Next Deadline: July 15: Exhibits - Our Public Voice

Presentation and professionalism, pros and cons of various selection procedures, theme shows, and the role of exhibits to promote tapestry are among the topics that could be discussed.

October 1: Tips and Tactics

January 15: Proportion.

When trying to determine why the means of artistic expression in tapestry was becoming archaic, I realised that one of the reasons might have to do with the custom of treating the threads of the weft as the chief medium of the visual message. . . .Yet fabric consists of both warp and weft. . . . 

These observations led me to wonder how the artistic language of textiles might benefit from . . . a warp whose strands would not be parallel and flat . . . but convergent, curved or three dimensional. . . . a convergent . . . warp fans out from a single point getting wider as it gets less dense . . . giv[ing] greater control and encourag[ing] modifications at all stages of the weaving . . . in the case of a curved warp . . . the strands run parallel to one another . . . along an arc. As they change direction, the strands enable the weaving of circles or arcs . . . Another way I like to arrange a warp is in an open-work structure in 3-D where the textile is made up of an arrangement of horizontally and vertically stretched strips of the warp whose surfaces are perpendicular to one another.

The surface is a reflection of the structure of the warp, and the one usually shapes the other.  Under the epidermis lies the supporting structure of the warp. 

below: Wlodzimierz Cygan, SEEN FROM...,  detail, 50" X 63” (126cm x 161cm), 2007