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Another wall in the gallery was filled with turquoises. Suzanne Pretty's Balance depicts:

"...a scene with china stacked in a precarious pile set on a rock tablecloth in front of cloud wallpaper. A Caribou Cup is balanced on the end of a fork placed in a Flamingo Cup set beside a Fish Teapot stacked on top of a Snake in the Grass and Rock Plates. Each piece of china is carefully balanced and teetering as the worlds depicted on the china try to balance"

Dolores Broberg's tapestry Rejoice: Birth Announcement for a Turtle is a delightful seascape bordered by turtles celebrating a turtle hatching out of his egg at the edge of the sea. It is indeed joyful, woven of sandy and watery colors.

The next group of tapestries features reds and yellows. Elinor Steele's Reconstruction 1 is a bold bright geometric composition. It is "one of a series of designs that represent my desire to weave the fragments of destruction into something strong and ordered." Elinor has a very strong sense of design and color and uses the computer to define her ideas. Opposites Attract by Susan Perrine is a non-traditional tapestry woven with beautiful red, cream and green papers. The wide paper warp ends protrude several inches from the surface and create a colorful, textural grid. It is difficult not to touch them!

Elinor Elkin has three small pieces in the show, Hands, Invisible and Dream. Her weaving is textural as she uses different kinds of yarns together. There is good humor and emotion in her designs, a dreamlike quality to them revealing a strong sense of imagination. Her colors are more earthy and neutral.

Betsy Wing's three tapestries are about color gradations and geometrics. Beautifully blended colors are contrasted with dramatic stripes of strong color. They hung very well next to Priscilla May Alden's bright Ancient Flow tapestries. These pieces are bold geometric designs "about the connection I feel to past cultures. There is a rhythm, like the beating of distant drums, which connects me to the Spirit Place and flows through me".

Three Faces and Eye on the Prize are Deann Rubin's dramatic, beautifully designed tapestries. They "were studies in children's book illustration themes that I have been exploring in computer drawings". Her contrasting bright colors contributed to the strength of her design. Thor Carlson's Lozenge Quadrille is an abstract design of vibrant colors. He uses the techniques of Flemskvav, Kilim, Soumac and Native American weavings in his work. Monk's- Book of Kells is Nancy Corkery's purple and red tapestry. She uses different kinds of yarns to create texture and softness.

Janet Austin's three small tapestries, Red & Green Apples are beautifully woven and hung. She is "playing with the contradiction between flat geometry and the asymmetrical depth of organic images."

Eve Pearce's large tapestry, Petra Ifan is a wonderful woven representation of a smaller unsung Stonehenge. "Standing under the headstone I could almost touch it. The monolith rests delicately on three points, each smaller than my fist". Her use of shading and color blending adds to the success of this landscape. At the end of my walk around the exhibit is Louise Abbott's Twilight Shadow. It was designed from a photograph she took while gardening. She was so surprised to see her shadow in the picture that she wanted to see it in fiber. The shading and blending is beautifully done in this very weaverly piece.

"New England Tapestry 2004" was a wonderful opportunity to educate the public about the art of tapestry in a beautiful gallery setting. TWINE is proud to have this exhibit near the ATB5 Biennial. Newport and Guild, NH both have a proud heritage of textiles celebrated by these exhibits.

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