weaving inspiration

My weaving is really taking over my creative time at the moment. Not completely dominating it, but I have been weaving pretty much every day since my last post. This is the result, hanging on the line to dry after being washed - I didn't even know you were supposed to wash things when they come off the loom, but it helps the warp and weft to meld together into a fabric. This was an experiment in colour and a practice piece to improve my understanding of weaving evenly, getting those edges straight and not loopy and finding out what happens when you weave colours together. I'm really pleased with the outcome, and have learnt all sorts of things. In particular, I was hoping for a more thorough blend of colours in warp and weft, but I've used too wide a sett on the warp, which means that my weft colours are dominating, though you do get a hint of the warp stripes running through.

I did have two days of not weaving though, travelling up to the big city to see two exhibitions. The first was the Anni Albers show at Tate Modern. A friend Steph and I had been looking forward to this for some time, she also being a stitcher and part of our little breakaway tapestry weaving group. We almost ran out of time, as it closed last weekend, but a quick bit of planning meant that we were able to get there on Thursday. The works on show were incredibly inspiring for a new weaver; each piece repaying close observation. For me that means pulling my glasses half way down my nose and getting it as close as possible to what I'm looking at - always a bit unnerving as I keep expecting a solicitous museum attendant to leap up and banish me for getting too close!

Her combination of colour, texture and technique was a real lesson in how to create beauty on the loom and, even more inspiring, many of her experimental pieces were woven on small simple looms, rather than the beautiful piece of equipment that greeted visitors as we entered the gallery.

Here, in La Luz (The Light), she has used a combination of linen and metallic thread to create a shimmering plane of colour and light - the central cross moving in and out of view as you change your position in relation to the weaving

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947

In the detail here you can see how she carries the metallic thread across the piece so that it appears to be couched on the surface, rather than woven. The subtle colours and the way she uses differing weights and shades of thread enhances the sense of layers of light moving in and out of view

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947 (detail)

This detail of "Two", which is woven from Linen, cotton and rayon, encapsulates the complexity of her weaving - I kept finding myself thinking "how on earth has she done that?" and wanting to look at the back.

Anni Albers. Two. 1952. Detail

Pasture, felt joyous - the wonderful play of green and orange, with little sparkles of white in counterpoint to the black thread beckoned me to close my eyes and imagine walking through fields of summer flowers.

Anni Albers. Pasture. 1958

Six Prayers, below, was a commission from the Jewish Museum in New York for a memorial to the Jews who had died in the Holocaust. They were beautiful to sit in front of, luminous, meditative, those wandering lines evoking lost journeys but also perhaps, curling plumes of smoke rising into the receiving sky.

Anni Albers. Six Prayers. 1966-7

By the time we had reached these weavings we had both come to the end of our museum feet, so parted ways, Steph going back to the station to catch a train home, and me walking down to the tube station to get a tube to my next destination, Russell Square, where I had booked into a hotel for the night (how very grown up!). This got me close to the British Museum for my exhibition visit the following day, I Am Ashurbanipal. I won't go into detail here; suffice to say it was marvellous, and fed my interest in all things Mesopotamian. But I was, of course, in one of the great museums of the world, and had been looking at weaving, so felt an quick visit to see the Coptic weavings would be a lovely counterpoint to what I had seen the day before. And they were, little snippets of colour and imagery, so fine you could hardly imagine a human hand creating them; so fresh and vibrant and full of delightful detail.

Having marvelled at these, I wandered through to the Mesopotamian and Ancient Levant Galleries, for some sketching and browsing. They are full of marvellous objects, including these curious half human half something entirely other figurines dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2400-2000 BC)

Weary at last with my wanderings, it was time to come home, but not before visiting my favourite image in the downstairs display from Nineveh. This relief of a captive woman bending down to give her child water is such a tender moment amidst all the killing and pillaging. I pay her my respects every time I visit.

You can see more of Anni Albers' weaving here, on the website of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation