Red Thread Studio

Full Flower Moon 2010

Okay, have I bitched enough? Been gone long enough for you to miss me? Thank you so much for all the kind comments on the last post, and please forgive my low moment of feeling territorial and unappreciated. It's been an energetically challenging year.

But now we have the beautiful May full moon on Thursday night, the moon of flowers, and may it heal the wounded Gulf, the people in Tennessee still recovering from floods, people all over the world still rebuilding from earthquakes or suffering from war or just trying to figure out who they are and what they need to do. Including me.

I've mentioned the StyleCourt blog before--it's one of my favorites for art, textiles, and design, and she has a lovely post on vintage editions of Out of Africa with fabric covers or textile-design covers. 

I also recommend Elis Vermeulen's fascinating blog.

As for flowers, I've been thinking a lot about botanical art lately, and wishing I could take some of the cool courses at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Katharine Tyrrell at Making A Mark often writes about botanical illustration, and has good books to recommend. Flickr has many, many beautiful flower photographs. You could take a new look at Georgia O'Keeffe's 100 Flowers. Or just step outside into the intoxicating May moonlight and find some lilacs. I spent last weekend making fabric flower brooches; I can't post pictures just yet, but I will, down the road. And finally, I've had some initial conversations with my friends at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge about the possibility of a group art/textile/slow cloth retreat there. It's just a little seed that's been planted, that may or may not yield, but doesn't it look like an amazing place? 

Those who read the stars and the cosmos say that this is a big, big full moon, an energetic watershed and a border between the past and future. Julie Demboski always has a brilliant and complex analysis, too. But you don't have to believe in astrology even a little bit to feel the power of a bright full moon in the sky, and to appreciate the symbol and sensibility of the Flower Moon.

Shipibo Woman Stitching

The Medicine Hunter sent this new photograph of a Peruvian woman of the Shipibo Indian tribe weaving one of the magical patterns that they're known for. I've written about them before, here and here. This photograph is so lovely -- it really captures that universal sensation of peacefully stitching, concentrating while also dreaming of who knows what. The patterns of Shipibo embroidery are like a musical score, corresponding to the songs that the shamans sing in the ayahuasca ceremonies, which are said to be extraordinarily healing.

photo by Chris Kilham; used with permission.

Peru seems to be in the air these days. I've also been following the Mayu Hand-Knit Alpaca blog; Kate is a Chicago girl who went to the same high school that I did, as it turns out, and she's been working to help improve awareness of fair trade purchasing in Chicago. This is one of Mayu's handmade alpaca scarves:

Since I haven't been to Peru, I can only share these images from those who have. It seems that everyone who goes there falls in love with the country and the people--and the textiles.

Full Cold Moon

Turn that TV off now baby

I'm so low I don't even sing

Tell me something about my country

Tell me one good thing

King and Malcolm, lamb and lion

Setting Alabama free

Thirty thousand angels flying

From Montgomery

Put that paper down now, baby

I'm so low I don't even sing

Tell me something about my country

Tell me one good thing           

                - one good thing, by anais mitchell

The full moon is beautiful in the sky, bringing a bitter cold front with it. It seems like winter has already been too long, and I'm dreaming of beaches. It's hard to believe that December is here, and the next full moon -- a Blue Moon and the Wolf Moon -- will be at year's end. I don't really know what to think about this year. It's been full of disappointments for me, yet I'm not sure the whole story has unfolded yet. It's been full of progress, too, though it feels too slow. And it's been full of hope; on some days that feels foolish, and on other days, powerful.

I drove to work today behind a van with this bumper sticker: I'll keep my freedom & money & guns, and you can keep "the Change." That's their bad punctuation, not mine. I've been behind this vehicle before; we seem to be on the same schedule. It's pretty much a guarantee, if I see it, that it's going to be a bad day. And now I've just listened to the president that this woman hates announce escalation of a murky war, and I wonder if this pigheaded moron in the van is happy now. Of course not.

It doesn't seem as if humans will ever transcend hatred, war, and violence. But fortunately, we'll also never stop creating, envisioning, loving, and happily, stitching.

A few links I've had bookmarked:

• The wonderful Tai Gallery in Santa Fe has revamped their Web site and it's full of beautiful textiles and bamboo baskets, with many of their gallery publications viewable online. There are dozens of amazing ancient and modern textiles, and the photos can be sent as e-postcards to your friends. Here's one:
  Mantle, Chimu Culture
  Peru, North Coast?
  Late Intermediate Period, 1000 - 1476
  Design: Bold blocks of pelicans and tuna fish motifs in a bright palette of red, yellow, blue, white and brown.
  Technique: Slit tapestry, warp and weft camelid fibers

And another:

Heirloom textile

Made in Gujarat, India
Collected in Sulawesi, 17th century
Technique: Resist and mordant dyed handspun cotton

• I think Jude scooped me on this one, but the new community Hand Embroidery Network has launched Needle, a new online magazine for traditional and contemporary hand-stitched embroidery. It's beautiful; go see.
• Britex Fabrics, the legendary brick-and-mortar store in Union Square in San Francisco, finally has a blog and online shopping for some of its ribbons, trims, and buttons. I lived near the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Street back in 1986 with Dave the Drummer, and worked in downtown San Francisco, not far from Britex. I used to walk there on my lunch hour. I'd rarely buy anything because the choice was so magnificently vast that I couldn't ever pick just one thing. On the weekends I'd paint silk fabrics for a designer named Connie Romweber and shop closer to home at the much funkier Mendel's on Haight Street and Satin Moon. What a luxury it was to have so many great fabric stores.

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Every day I think about my poor neglected blog, and send out a silent thank-you to my readers who are still stopping by. It's been kind of a crazy month.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the loveliest e-mail ever from a woman named Maria, blogging here, who is living in Switzerland and working with Peruvian Indian textile artisans on a wonderful Slow Cloth project. Her message was extraordinarily kind, and extraordinarily well timed, reminding me that there is value to this blog and the efforts I've made here as a global textile explorer. I've been discouraged this month with my "day job" swallowing my life and possibilities, and I still hit roadblocks related to certain people who know me in real life lurking here--that came up for me big-time earlier this month. But Maria's message, her commitment to her work and her level of achievement, inspired me anew and reminded me of what matters.

A lot of what's mattered this month has been current events. The health care reform ugliness makes me heartsick. Every life decision I make is affected by whether or not I can get health care with my pre-existing condition; I am sure my health habits are as good or better than most Americans, but I'm considered a risk outside of an employer plan. And all of the hope and astonishment and joy of electing a man with intelligence and integrity is being drowned in the reality of our political system and our pathetically anti-intellectual, intolerant, violent and fear-driven culture.

Meanwhile, my brother's farm in California was at the center of the destructive Lockheed fire. There was no loss of life or structure, but the fire and the necessity of bulldozing to cut fire lines did significant damage. And there were some very tense days, not knowing if the incredibly courageous and dedicated firefighters could contain the fire. Everyone is okay, and I'm grateful for that.

Since we talk a lot in this blog about world cultures and their inextricable link to textile traditions, please take a look at the New York Times Magazine's special issue on women and girls this week. Some of this previews a new book by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl, called Half the Sky, and the accompanying Web site here. I don't always agree with Kristof's position on sweatshops but I do understand his point of view and greatly admire his commitment to giving voice to the silent female majority in the world, whose rights and freedoms are too often limited. Maybe we should start a group to make microloans to women and girls working with textiles. Anyone game?

I think all things are connected, and the article we read about women in Africa can inform every stitch we take or every piece of art we make, so I hope you don't mind these news-focused posts.

Oh, and one more thing! Maiwa has a blog now -- I was so hopeful about going to the symposium this year and it is not to be, but I am glad for all the material they're posting.

So that's about what I've got to say. I'm trying not to let the commute and the cubicle kill my spirit, to be grateful for the chance to work with interesting material and authors, and to believe that there's more for me and it will appear in time.

So don't be tempted by the shiny apple
Don't you eat of a bitter fruit
Hunger only for a taste of justice
Hunger only for a world of truth
'Cause all that you have is your soul
All that you have is your soul.
            Tracy Chapman, All That You Have Is Your Soul

Telling Stories, Finding Meaning

Thanks to the nice people at CraftGossip for linking to my last post.

Here's a feel-good video that's also full of really beautiful Peruvian textiles in dazzling colors, worn in everyday life by some equally beautiful children. The video is a trailer for Imagine This!, a take-off on reality TV shows where a group of volunteers goes somewhere in the world and makes a transformative change in one week to, well, help people. In the trailer, these crazy kids go and build a playground and retrofit a schoolbus to run on vegetable oil for a group of kids in Peru who previously had to walk miles to their under-resourced school. It's a moving and sweet story, a great idea, and as mentioned, textiles! And I love the Thievery Corp. soundtrack, too. (Thanks to friend and colleague Connie for the link, via Facebook).

(Okay, tried embedding the video and it didn't work. Here's the link.)

Edited - I had to remove part of this post because I had some erroneous information. For anyone who already read the post, Rob Walker's Consumed column was not cut this week, it will appear next week. I'm very sorry! I made an assumption -- wrong. Hmmm, maybe it IS time to stop blogging.

I'm still swamped with work and the new schedule and too many changes I need to make, and I've got deer-in-the-headlights paralysis a lot of the time. Still trying to post, though! I've been putting up links on Facebook, too, so send me a friend invitation if you want to connect there. Here's a link that's great for design inspiration -- the National Agricultural Library has a really cool collection of botanical images online. And this page has images from rare Japanese botanical books, too.

Another Use for Tulle: The Work of Ernesto Neto

Oh, how I love a good arty slideshow (much better than an online video for me, for some reason), especially when it details a truly original and wonderful art installation called Anthropodino that involves sewing, spices, stretch tulle, hand embroidery, lots of masculine/feminine dualities and a wild-haired Brazilian artist. The artist is Ernesto Neto and Ken Johnson wrote the review for the New York Times, with the juicy title of "Into the Embrace of a Great Spicy, Gauzy Mother." There are more details on the construction from "Hey, Drill This! Park Avenue Armory Goes Sci-Fi," by Randy Kennedy, whose text accompanies the slideshow.

Describing the piece as a "biomorphic sculpture," Kennedy says, "Made of hundreds of yards of stretched Lycra tulle, it looks something like a superfine spider web, laden with egg sacks, that has drifted down onto the skeleton of a forgotten species of dinosaur shaped like a cephalopod." Yet within this massive construction are yards and yards of hand-embroidered edging and fabric sacs full of spices acting as natural dye agents, letting rich reds and yellows and ochres seep into the tulle. And then there are bones, perhaps in the spirit of this Mineral Year. One young assistant, stitching underneath layers of tulle, said she felt like a silkworm. (the photo here is the martin margules family collection installation at the 49 biennale di venezia. photo: eduardo ortega, found at designboom.com)

Bloomberg also has an fascinating article on the installation, and you can see more pictures of Neto's work here. Neto has also collaborated with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

There's a whole school, it seems, of other-worldly Brazilian art constructions; when I worked at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, many years ago, we hosted an installation by Tunga, also from Rio de Janeiro, who worked with human hair (preferably on the heads of twins, and braided together) and lizards and copper wire. Tunga, known for brilliance in the global contemporary art world, and his assistants were as gentle and kind as could be; they were attitude-free, enjoying themselves as only Brazilians can, and very sweet to me, sending me postcards long after their stay in Chicago.

When I had the chance to visit Rio, these strange creations made sense. There are more than three dimensions in Brazil, and it's magical and dangerous and inexplicable and generous there. And very big, just as the works that these artists/shamans conjure.

I leave for Kansas City tomorrow for the Surface Design Association conference; look for blog posts.

Making Good: Andean Art of MANTO

My efforts at a separate blog on sustainable textiles and clothing haven't yielded great results. For one thing, nobody seems to find it, so I'm not motivated to write new posts without readers. And for another, truth be told, I'm disappointed with some of the sustainable fashion and textile claims that I see, especially here in the United States. It's too often marketing instead of real innovation; too many light-green buzzwords instead of real commitment to standards of environmental or social change; too much replicating whatever fashion dictates for skinny 20-year-olds or making t-shirts instead of a real aesthetic. Story of my life -- I want substance AND style.

I realize this is an emerging movement, and that it's hard to change a global behemoth of an industry, especially in a shattered economy. But I'm just not that interested in pushing a lot of "sexy eco-chic diva!" or "adorable green mommy!" junk on my readers. There are plenty of other blogs doing that.

So perhaps I'll just go back to posting here when I find something of real authenticity and interest in the sustainable and slow fashion/textile world. Readers, I trust you will let me know if it's too much, too little, or if I'm trying to cover too much ground under one blog umbrella. As you know, my dream with this blog would be to turn it into a real magazine, or e-zine, for global textile artists, artisans, crafters and explorers, and magazines often have a wide-ranging portfolio guided by one overarching theme, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

With that prelude (never at a loss for words), I found MANTO, a wonderful Argentinian company that seems to embody principles of Slow Cloth and sustainability. They're interviewed here at Luxe Essentiel, an international green design blog, saying:

"MANTO (Cloak- woven fabric) are the threads that connect us. MANTO is woven in the hills. We gather, creating a fertile social, cultural, artistic and commercial link between the weavers of the Andean culture of northern Argentina and city dwellers all over the world. We contribute to the knowledge and spreading of unknown work methods and lifestyles, paying respect to their cycles and their connection with nature. We design products that represent this feeling." 

On the Manto site, there is this lovely quote: "Each weave leads us to the art and the knowledge of the one who makes it."

And this is what their beautiful, chic yet timeless garments look like (for more, click on collections on the site):

Creating Songs and Worlds in Stitches (more Peruvian textiles)

I'm slowly emerging from Electionland, though I readily admit that I'm completely besotted by our new First Family. Every time I see them being all affectionate and sweet I feel like the orphan outside the happy family's window, wondering if they'd adopt me. 

I did stitch while watching all the speechifying last week, and this is the current status of the shsisha practice piece. I have a little more beadwork to do, then I want to move on to the bigger piece I have planned.

Here are more photos of textiles from the Shipibo Indians of Peru. I've reduced these somewhat for faster loading, but if you want to see a full-size image file, just let me know. All of these photos were taken by Chris Kilham, the Medicine Hunter, who works closely with the Shipibo Indians and other indigenous peoples all over the world, and is also, among other things, the man who introduced me to yoga in 1993 and designed the yoga practice that is still the foundation of my practice today. This is his most well-known yoga book.

Here's what Howard G. Charing says about these rhythmic patterns:

"The main figures in the Shipibo designs are the square, th rhombus, the octagon, and the cross. The symmetry of the patterns emanating from the centre (which is our world) is a representation of the outer and inner worlds, a map of the Cosmos. The cross represents the Southern Cross constellation which dominates the night sky and divides the cosmos into four quadrants, the intersection of the arms of the cross is the centre of the universe, and becomes the Cosmic Cross. 

The Cosmic Cross represents the eternal spirit of a person and the union of the masculine and feminine principles -- the very cycle of life and death -- which reminds us of the great act of procreation of not only the universe, but also of humanity, and our individual selves. The smaller, flowing patterns within the geometric forms are the radiating power of the Cosmic Serpent which turns this way and that, betwixt and between, constantly creating the universe as it moves."

Whew. Not every textile tradition is quite so mystical and metaphysical, but all over the world, we find textile stories like these, with a language of their own, deeply integrated into the history and social constructs of a culture. A key element of the Slow Cloth mission, at least as I envision it, is preserving and honoring these traditions, documenting them, keeping them alive and vibrant, not letting them get swallowed up in an Old Navy world. We lose something when cultures, arts and languages die or lose their integrity, just as when animal or plant species become extinct. 

There's plenty to say, as Anaka of BrassTacks Madras pointed out in the comment thread on African textiles, about how we who want to support traditional artisans in developing countries can go about it without doing harm, or creating markets that then collapse. This is a concern for many things -- foods, medicinal plants, other crafts. But I think I'll save that for another post and just let you enjoy these vivid works of creation and visions.