Warp and Weft ends

Roselyne Guittier France 

representing Spring. Here Roselyne chose not to sew in the warp ends. 

The international tapestry project, Fate, Destiny and Self-Determination/le sort, le destin et l'auto-determination,  has, as hundreds of people have witnessed in the weaving classes I teach, and through the Facebook presence for the project, been a long journey, and one that is hardly over yet. Shapes continue to arrive..and here are two more that came this week. We are now up to 181 shapes received from 20 different countries.

Roselyne Guittier 

representing Summer. A most intriguing  artist who ventures into many tetile related areas.  To know more look at this review of her work on this link http://www.novartparcours.fr/?p=179

Like any journey, it requires a lot of preparation, before the journey physically begins and it's beginning was November of 2012. Well...perhaps earlier than that even if we go far back enough to the germination of the idea.  Then there is the actual journey itself which started in January of 2013 - a year and a half ago already! As many artists know, pursuing to live a creative life can become an epic journey , similar to a Ulyssean quest. Like Ulysses, the artist tests him or herself against the call of the siren. That call to be an artist is fraught with risks, challenges, obstacles, requiring tenacity, discipline, vision, and creativity in solving the various kinds of challenges that arise.

I spent the day working on the finishing yesterday (May 6) and Agota Dolinay continued where I left off today.  Finally all the ends are warp ends are secured or sewn in ...and first let me remind you what you it looked like a couple of months ago.....

That being said,  there are occasional victories, and there are many moments of joy though admittedly they may seem not to arise as frequently as the frustrations, road blocks, daily life demands and setbacks. Solitude can become isolation which is why in part I sought to undertake this project, interweaving many people together. Certainly there is a lot of fulfillment, growing, learning, expanding....

yikes

What a relief to have this much completed. Now...the warp threads (white threads on edge) can be cut, slits sewn and the mounting arrangement attached. Only another 40 hours work :)

The remaining part of the journey for this international tapestry installation remains unknown and in the hands of destiny. I have done as much as I can do in soliciting venues to exhibit the installation in the Greater Toronto Area and I await their response. This has included  Craft Ontario (aka Ontario Craft Council), World of Threads Festival, and the York Region Pan Am Games 2015. If anyone would like to invite us to exhibit the installation we would welcome your invitation. Meanwhile there is still more work to do on it before  photographing it professionally. 

Exhibitions

Ibolya Hegyi from Moholy-Nagy Art and Design University in Hungary writes about 

Historical and Contemporary Tapestries in Hungary

Christian Museum, Esztergom 

10 May - 24 August 2014 

Esztergom’s Christian Museum holds a larger number of late medieval and early modern age wall tapestries than any institution in Hungary apart from the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The Christian Museum’s close links to the genre, which looks back on substantial traditions in Hungary also, are shown by the many tapestry-related events it has staged over the last decade. The present exhibition entitled ‘Historical and Contemporary Tapestries in Hungary’ is the latest of these. Staged in co-operation with the Museum of Applied Arts and the Ildikó Dobrányi Foundation (named after the well-known tapestry artist and art organiser who died in 2007), it conveys the past and present of European woven tapestry, illuminating the connections also.

 The first section of the exhibition is entitled ‘Flemish Tapestries with Biblical and Mythological Themes from the Museum of Applied Arts and the Christian Museum’. In it, one of the genre’s most significant traditions – the Flemish – is represented by Oudenaarde and Tournai tapestries kept at the Christian Museum and by the 18th-century Brussels tapestry ‘Mercury Hands Over the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs’, a work preserved at the Museum of Applied Arts. To this last-mentioned tapestry is connected the Web of Europe assemblage of works. In contrast to the collective tradition in tapestry art which rests on co-operation between designers, cartoon-makers, and weavers, this assemblage denotes the recent, individual, independent strand of the genre and leads into the exhibition’s second section: ‘Autonomous Tapestry Art’. This second section presents the sovereign tradition associated in Hungary with Noémi Ferenczy first and foremost. An outstanding figure in the history of art in Hungary, Noémi Ferenczy was not just an artist, but also a teacher who established her own school. In 1951, she set up the Department of Tapestry at the Academy of Applied Arts, the legal predecessor of today’s Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, running it in conformity with her own approach. A student of Ferenczy’s, Gizella Solti graduated from the Department of Tapestry in 1955. Later on, she was a member of the ‘Great Generation’ which, in the 1970s, brought about the golden age of Hungarian textile art. As well as tapestries by Noémi Ferenczy and Gizella Solti and material shown at the 6th  Szombathely Biennale, which was billed as ‘± Woven Tapestry’ and which represented a turning point in the history of autonomous tapestry art in Hungary, the second section presents Hungarian works awarded prizes at international competitions held around the year 2000. However, this period witnessed not only the weaving of autonomous tapestries, but also the production of collaborative works reviving the collective traditions of the genre. Of these collaborative pieces, the tapestries St. Stephen and His Work and Lights of Europe are both on display at the Christian Museum’s exhibition, which will open on 10 of May 2014 and may be visited until 24 August 2014.