Deborah Valoma, Longing, 2011, installation and performance integrating the sensual, spatial, and rhythmic dynamics of weaving and dance. Improvisational movement by Victor Alexander and Yismari Ramos Tellez. Music and sound by Arianna Brame and Petra Valoma. Filmed at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR, during an artist residency in conjunction with “Weaving, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” a retrospective of the work of weaver Laurie Herrick curated by Namita Wiggers.
Jason Russel is currently the featured artist in the Gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon.
I make objects because it feels very human to me. It gives me a sense of participation in this time I have been given. I am always at a loss for words when I view the perfection of Nature. My work is a feeble attempt at interpreting its wonders. Nonetheless, I feel a need to work with materials that in both a visual and tactile way take me back to our elemental roots. What machine can do this?
Installation of Recollect 2 was a breeze thanks to Kat Perez the exhibition coordinator. I was happy to have the work installed near my primary inspirations for this project – Laurie Herrick’s Purple Polychrome and Tree of Life. I am feeling really good about this work and am glad to have another day with it before heading home. Its always hard to tell what to make of something you’ve just finished.
If you havent already done so, I would encourage you to check out the website for the exhibition Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. From the website you can download weaving drafts, look at Herrick’s notes and sketches and participate in the exhibition by uploading an image of your own creation inspired by Herrick’s work on the museum’s Flickr page. Eventually a recording of my artist talk will also be available on the museum’s program page.
THANK YOU to everyone at MoCC for their generosity and assistance in making my time as artist in residence a memorable and inspiring one – Namita Gupta Wiggers, Kat Perez and Lauren Raburn especially!
Finally thank you Kristofer Kelly, my partner through it all for your patience, encouragement and love. (I’ll be home in forty-eight hours!)
Today was the day (after six final hours of weaving) to hem stitch then cut Recollect 2 from the loom. After some repairs and wet finishing it will be ready to hang tomorrow. Here are a couple images of the piece earlier today just after it was removed from the loom…
Weaving continues this week. Slowly. I am aiming to cut the cloth from the loom no later than Thursday evening leaving a little time for finishing (overnight basically) before hanging in the gallery Friday afternoon.
The finished work will be smaller than planned. I did not anticipate the time that would be required for a four-shuttle pattern, but am very pleased with the resulting cloth. The subtle complexity of colour blending possible using the polychrome technique is truly captivating.
I have to work hard while weaving not to pause and stare at the slowly shifting blocks of silk and hemp almost floating off the loom. I think that this structure holds a great deal of possibility for future work and will be revisiting it on my loom at home. As I said in my artist talk Saturday, I have learned a great deal from my encounter with Laurie Herrick who continues to be a great teacher.
I began weaving today with a tie up composed of three interleaved sequences of random integers. The plan is to change the tie-up each time I run out of treadling variations (approximately once a day). The blocks in the resulting pattern are a little subtler than in the simulations I created before traveling to Portland, but were fairly close to what I had anticipated.
What I hadn’t guessed is that the fine silk thread I am using for a tabby weft between pattern shots would assert itself so much, casting a glowing, pinkish haze across the surface of the cloth. In the above image you can also see the warp ikat predominant in a few blocks. Weaving was slow this afternoon and evening as I was still getting used to the treadling sequence – basically six variations on three pattern treadles, with one used for each colour.
Am really looking forward to a full day of weaving tomorrow and discovering how the pattern blocks will tumble across the cloth…
