The effects of last year too are resonating in this place and I feel slightly anxious about digging into the project. Not that it'll stop me, but the fear is something that simply must be worked through. 


Regardless of emotional state, there IS a rug hooking guild meeting tonight, which should mean tea, cake, new things to learn and a greatly needed project to dig into. 

Get To Know It

Yesterday I was introduced to the BAC and the weaving and spinning (and rug hooking) guilds, shown around the studios, conference rooms, the shop and the solarium, introduced to many people and finally given a box of weaving books and sent on my way. 


The BAC is a beautiful place. That being said, it's always a little difficult to reconcile what you've read and imagined in your head with what's actually in front of you. The weaving studio is huge, and the dye kitchen similar in size to the one at the college (albeit without the felting table in the way), but I thought I'd be getting bigger looms... Most of the ones in the studio are 4-harness (for teaching classes and such), but the largest I saw was a 12-harness macomber. There are a couple of 8-harness jacks and an octado dobby too. 


All this means is I'll have to be okay with toning down the pattern development a little (and figure out how to make the physical labour of running a big macomber less intense). It won't matter too much for the final outcome. And as for the project itself, I've made a list of materials and have already ordered a few mordants for dyeing. I'm going to be doing a lot of experimental dyeing with the plants found in my new house's spectacular garden, and Ontario's ridiculous summer (seriously? I did NOT sign up for more summer) means the dyestuff stays fresh for longer. There were a few neato dye books in the box of things I was given, and with very little money I can put together a great dye book and DYE ALL OF THE YARNS FOR THIS PROJECT WITH THINGS FROM THE YARD! 


That'll be fun. 


Also, I mentioned in an earlier post, possibly the last one, that Burlington feels very familiar. It's gotten a little sinister since I started watching the Wire, but I know that's all in my head. I've noticed something strange though, and what I've noticed in the past couple of days is this: there is nobody my age in Burlington. Where are all the young, hip twenty-somethings? Nobody said there were any to begin with, but you'd expect there to be someone kicking around. Has everyone already emigrated to Toronto for the year? Is this really just a town of middle-aged couples and retirees with dogs? Maybe my future friends are all waiting for me at Ribfest. UGH.

Handwoven

Christina Garton from Handwoven mag is saying nice things about me: 


http://www.weavingtoday.com/blogs/weaving-today/archive/2011/08/31/behind-the-scenes-at-handwoven.aspx

And if you're near a newsstand, grab (purchase) a copy of handwoven because there's a little article about me in it.