Inspiration: Leonore Tawney

I have just come across this artist who lived to be 100 years old, Leonore Tawney. She was quite a revolutionary artist, working as a weaver and collage artist.

"She manipulated her weavings into sculptural forms such as The King Iand The Queen, 1962, a revolutionary concept at the time.

Many of her works incorporate handwritten and printed manuscripts in a variety of languages from the early Discours Historiques,1966, and Epîtres, 1967, to That Other Sea, 1967, and Distilla, 1967. More often than not she employed strips of paper in a weaverly fashion."

http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/lenore-tawney-spiritual-revolutionary

Google her to find out more about this inspiring woman and artist.

Cheesecake with Handpicked Blackberries

 Today I made a cheesecake. I had a dinner party to go to tonight with a group of fellow Virgos and Libras and wanted to bring something special. It is blackberry season now in Washington and they are everywhere. I got the raspberries at the store. The cheesecake was delish and the party was delightful.

Virgo-Libra Dinner Party

Exploring cloth

embroidery sample squares

Butterfly embroidery

Lately I've felt drawn to sewing and have had the desire to dye fabric. I was a little intimidated but finally took the plunge and dyed some linen fabric from my stash with a navy Procion dye. I've also been embroidering small squares of fabric and here are some of the results. The inspiration for these is the Spirit Cloth Diaries class I am taking online with Jude Hill.

Butterfly Shibori

Home from Penland

Penland View

I'm back from two weeks at the beautiful and wonderful Penland School of Crafts. The school teaches all kinds of crafts and arts from glass, metals, printmaking, textiles to bookarts. I took a book/lettering/painting class with Laura Wait. It was fabulous. We started with large pieces of paper and then started writing words with sticks, shingles, rocks and whatever primitive materials we could find. Next we graduated to brushes and calligraphy pens, creating layers of text which bagan to take on the look of abstract forms. The next step in the process was learning to sew exposed bindings such as the herringbone. Paint was added to pages before and after the sewing process. Here are some pictures from the workshop.

Writing tools

Sample text

exposed bindings

Sewing a book on linen cords

Laura Wait demonstrating writing and painting with sumi ink

Palette and books in progress

Exposed binding book

My books on display

Some of my books