Shawls Are More Than a Wrap - Part Two or What in My "Tool Box" Can I Use?

I have a habit of being interested in new techniques, taking a workshop, and after the workshop/class never having the time to play with what I've learned.  The cycle goes like this - excitement to use the new techniques, no time to play reinforcing the technique, months go by, fear sets in, memory fades, and there you have it. New technique, new supplies, sitting on the shelf or in the box never touched again. My "tool box" is full of these things! Any of you have this problem?

Well this time, I was thankful for an excuse to play with Color Hue dyes that I learned about at a weavers'  conference last summer, July 2014.

©Judy Connor Jones

It was a wonderful workshop and the dyes were so easy to use and the teacher was excellent. As it turned out, they were the perfect dyes for this project. You see they bond instantly to silk and because they do, they require no mordants (dyers nerdy talk) and very little washing of excess dye in the cloth. There is very little dye left that has not bonded to the cloth.  So why is this important?  Remember my dilemma, how to incorporate prayers in the shawl? One of the other items in my tool box is knowing how to ink jet print onto fabric. While the ink jet print is permanent, washing over and over again to remove dyes would cause the ink to fade. The Color Hue dyes would allow me to give color to the silk, which was white at the beginning, without the print fading. I would print prayers or statements of faith for each of the Abrahamic faiths onto silk, dye it, and cut it into ribbon using a Japanese technique for making long strips of ribbon, another tool box item!

©Judy Connor Jones

Issue resolved! BUTTTTTTT (UT OH, here goes another Judy brain storm!) - wouldn't it be cool if the prayers or statements were written in English, Hebrew, and Arabic! YES! 

Reality check - how to do that? I don't know Hebrew and I don't know Arabic. Just so happens that my husband works at a seminary (Andover Newton Theological School) where, you guessed it, there is an Interfaith Professor, a Hebrew Professor, and BINGO, an Islamic Professor!  I am most grateful to the help they provided by doing the translations I needed and their perseverance to get it into a format that I could use. Thank you Jenny, Greg and Celene.

So what was printed and woven into the piece? For Christianity, in English, I printed the first line of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name", for Judaism in Hebrew, part of the Shema, "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.", and for Islam in Arabic, "There is no god but God".  Under each of these ribbons was another ribbon with the same phase for each, "Peace, Salaam, Shalom".  At the end of each silk ribbon row was an olive wood bead from my "stash of stuff" which I acquired from my mother-in-law's "stash of stuff".  Perfect! They were waiting for this moment!

©Judy Connor Jones

When the piece was completed and I took it off the loom, I was so moved by the colors and the incorporating of the prayers that it became a Holy moment.  My hands had created something I never dreamed I would do.  So many serendipitous things happened in the making of this piece that it is hard to believe that my hand was the only hand creating it. The Great Creator's Hand was definitely present.

©Ritterbin.com

The piece was shipped off and presented to the General Secretary of American Baptist Churches, USA at their Mission Summit, June, 2015. The Program presentation was called "Draping of the Mantle", a reference to an ancient tradition. PERFECT! I was honored to be a part of it.

So what's next? I don't know.  I do know that something new and creative is around the corner. The idea of working with the Interfaith concept is gnawing at me. I can't ignore it!

I leave you with a collage of pictures including the draping of the mantle and a blessing that you may be wrapped with the mantle of inspiration and creativity.

Please respect copyrights, ©Ritterbin.com and ©Judy Connor Jones

Shawls Are More Than A Wrap!

I recently was commissioned to create an Interfaith Prayer Shawl which was to be a retirement gift for the General Secretary of American Baptist Churches, USA. It was to be presented to him at the biennial Mission Summit held in Kansas City at the end of June.

After I'd agreed to the commission I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into! What was an interfaith prayer shawl?  What faiths to include? After all there are many all over the world. Had this been done before by someone? Could I find something on the internet to help?

The specifications were:

 1 -  represent the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity
 2 -  without specifically being a Tallit (Jewish Prayer Shawl), it could incorporate a few of the elements such as the Tzitzit
 3 -  Be a specially designed handwoven piece instead of a knitted shawl that the Prayer Shawl Ministry makes to give to people for whom they are praying.

This was to be a whole different thing made special for the occasion and the person for whom it was intended. Wow! Breathe! What a challenge! You can do this!

Where to start?

First I needed to discover if there was such thing as an Interfaith Prayer Shawl or if anyone had made one before. So I began my research. I found lots of Interfaith art work but nothing was wearable. After many hours of researching and not discovering anything, the question became "What was I going to do"? Panic, of course!!!

It occurred to me that I needed to remember what I, as a weaver, do best, Work With Color! (A "DUH" moment!)

Ok, got that! NOTE TO SELF: The colors will progress from the desert colors for the nomadic tribes of Judaism and Islam to the colors representing the majesty of God for all three faiths (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) to the blues and greens of Living Water representing Christianity. My palette was set after I looked to my shelves to see what yarns worked in the color way I wanted. Amazingly, I had all the colors I needed in my stock of Tencel. This would be a good weight for the shawl and when woven in a twill and plain weave structure allow the right amount of drape.  Here is the final palette, 12 colors in all including a gold metallic yarn.

You'll notice there are only 11 colors here.  I added one more to the dessert colors because I didn't think the colors were strong enough.  I had just ordered the color Sienna from my supplier. Turned out it was the perfect color addition. It is in the card wrapping below.

The next step was to figure out what else would make this a special prayer shawl. I wanted to somehow incorporate prayers into the weaving.  But how to do that? And what prayers? More research needed!

I'll leave it here for now and follow up with another blog post on what happened next. While you wait, here are a few pictures of putting the yarn on the loom to weave the sampler and choose the weft color.

Can't wait to show you what came next!

"There's No Business like Show Business"!

Getting ready to do a show this weekend in Wilmington, DE. As a Master Artisan in the PA Guild of Craftsmen, I will be exhibiting my work at the PA Guild Fine Craft Show at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington Delaware.  This is a beautiful air conditioned facility with plenty of parking  and plenty of artists!

Come see me at booth, #316, on July 25 & 26.  Hours are Saturday, 10 - 6 and Sunday, 10 - 5. You can get directions and admission coupons for $1.00 off at the guild's website, www.PACrafts.org.

Hope to see you there........................................Remember, fall is just around the corner! I can help with those cool breezes that begin to blow!

              Jessica says Hi and is wearing my Ripple Scarves which are made of silk and wool.

Weaving an Advent Art Journey - Week 2

What does weaving have to do with an Advent art journey? If you missed the answer to this and week one, I encourage you to check out the previous post, http://studiojottings.blogspot.com/2014/12/weaving-advent-art-journey.html .  This will give you some background info for this week's post.

Week Two in our Advent theme at Pilgrim Church was "Prepare the Way for Peace". We thought about ways we see signs of preparing the way for peace in our lives and the world.  Pretty current topic as we are bombarded everyday in the news with non-peaceful happenings around us. Are there things happening that are working toward Peace? Do we see signs of it in our lives? What ways are we working for Peace?  These are important and valid questions to reflect on. In thinking about these questions we are also preparing the way for the Christ Child.

Our thoughts were written on "paper straw" and then added to the manger as a symbol of the comfort and peace we both seek and find in this season of Advent.

As our journey continues, after coffee hour, we worked on getting the next elements ready.  Here's a few pictures of preparing the cloth which will be used on Sunday, December 14 as we think about "Preparing the Way for Joy".

Each week in Advent we will add to the installation as we think about preparing the way for Joy, and Love. The completion of the installation will be Christmas Eve.  Keep checking back to my blog and follow along on your own journey of preparation. Better yet, if you live near Duxbury, MA come join us! http://pilgrimchurchofduxbury.org

Weaving an Advent Art Journey

What does weaving have to do with an Advent art journey?  As an artist and a person of faith, I believe that a God who created humans in his/her image would also give each and everyone of us the ability to create.  I know what you're thinking, "I don't have a creative bone in my body! What is she talking about!" Too often I hear this from people as they admire my woven work or quickly respond to my suggestion that they might be creative also. However, I believe that everyone has this ability.  You may not be able to do what I do, but somewhere in the depths of your being there is a creative spot.  It just needs to be brought out.  That's where community comes in.

One very important community for me is within the church.  Several years ago as I sat in worship I thought about how art is used in churches. It seemed to be all visual, if there even was any art, and the design and implementation was relegated to the "Artists".  That bothered me and I began to think how art could be more than just something we look at while sitting in the pews.  So I developed what I call "Participatory Art in Worship".  At the church where I was a member at the time, the minister, music director, and myself formed a worship team. Together we led the worship attendees through a new creative involvement. It would be too lengthy to go into details in this post of the many installations we led but you can read more about them if you click on the side label Ecclesiastical Installations.  Here is one link but there are several others, http://studiojottings.blogspot.com/2010/03/ecclesiastical-installation.html. From these posts you can get an idea of how this art form developed over several years.

So that leads me to today and the work we are doing at Pilgrim Church in Duxbury, MA.  Advent is a time of preparation. Over the four weeks of Advent to help us prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ Child we are using participatory art as a way to "Prepare the Way for Hope, Peace, Joy and Love" in our lives and the world. We are weaving (get the connection?!) a journey through word, thought, music, and art.

The first Sunday in Advent was Sunday, November 30.  The theme for our Advent Journey is "Prepare the Way of the Lord".  During the service, we reflected on where we see signs of HOPE as we prepare the way for hope in our lives and the world. In preparation of the Christ Child's arrival we are building a manger as the centerpiece of our installation. Each person in worship was asked to write their reflective word or phrase on a paper log which later we added to the manger.  The children during the Children's Time brought  driftwood (since Duxbury is an ocean town) as a symbol of building the manger.

After worship during the coffee hour our paper logs were added to the manger frame.  These written reflective thoughts are prayers which are offered as part of the manger. All were welcome to help attach the logs and the driftwood to the manger frame.

Each week in Advent we will add to the installation as we think about preparing the way for Peace, Joy, and Love. The completion of the installation will be Christmas Eve. I'll share pictures of the process and each week's installation.  Keep checking back to my blog and follow along on your own journey of preparation. Better yet, if you live near Duxbury, MA come join us! http://pilgrimchurchofduxbury.org

Mad River Valley Craft Fair

It's been over a year since I've done a craft fair.  I've had to deal with repetitive motion pain issues for the last two years.  I finally had to cut back on my work and then learn how to redirect the way I work and how I sell.  After physical therapy, a chiropractor, exercises, and being kind to my body I am able to return to the Mad River Valley Craft Fair this weekend.

This is one of my favorite places to go for a show.  The valley is always beautiful, no matter what the weather. Although I'm hoping for gorgeous days! The show is a fund raiser for the Valley Theater Players of Waitsfield.  It has a down home kind of feel, a throw back to the early days of craft shows. The quality of work is very good with many accomplished artists.

So if you are traveling in VT this weekend, stop by and visit the show.  I know you'll have a good time.  Visit me at booth T. See what new items I have, spice up your wardrobe for fall and winter, and get an early start on holiday shopping.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

See you at the Fair! I'll be outside enjoying the VT air!

Weaving with New Materials

In the midst of this crazy time of year for me with orders to fill and work to ship off to galleries and art centers, it's always good to stop and take a break and breathe!  Breathing can be a day off, a day away, a day to read, or a day to learn something new and challenging.  I did just that this past Saturday.  I had the chance to learn something new, to work with materials I've never work with before, and to become a student again.  It was great to feel that excitement as I created something totally different than what I normally do in the studio. And I have to say I was proud of what I had accomplished by the end of the class. So what was it that drew me away from thinking about the ton of work I had to do to get work off to places "hither and yon"! It was weaving jewelry with wire and metal!  The feel of the material was different than working with fiber but the techniques were familiar.  We were doing simple plain weave and plying of the wire to create a piece of woven jewelry.

The class was taught by a wonderful artist, Anastasia Azure, a weaver who works with unusual materials - fish line being one of them.  Her work is fabulous and blows me away. You have to check out her website at www.anastaciaazure.com.

The class was held at The Mad Dog Artists Studios in Pawtucket, RI.  How's that name to get you in the mood for a creative experience!  As you might guess it is an old factory building which has been renovated into studio space where many artists come together to work. As one who works alone in my studio I am always a little envious of the inspiration one gets when being in the company on a regular basis of other artists.  So I live vicariously through one time experiences such as I had on Saturday. And it was great.

Here are a few pictures of what I learned to do.............................

Beginnings

Beginning the weaving. Aluminum base with colored plied wire.

Framed and finished pendant 

Close up

Can't wait to wear my new necklace!

What new experiences, learnings, or challenges have you had lately to get the creative juices flowing?  I welcome sharing in the comment section.  I'd love to hear what you are up to!

A Different Vision

For the last 8 months I've had the pleasure of working on an exhibit called "A Different Vision".  It is sponsored by the Plymouth Art Guild in Plymouth, MA, www.plymouthguild.org. The guild sponsored this exhibit in 2010 and then decided to do it again in 2013. A Different Vision is a tactile, innovative, and exciting art exhibit where the blind and the visually impaired as well as the sighted can enjoy the art.  Everything is touchable. Really, it's all touchable!  No please do not touch the art signs here, only Please Touch!

So my job was to help publicize this event by starting A Different Vision Face Book page.  You can find it at www.facebook.com/ADifferentVision.  It's been fun to connect with a whole new group of people on the page.  As administrator I am trying to get the word out to people who might not have heard of this event, artists and folks who would enjoy the show.  My goal is to have 100 Likes on the page by the opening which is May 11 at 7pm.  So stop by the page and give us a "Thumbs Up".

As an artist I was challenged by this exhibit to make something in my medium.  My normal wearables, while they feel very soft to the touch, were not going to be the thing that got them accepted into the show.  So I looked at the yarn on my shelves, put my weaver's thinking cap on, and decided to do something totally different than what I normally do. I knew I was going to create a scarf but it had to have a lot of texture and something special about it that a visually impaired person could see with their hands.

Yarns used to sample

I remembered taking a workshop one year at Convergence (Handweavers' Guild of America's biennial conference) on Shibori.  Normally Shibori is used as a resist dying technique.  But this workshop used it as a resist technique for texturizing cloth!  (find out more about Shibori at http://shibori.org) So when I was thinking about ways to texturize my woven piece for the exhibit, I thought about creating bubbles in handwoven wool cloth by using the Shibori technique. Wool shrinks and fulls (felts) so the resist would cause the bubbles to form. Then my mind took it one step further.  What if I made the bubbles spell out the colors of the scarf in Braille!  Oh sometimes the creative mind gets us into all kinds of trouble!  After trying several methods (round marbles, flat marbles, thread) for creating the bubbles, I settled on a method which used very tight elasticized bands. This proved to be the best tool to use. 

After much sampling (several 1 yard samplers) I realized that making the bubbles spell out the Braille words was just not going to work effectively in a scarf.  It was hard to scrunch up the fabric in the correct line that it needed to be in order to be read. Each time I applied the band to one area it threw the cloth out of line and I couldn't see if the next bubble was going to be in the right place. So scratch that!  Back to the drawing board.  I thought I had a good idea using the Braille but how was I going to make it happen?

Ah Ha! BEADS! Oh those wonderful glorious beads that come in all sorts of colors! That would do it.  So I wove beads into the scarf at the beginning and end to spell out the main color of the scarf.  It worked beautifully.  I was able to line the beads up in the correct place for each letter. One scarf was Blue and the other was Purple.  I decided to put the Shibori bubbles throughout the scarf which gave it a funky very textural feel.

Drawing up a pattern guide for placement of the beads. This spells purple.

Weaving the beads in place.

I added beads to the fringe and twisted the ends together to form a loop scarf.

I have to say creating these scarves took me out of my "box" and comfort zone but I love the chunky, funky look of these scarves!  

"Bubble Wrap" - blue

If you live near Plymouth, make sure you stop by the Plymouth Center for the Arts and visit the show.  Let me know what you think of my "Bubble Wrap" Scarves. 

"Bubble Wrap" - purple

Gallery Exhibit - Cranberry Country Weavers

Yesterday I spent the day helping to hang an exhibit of weaving done by the Cranberry Country Weaver's Guild members. The exhibit is at the West Bridgewater Library in West Bridgewater, MA where our guild meets once a month. www.cranberrycountryweavers.com.

It was a great collaborative effort to arrange and display the work so that no matter what the level of weaving each piece was presented with it's own special attention to detail and given it's own space.  This is the first time the CCW Guild has put on an exhibit. It was not juried which is a great tribute to how this guild works.  Everyone is treated equally and all weaving is appreciated. It's one of the things that makes this guild so special to me.  We are there to help and learn from each other and have fun along the way.

So here are some pictures of the exhibit. Of course if you live near W.Bridgewater, Ma I encourage you to go see this exhibit.  The work is great!

          Enjoy the exhibit!