Red Thread Studio

Bodhisattva, Would You Take Me By The Hand

Lots of walking today. My favorite way to explore a city is on foot; there's really no substitute. I've walked miles across London, through the vertical mazes of Hong Kong, and as a resident in the streets of New York and Chicago and San Francisco. Why be in a dank, crowded subway when you can see the city? 

Here in Washington, I've usually been here for trade shows and not as a tourist; I've often been to the National Gallery but not done the full-on walking thing, and now I have the chance. My suite is only a little more than a mile from the White House, but once you're down in the museum zone, you're clocking some miles. 

I think it's worth noting that our highest halls of government and power are surrounded by art, lots of art, and culture. These museums are open 364 days a year, and you just walk in; no charge, they belong to We the People, damn it. And, at least at the Freer, where I went today, there were no guards in the rooms; nothing but -- come on in, make yourself at home, a quick security check of the bag, and enjoy. There didn't even seem to be restrictions on photographs. 

The Freer Gallery is a little jewel of a museum that had an interesting show of paintings by James McNeill Whistler in the context of his interest in Asian art. Charles Freer, who founded the museum, had parallel interests in ancient Asian and contemporary American art, and he felt that in Whistler these two paths converged. I also saw the beautiful Japanese tea bowls repaired with silver and gold; in a year when I've felt so irreparably damaged and broken sometimes, there's surely a message there. I saw galleries of Japanese screens and scrolls, Islamic decorative gorgeousness, Buddhist art, and some beautiful statues of Shiva. Below is a large 12th century Bodhisattva (the best photograph I could get with my limited skills and the museum lighting). 

Can't we make a law that our political leaders have to just sit with this statue once in a while, and contemplate compassion? It's right down the street from their offices. I know, church and state and all that, but it might do some good.

Now, here's what I especially want to share with you. The Freer Gallery has some fantastic interactive exhibitions online. One in particular is called Style and Status: Imperial Costumes from Ottoman Turkey, and the opening splash, as well as some of the robes, has lots of those beautiful wish-fulfilling cintamani dots. 

On the way home I walked by the Obamas' house, on the north side, and it made me very happy to know we have a really good, not perfect but very, very good, honest man and a totally awesome woman running things inside and trying to fix this country's damage. See? It's like a little party outside all the time.

Traveling Light

I'm working hard at traveling light, in every sense of the word. My packing job tonight is a tough one. I need the yoga mat, the hip scarves and zills to practice dance, the stitching and beading supplies, the sketchbook. The computer, the phone, the iPod, the camera, and all of the charging devices for these things. The work files and life details for a month away. All of this before the clothes and shoes and toothbrush. This packing challenge is what they call a first world problem. I think of Dijanne's traveler's blanket, and an old trunk I sent from Canada in 1977, picked up at Air Cargo at the old Omaha airport, when things were simpler.

I used to love to take road trips through Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, or from Chicago heading west. When I was 16, my best friend and I hitchhiked from Chicago to California. Could we have been more reckless? You couldn't do that today; you'd be kidnapped or dead long before you hit the Golden State. 

Someone reminded me of that hitchhiking trip last night. It sounds so dangerous now, but I wasn't the bold one; I just went along for the ride and for the dare, I guess. I would have been happier in a car with my own music and company of my choice. For a while I made sure to own a station wagon and be able to fit what I needed in it, so I could head out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels, as Gram Parsons sang. Another time I made a pact with someone to explore all of the old Route 66 together; we never made it. 

Stitching, slow style, can be a portable constant. In 1991, a year with a lot of movement, I made the beadwork for this shirt:

Tomorrow I travel by air, paying extra for baggage, as we always do. The airlines have just codified it now.

I have friends who are very bold adventurers, with passports full of stories, and they do awesome things. Yet I always think that the greatest adventure is through the heart - or through someone else's. There is probably more fear and more thrill in saying "I love you" for the first (or the last) time to someone than in exotic trips that give you 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Everybody I know is talking these days about what they wanted to be, what their hopes were, what the surprises and disappointments have been, how they've lowered their expectations, and where to go from here. And then, how they want to make art and music and meaning. There is so much hunger for satisfaction, for truth and for intimacy, and for connection. 

Now, though,  I'm traveling for work, in relative comfort, but open to whatever treasures I may find. See you from the Eastern time zone soon.

Now that you've made your mistake
Now that you know how the heart bends and breaks
Just throw away the book
And take a second look
Behind the door
The guided tour
Of what we came here for 

One: don't let the sun go down on
Two: who love but are undone by
Three: whose name is I won't even start 
Before we learn the rules of travel
Inside each other's hearts
Inside each other's hearts

Rosanne Cash, Rules of Travel

Ways of Chronicling the Journey

I apologize if you've been seeing text over images in recent posts. It doesn't appear that way when I preview the post, but I just learned that it shows up that way on the site. I've fixed several but let me know if it happens again.

I'm fascinated by the work Dijanne is doing with her traveller's blanket and traveller's medallions. Imagine the experience of being a traveler before there were cameras, or guidebooks, or postcards; how inventive to build the story of the journey in cloth and stitches. Dijanne's versions are, of course, modern and personal and imaginative, yet always conjuring an echo of ancient travellers whose work has informed her.

In the same vein -- (and stay with me here, I realize that sometimes my connecting of dots comes out like mental hairpin turns to those who aren't in my brain, and actually sometimes it feels that way to me too) -- Sharon B. on Pintangle linked to the newest issue of Bonefolder, a gorgeous free-to-download e-zine on book arts. In this newest volume (Vol. 5 No. 1), book artist Susan Allix has written Colours of Persia: The Making of a Book (page 19 in the magazine). It's a beautiful account of her decision to make a limited-edition book of prints that tells the story of her travels through color. Allix writes, "Travelling around this country with my bag of crayons, sketchbooks, notebooks and camera, I had been quite overcome by its colour. There were turquoise domes against blue or black skies, sun-baked courtyards containing ever-repeated patterns of yellow and ultramarine tiles, glittering mirror work, piles of rosy pomengranates, eye-stretching fields of acid green rice crops. I could buy woven textiles from nomad people and rescue fragments of old blue and yellow ceramic from the gutter to remind myself of the colours when I returned to London. Travellers in Persia always seemed compelled to write of their experiences. In using accounts which stretched from the 1st century AD until the present day and setting them in the places in which they were written, a mind picture could be built across time showing both the continuity and vicissitudes of life. The intimate and narrative qualities of a book, together with its images, lend themselves to a travelling progress." 

Allix, a master book artist and printmaker, has also made a limited edition travel book on Egypt, on view here. Her prints and books and words are all magical. 

If you like printmaking, definitely visit Marja-Leena's Web site; Marja-Leena visits and comments here (and thankfully set me straight on my Swedish-Finnish confusion in the Marimekko post) and her site and work are both stunning. 

One more link . . . the movie Australia has just opened here, and All the Rage has a terrific interview with costume designer Catherine Martin, and her creation of "a staggering 2,000 costumes from 1930s-era vintage gowns to traditional aboriginal dress." I love reading the backstory that Martin creates to arrive at a look; it's a reminder of all that clothing communicates if we look carefully.

Global Textile Explorers

There are a few people fortunate or slightly insane enough to have my dream job description of "global textile explorer" and they're sharing their finds.

For those lucky enough to be in or near San Francisco, Daniel Gundlach of The Language of Cloth will begin his annual sale of handmade textiles from Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand on November 28 at his studio. Visit the Web site for details, and while you're there look at the galleries of batiks -- there are many very beautiful things. Gundlach's passion for traveling the world in search of textiles of every description is contagious.  

Most textile blog readers know Jude of SpiritCloth as a prolific and philosophical Slow Cloth artist, and she's posted a link to elsewhere, her brother's new blog on travel and journeys of all kinds. That blog will in turn take you to EXOT, where Jude's brother R. Nemo Hill and Julian Mendez Perea post about the treasures they find all over the world, including textiles. They're at the Union Square Holiday Market in New York City for those on the East Coast; visit EXOT for more details. 

Looking at these sites inspired me to dig out a stack of lovely Indonesian batiks that someone gave me once. I thought I knew the provenance of almost every piece of fabric that I have, but I can't for the life of me remember who gave me these, with the Indonesian tags still on them. Whoever it was, it was an incredibly thoughtful and beautiful gift I may not have fully appreciated at the time. I do now . . .thank you. I'll post some pictures soon.

The Magical Music of Shipibo Indian Textiles

The Medicine Hunter sent me this photo of a Shipibo Indian textile, taken on his travels exploring medicinal plant culture in Peru. Shipibo Indians have an extraordinary textile tradition that reflects their spiritual cosmology and the visions they invoke through the use of ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant that's said to offer profound healing and creativity. (click to enlarge photo)

Chris writes, "The recurrent patterns in those most
unusual works are the ayahuasca geometry which most every ayahuascero sees directly. I have , of course, and then take a good look at the blouses, skirts, pants, shirts and robes worn by the Shipibo (who are often called the ayahuasca people), and see the replication of the visionary experience in textile form."

Along with this link to the most vivid powers of the imagination, these textile patterns also correspond to music. The Shipibo can literally sing these patterns to each other, and both songs and images have complex and powerful meanings that are experienced as balancing and transformational energies. 

I'm just touching the surface of this fascinating textile tradition that graphically illustrates how cloth can be a vehicle for spirit, meaning and communication. For more, read "Communion with the Infinite," by Howard G. Charing, another ethnobotanist who works with shamans, ayahuasca and the Shipibo people. Over at FiberFocus, Rayela has also written about Shipibo textiles. 

Chris has generously promised to send more photos, and is actively working to promote and preserve the Shipibo culture and traditions, so stay tuned. I love the sun and shadow on this photo, and the tiny turquoise and fuschia diamonds in the pattern; it's hypnotic. I haven't had the ayahuasca experience, but even the tiny glimpse of it in their textiles and artwork is magical. 

 

Refuge of the Roads

These are the clouds of Michelangelo

Muscular with gods and sungold

Shine on your witness

In the refuge of the roads.

-- Joni Mitchell, Refuge of the Roads

These last two weeks were a rollercoaster. I got a little carried away with the political drama. As much as I was energized and inspired by the first week, I was exhausted and repulsed by the sneering, bitter aggression of the second. I know not everyone will agree with me, but you can take it or leave it. Yesterday I had to pull back; I finished a chapter of the market research report on the exciting world of sugar and sweeteners that's currently paying my bills; I made dust covers for my sewing machines (actual skills involved!); I took a long time for yoga; and I contemplated my ultimate Plan B, leaving the country. 

I'm a dual citizen of Canada by virtue of being Canadian-born, and I'm always glad to hear from my Canadian readers since I could be your neighbor soon. I haven't spent much time there -- only my first year of life in Edmonton, and part of my 18th year in a tiny apartment on Isabella Street in Toronto, where I learned to drink Grand Marnier from my urbane roommates and had most of my worldly goods stolen by a neighbor whose girlfriend had left him; he thought that gifts of my clothes and jewelry might bring her back. The soundtrack that year was Hejira and Running on Empty and Bonnie Raitt on 8-track tape, and the snowfall set records.

In the airport on the cold February day that I left Toronto, a man approached me to ask if I wanted to go and be a blackjack dealer at the Calgary Stampede. A road not taken, and he was probably asking something else entirely, but the cowgirl archetype has been a part of me ever since.  I met a friend of spirit, he drank and womanized. What if. 

I bought fabric there that winter and made a Dresden Plate quilt from instructions in McCall's Needlework & Crafts, now very faded and torn:

It makes me think now of Dijanne's incredible Traveller's Blanket, which I've been meaning to mention for some time. Her work is mesmerizing and beautiful, as always, and the concept is mystical and rich -- I love the depth of her research and inspiration. Here is what Dijanne wrote about it:

The blanket is inspired by the idea that the maker is a traveller in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, one of the great travellers from medieval times in the decade or so preceding Marco Polo - and the fragments of fabric that he sews to the blanket are an aide de memoire of his experiences , but, as he is also a fabric merchant it is his way of memorising cloth to be replicated in the future when he is home - it's a bit of a play on the idea of memory of cloth and memory as a sensation rather than a photographic record.

So my old quilt is a traveler's blanket of a different sort, still an aide de memoire of a strange journey. The I Ching has a hexagram for the traveler, #56, The Wanderer or Sojourning. "You are a stranger in a strange land, whose identity comes from a distant centre," says my translation by Stephen Karcher. But with a peripatetic childhood, my identity -- fractured though it has always been - had to come from within. What does a traveler's blanket look like when the traveler never returns home?

Circles of Cloth: More Virtual Textile Travel

I have travel on my mind . . . especially places near water. Here's a dream trip: The Textile Society of America is having its annual symposium in Hawaii in September this year, and the theme is textiles as cultural expression. This sounds like a fascinating event, probably well worth figuring out a way to go.

Other temptations: The Maiwa workshops, and the Organic Exchange conference in Portugal in October for the organic cotton industry.

And if nothing else -- though it's mostly been a homebound year so far, except in my mind, there is a chance that I could go to Brazil  in the fall to speak about sustainable textiles and apparel. I was lucky to go for the first time a few years ago to attend an organic and sustainable products conference there that's run by some wonderful people, and we stay in touch to this day. The conference that year was in Rio de Janeiro, a city of great wealth and beauty alongside great poverty; like most magical places, it's a little dangerous and very seductive.

At Bangles & Clay, a blog that's part of a nonprofit organization called Nest, there's a post about Coopa-Roca, a sewing cooperative in Rio founded by Maria-Teresa Leal (the English-language Web site for Coopa-Roca itself is here). Leal founded the cooperative as a way to utilize the sewing skills of women living in the profound poverty of one of Rio's worst favelas and create decent work opportunities for women raising families in violent slums. Now the clothes of Coopa-Roca are seen all over the world, and despite many challenges, it's been a success story in the midst of all-too-common despair in these neighborhoods.

There are stories like this in many places, and room and need for many more. Each one is different and unique, and each one comes down to a chance for people to celebrate their textile and craft heritage and skills, often at risk of being lost, and to have work and fair pay.

The Coopa-Roca women use recycled garments and fabrics and traditional knitting, crochet and patchwork techniques, including yo-yos -- fuxicos in Portuguese. I love seeing the resurgence of yo-yos -- like many children, learning to make a yo-yo was one of my first sewing lessons. And I love that it connects me to women and children worlds away through something as simple as a needle, thread and a circle of cloth.

Time Waits for No One

My father used to call me "Miss-elaine-eous" and I must have been eleven or twelve years old before I realized that he was making a play on the word "miscellaneous." So here are my MissElaineous offerings for today . . .

• The Maiwa Textile Workshops for 2008 are up, and they look completely inspiring. Workshops are 2-3 days; the schedule begins in September and goes through early November, so there are a lot of opportunities to find your way to Vancouver. I'd love to take the blockprinting workshop and The Expressive Stitch. Well, really, I'd love to take almost all of them.
• Have I written yet about Permacouture Institute here? This is a new nonprofit organization with a very creative and activist sustainable textile and Slow Cloth orientation. I spoke by phone with founder and executive director Sasha Duerr today -- this woman is amazing and will make some positive waves in the textile world, I'm sure of that. She's an expert on natural dyeing and has a special interest in edible dye plants (cabbage, beets, onions, etc.) and all the possibilities inherent in being able to grow things that will both feed us and color our fiber without harm to the environment. We talked about her work and about some of my ideas for taking the Slow Cloth concept to new levels. . . . everything is possible, right?
• I've been meaning to link to a blog post by UK biologist and textile artist Mags Ramsay on The Character of Cloth. I love the work she's doing with indigenous African textiles -- very beautiful and with a great "spirit cloth" sensibility.

That's what I've got today. Off topic, this week has been a continuation of a pretty intense and unrelenting healing journey -- I've been prescribed physical therapy for my neck, and Monday was the first visit. I wasn't quite prepared for the tremendous amount of grief and sadness stored in that area that the bodywork released. Though in practical terms the therapy is necessary for some dental work to be successful, on another level it's evidently part of a lot of ongoing work I'm doing on old emotional issues - according to Dr. Christiane Northrup, at 50 all of your unfinished business from childhood MUST be resolved if you're to stay healthy, and it will rear up like an immovable elephant in the room if you don't. I'm finding that to be all too true, and it turns out my unfinished business is a doozy.

Finally, I have a colonoscopy scheduled on Friday as the follow-up to March's illness. I tell you this not to give you Too Much Information, but to encourage you to get this test if you are around 50, and not be embarrassed or put it off. I know, I don't feel old enough for it either. On the inside, I'm about 16 -- rebellious, darkly romantic and trying to figure out what to be when I grow up. But on the outside, time waits for no one (or Tom Waits for No One, as we fans say) and we must attend to our bodies. We are all of the nature to age, as the Buddhists say, even if 50 is the new 30. I hope the procedure will be as dignified and painless as possible.

And hey, where are the Fiber Artists for Obama? They seem to have let their blog go dormant. They ought to be celebrating today. Fiber art in the White House! I'm sad for the way Hillary has sometimes been treated, and  proud of her for the most part despite some missteps. But we do need a change, and no one has set a fire in young voters like Obama has since Bobby Kennedy, and I'm all for that (I was and still am a John Edwards fan, too, and I truly hope there's a place for him in Obama's cabinet after a November victory). Like me, this country has a lot of healing to do -- the old ways just aren't working.

I hope you, cherished readers and all who find their way here, are also healing from anything that ails you. Onward we go.

Life at the Crossroads

Just give me many chances
I'll see you through it all
Just give me time to learn to crawl.
        -- Rickie Lee Jones, Stewart's Coat

The universe keeps delivering amazing messages to me -- articles, Web sites, artists. Some of them have to do with healing the past and others with creating a new future. My word for 2008 is magic, but much of the year 'til now hasn't felt very magical (though last month I did do a lot of pondering on the magic of antibiotics and thankgodI'mlivinginthe 21stcentury). Maybe, though, it's all about recognizing magic in all its disguises. Onward we go, in search of it.

On the Slow Cloth/Slow Craft front, one of my online discoveries is the work of Laura Morelli, an author and traveler who seeks out the finest artisan crafts and craftspersons around the world. Morelli has a blog and writes a column for National Geographic Traveler called, "The Genuine Article: In Search of Authentic Crafts." I found her via this wonderful column on saris and fabrics from Rajasthan in India, and I'm hooked. I think this woman has the coolest job in the world -- to travel and immerse herself in the world's craft and textile traditions and share them through books, articles and lectures (she has a Ph.D. in art history from Yale). I also love that she seems to share my penchant for cowboy boots and authentic clothing from the American West. 

(*photo of sari silk by Celeste33  -  Creative Commons noncommercial license)

On the Slow Fashion/sustainable textiles front, I came across Project Refashion, a blog by Claire James, "renegade fashion scholar," all about sustainable apparel, focusing in particular on clothing made from waste fabric or old garments. [EDITED to add: I'm not sure what's wrong with the ProjectRefashion.com link -- it was working on Saturday but seems to be down now. I'll keep checking and update when it's live again.] I admit that this is, for me, the least accessible niche in sustainable fashion. From a maker's standpoint, I'm not that interested in using old garments. I can see that it's an incredibly creative and challenging thing from a design standpoint, and it most definitely is environmentally friendly and admirable; I just haven't seen much, up until now, that I thought really had both aesthetic quality and skill.

A feature on refashioned designs and designers in the current issue of Yoga Journal caught my eye, though, with some well-done garments, and then I found Project Refashion. Claire James calls refashioning "do-it-yourself reconstructed clothing as a contemporary urban art form." I can get behind that; that puts refashioning in a context I can relate to, and James has a lot of interesting things to say on her blog.

Back to work. Whenever I'm near the end of a big project, the entropy around me starts to mushroom and my apartment looks like a tornado hit it. I've mostly kept up until this week, but now, I, the world's most reluctant housekeeper, can't wait to get this market study done so I can clean up.

Mesmerizing Maiwa Podcasts

I've mentioned Maiwa and the workshops and symposium that Maiwa hosts. This is slow and authentic textile Mecca. Now Maiwa has added a series of podcasts to the Web site, excerpted from previous workshops and lectures, that looks completely fascinating. Topics range from ancient mummies to Slow Cloth in India to shibori to a series on The Working Traveler. You can subscribe via iTunes or an RSS feed. This really looks like a tremendous resource and inspiration and after my Very Slow Modem gets busy downloading I'll be listening all day tomorrow while I write about the sustainable clothing consumer (yes, we're getting close to the end of this study, finally).