Tuesday, January 9, 2018

"This Week" series, "A Fortnight"- Diaristic works.

"This Week III"

"This Week" Series. 
Aspects of the work:
1. Materials used are: 
a. warps -silk that has been dyed in the eco-dye baths used for the picket fence explorations.
b. wefts – cotton fibres ‘unwoven’ from the eco-dyed calico used for the picket fence explorations.
These materials were all in studio stock – ready – at – hand.

2.Weaving is a repetitive activity. The stitching used is based on variations of knot making, drawing through various loops at various frequencies.

3. The pieces are created with one warp sett per day; each sett containing 8 warp ends – referencing the eight hour mundane day (If you sleep eight hours, work eight hours there can be only eight hours left for the everyday). They are built up to a seven day composite or a weekly unit.

4. It is planned to make these on an ongoing series across a period of time.

5. The fineness of the materials used and the unevenness of the subtle colouring is chosen to make the thread work existent but illusive. Shadow created by the mounting of the work amplifies as it masks the actual work. This resonates with mundane work that often only has its visibility in the effect it has of maintaining a functioning existence.

6. The fineness of the materiality and the small scale of the thread work evidences maker commitment or an intensity of emotional investment, reflective of the large part of mundane work being emotional labour.

7. The scale of the created work and the form of presentation are designed to stage an intense viewing experience. The details are incrementally perceived on close inspection. This relates to the micro-detail level of care the mundane is mostly involved with.

8. By creating these works with the concepts behind them I feel I have given a materiality to time.

9. The pieces are inspired by the ephemeral nature of much mundane activity – the tales of the work are loose, often unsecured. The passages of the weaving or stitching are mobile on the warp threads – they are not totally fixed or permanently located on their warp setts.

10. The warps used in these pieces are high value Cambodian raw silk. This is life – valuable, hard to come by. The wefts are recycled threads taken from other projects and reworked in a new nature so instead of being hard packed into a tightly woven pragmatic calico fabric – good for lining curtains but very cheap to purchase – they are treated with delicacy and high regard to create networks of beauty and individuation of each strand.

11. The overall impression created in these pieces is of fragility but they also have a tension and resilience in them with the warps being maintained under tension. This reflects the nature of everyday life – fragile but surprisingly resilient.

12 It is widely believed that the everyday is a set of habituated practices. This description implies things are monotonously repeated identically over and over but in fact that is never the case in the human process – there are always nuances of variation. The weaving and stitching is using a very limited vocab of automatic or habituated activities but every expression is subtly different from all others

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Hoarding for the future






Absolutely scrumptious dried grasses, collected at the start of our present drought, hung to keep intact. Waiting now for inclusion in my paper-making and botanical contact printing for the next round of mindfulness books. Excited. 

Establishing the Weavery 01/01/2018


We have been working hard on the new direction for my creative business and the last few days have seen the first stage reaching a conclusion. We have refitted and extended an exisiting structure on our property ready to house some of my weaving equipment and supplies. Here is the grand old lady Sunflower loom that has been my creative mainstay for nearly 40 years. She is a glorious 8 harness Swedish style counterbalance floor loom, 48 inches weaving width, sectional beams - a main and a supplementary. She does the works. This loom was individually made from reclaimed native Kauri timber taken from an old freezing works that was being demolished. I love how this once mighty tree has walked with me so far and through so much adventure of the mind. There have been times when I have felt owned by this loom and the work it empowered me to do. Times I have had to step aside and refresh body and imagination beyond the horizontal and vertical grid. However, I always return to here. The rhythms and the flows of process anchored me in challenging times, focused my fraught body and soul and rewarded my attentiveness.
Now I am preparing to share my beloved Sunflower with others desiring a unique creative encounter. This new space for Sunflower is going to be renamed The Weavery.Included in The Weavery will be a range of tapestry looms as well as Sunflower, and it is also a set up photographic booth ready to record all the creative makings that will be generated here.  It will be the initial focus of our creative retreat campus called Puka Place.
Puka Place will be a creative retreat not just for people wanting to weave. My own making practice is wide ranging and eclectic and anyone who wants to pause their lives in a relaxed, environment close to nature with access to all kinds of making equipment and processes will be most welcome.
The location of Puka Place is Opunake, Taranaki, New Zealand. I record images of this location most days either on my blogpost https://mornings-viv.blogspot.co.nz/ or on my Facebook posts where I often label the images as Taradise.....a small piece of Taranaki paradise. https://www.facebook.com/viv.davy.5 . We strive to live an organic, mainly self sufficient lifestyle here with a few ducks and chickens and lots of garden for veges, dye plants, herbs, flowers and beautiful trees. Sometimes I post about the garden just really for my nephews and friends. https://www.facebook.com/Vivs-Garden-1439883882756066/  .
I must admit I am still constructing my portfolio website but this blog does has quite a-lot about my own making practices, including my weaving.

You are welcome to look at any of these links to see why this makes such a fantastic creative locus to offer to other imagination wanderers.