Reflections on The Man in the Moon, MCCT June 2010

Following obsessions is one way of describing contemporary weaving practices regardless of what methods are used. In my life as a painter there were flowers, landscapes, male figures, portraits, in my life as a quilter there were flowers, landscapes, male figures, portraits, and in my Jacquard woven textiles all of these have made an appearance.

 Here is one of my painting of flowers being held by a figure 

standing in a landscape (Saltspring Island)

Here is a painting transitioning itself into a quilt with landscape flowers and figures

This is a landscape mural I painted painted  in a bedroom in a house in the country, the bedding , the tufted duvet and pillow case are also made by me.

A jacquard woven self portrait made during my first visit to the MCCT

One thing does lead to another and a line can be drawn from my earliest drawings of flowers as a child in terms of shapes and colour to what I do today.

Can you find two things that are wrong in this photo* see bottom of page for correct answer 
 __________________________________________________________________________

After doing a workshop on the TC-1 in Austria in July 2009 I got back to the MCCT in June 2010 to continue exploring what I had started in Haslach. There I had decide to explore white on white damask but it was more about texture it is hard to limit yourself when working with the complex weaver structures that can be woven on a jacquard looms. As I have built a vocabulary of weave structures over the past ten years my concerns in making cloth have changed and given that this time in Montreal I would be designing for a 6 colour warp I still wanted to see if and how to bring as much white onto the front of the cloth while including the other colours.

Expanding last summers flower garden and combing a previously used landscape I began to work on a two coloured shuttle design.

This is one of the weave structures I created [I call it peek -a-boo, it as an eyelet look ]

Working with a structure i had created three years ago to produce a rich red, I liked the effect and then shifted it to bring each colour to the front and made one piece using only this structure.

Three shades of blue and two reds using the same structure.

This is a detail of the different shades of white, distance plays an important part helping the eye recognize what it is seeing on the surface of a jacquard cloth much like Georges Seurat's pointillist paintings

This detail of "white" floats on a backdrop of colour which is a garden siting under a big sky 

 Sky Detail

  

Earth detail

 Reflections on The Man in the Moon, 2010, six colour repeated warp; black red green blue yellow and white yarn, woven with a two colour weft; black and white, 48.26 cm wide X 1.42 meters High (19 “X 56”)

 ----------------------------------------------------

 Cows can not lay down with their legs in front it is physically impossible and "W" is missing from the alphabet

---------------------------

"Desire in shades of Purple" Scanned of woven photocopies

This the first DIYJOE, downlaod this image make an 8. x 11 thermal transfer of it and iron it on a T-shirt and Bobs your Uncle! your very own DIY Joe Lewis T-shirt

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++