Itinerant weaver on the road. Joe Lewis East Cost Pop Up

Joe Lewis Itinerant Weaver

With 10 jacquard woven wall hangings in a suitcase and picking up sticks and yarn to make a back strap loom to string up in a near by tree, or lamppost I will be wondering around the east cost of Canada in August into the fall. With a PowerPoint and the gift of gab (a genetic trait of my Scottish via the east coast roots).i am looking for invitations to hang my work, give a talk and meet guilds and other textile artisans. ( a couch to sleep on, a cup of coffee and ride to the next town perhaps.

Itinerary bookings as of April 26 2015

Bonavista, NL, Church St. Festival,  July 27th to August 02. Location Rayns Premises National Historic Site with the Art Walk taking place Friday July 31 2015

Reality as of August 2 2015. My first east coast Pop Up exhibtion has come to an end and if likes and shares facebook and Twitter are to be interpreted in a positive light the show or at least my presence in Bonavista was noted. The location in which I exhibited was rather amazing. Like the former Joseph Simpson Knitting Mills. (1861 – 1947) on Berkeley Street in Toronto and the Canadian National Railway Station in Brantford Ontario (built 1905) it has a history of industrial/ mercantile use and as such has a high ceiling and a large amount of floor space with windows enough to let in adaquite quit light in a per-electric era.

Rayns Premises National Historic Site, Bonavista NFLD 

This a photo of me by Bonavista based photographer Loretta Landres at the Fish Store

The rough hew whitewashed in interior of the Fish Store did set of my work

While my exhibition was a Pop Up the interpretative presentation of the processes involved in catching and processing cod is foremost in this space. While unmanned unless a tour group is coming through or a talk or some other presentation is being made I did have the chance to speak with visitors on the days before the official Art Walk event that was scheduled for the Friday evening of the week long Bonavista Church Street Festival​. I sat in on one talk giving by a Parks Canada employee for a group of American tourist. She spoke from first had experience of how the moratorium on cod fishing and closing of the Cod Fishery in 1992 effect the local economy, her own  her husbands job loss and subsequent leaving to find employment in Ontario and eventual return and becoming an employee of Parks Canada. The audience was extremely receptive and while there was a lot of personal information it was the "workers" voice inserted into the longer history of the Newfoundland and Labrador industry and the specific of the Ryans family business. 


I need to thank a bunch of people for making my trip to the Bonavista Church Street Festival​ possible and the first would be Ruth Weller-Malchow​ of Bonavista Living & Bonavista Creative​ for inviting to participate in the Art Walk in the Town of Bonavista​ and these individuals without who's continuing support of my art it wouldn't have been possible for me to go.  Mary Alton​ David Bateman​ Doubledee Barnes​ Lou Ann DeLong​  Mary French-Pace​ Kris Lewis​ Becky Kelley​ Julie Kirkpatrick​ Piers Knight​ and Lana Rottenberg​   Barb Mcilquham​  Elaine MacNeill​  Jeremy Podeswa​ Michelle Walker​ and i know I am missing many others who have subscribed to the concept that buying art keeps artist alive and making.Next for me is "Strata-graphic Evidence::the textile work of Joe Lewis” interactive exhibition tour,, catalogue with on-line only component. Cheers until the next time I Pop Up..

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While curated exhibitions in professional galleries add to ones resume the spontaneity of a Pop Up show is an equally viable way of building a reputation. Having been a painter who has become a weaver the portability of textiles makes this approach much easier if truth be told. With a one week exhibition scheduled in Bonavista NL the end of July beginning of August and friends scattered through out the maritime I thought I might as well see if I can arrange other exhibition opportunities.

Piecework , Gladstone Hotel on Queen Street West in Toronto Ontario, October 11 - 14, 200f

I have shown in bars, cafes, restaurants, beauty parlours , libraries, train stations, church halls, empty storefronts, old factories, summer kitchens, garages, a former Orange Man's Hall a Quonset Hut, (Guild Hall, Whitehorse) in other artist studios, peoples living rooms and on a clothesline in a back yard.

3Hangings on backyard clothes line Brantford ON

The "Joe Lewis Itinerant Weaver" trunk show consist of 10 jacquard works woven at the Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles between 2003 -2011, it is 34 running feet/(10.3 meters) and easily hung. While my PowerPoint ramblings are as much story telling as "lecture" they have a thread of 5000 years of technical developments in weaving, a wide look at contemporary fibre arts or a an up close look at weavers / artist working with Jacquard looms to make their work'

Lia, Cook, (california) Kathy Schicker London England and me (Toronto)  in front of Kathy's "Sisters" piece at the opening of "Telling Tales: Narrative Woven Textiles by Joe Lewis and Kathy Schicker" Berkeley Castle, Toronto (tin the former Joseph Simpsons Knitting Mill 1861 – 1945.
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Schedule TBA

I f you are interested in inviting me to show contact me via e-mail.

fibre_quarterly@yahoo.ca  put "Joe Lewis Pop UP in the subject line 

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Joe Lewis Press:

Joe Lewis rides the Jacquard Wave by Christoffer Jones, Live With Culture April 8 2010

Telling Tales, Textile Forum 2/2010 June pg.10

"Beyond the Studio, Joe Lewis: Holding the Torch High". by Graham McCracken pg. 29 Fibre Focus Autumn 2010, Volume 53, Number 3

'Joe Lewis Jacquard Weaver' by Graham McCracken: http://www.ohs.on.ca/members/fibre-focus-magazine/ is a download from the website,

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 
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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”)

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

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"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

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Austria July 2009, T-C1 workshop with Vibeke Vesby

Haslach Upper Austria was the location of the European Textile Association’s 15th biannual Conference: “Revival of Old Textile Centres: a new future for training”  Wednesday, July 22 until Friday July 24, 2009.
The ETN 15th conference took place in Austria at the Textile Centre Haslach, with pre-conference activities in Vienna and Linz "2009 Cultural Capitol of EU" and post conference workshops organized by the Haslach Textile Centre.

During the day of Networking presentations I spoke on publishing fibreQUARTERLY and about textile and fibre arts activities in Canada (this presentation was supported by the Canada Council)

After the conference I took The Sky is the Limit: Challenge your creativity with a TC-1 and Photoshop ™ with Vibeke Vestby from Tronrud Engineering Norway who is the developer and manufacturer of the T-C1. Using Photoshop ™ to create weave structures was something I had been resisting because I had been using Poincarré ™ software in Montreal at the MCCT and "The Woven Pixel" by Alice Schlein and Bhakti Ziek.just seen a bit like starting at scratch. 10 minutes into the workshop however I was slapping myself on the for head and uttering duh and grinning from ear to ear. Building weave structures a pixel at a time in black and white and then defining them as a pattern to replace a colour in the design was so simple and such an obvious use of that particular bit of software I was stupefied by me resistance and just got down to it.

This the image I was working with during the T-C1 workshop

This is a simulation of the damask pattern I developed from the garden images

I wove a test sample with a white weft on the white warp

Being a workshop my sample is the cue waiting to be cut out, I was satisfied with the result but realized I had used to many weave structures to make a readily recognizable Damask which for most people is the simple two colour or two tone weft faced Satin and its reverse. I decided to move onto something more complicated and insert multiple coloured/ shuttle areas into a primarily white on white multi layered cloth with the colour inside when not on the surface (front or back) rather then a brocade.

that little strip is my sample and for me it was enough to answer my questions on how and if this design would work.

The inserted upright rectangle will be a 6 colour insert. I wove a small sample but at that point the loom started to act up so being unfamiliar with the loom I stopped, but I had enough to convince myself this design could be produced.

Later in the year Vibeke provided me with an image of larger sample of this design she had woven for me. Using a green rather then white yarn to punch up what I planed as white on white area of the design. Looking at this 18 months later and having heard two papers on Velvet weaving at the TSA symposium in Lincoln in October I now am thinking a trip to the Lisio Foundation is in order and a silk damask with a multicoloured velvet brocade might be an interesting way to go.

Here is a photo of the workshop group standing left to right Christina Altona, Doris Hascher, from Austria Simona Standler from Czech Republic, Heide Peitarinen from Norway, Joe Lewis (Canada) with Vibeke Vestby, Agnes Haupty from New Zealand and Khatuna Popiashvili from Georgia in front of T-C1 and  Della Reams an American who teacshes in Qatar. [Textile Conference bring an international audience together don't they]

To read more about the Textile Center Haslach and the 2009 ETN conference go to fQ Volume 5 Issue 3 Fall 2009  for Conference reports and there is also a longer article on Haslach Textile Centre

Links to the Organizations interest mentioned in this postings

European Textile Network http://www.etn-net.org/

Textile Centre Haslach http://www.textile-kultur-haslach.at/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1


T-C1 Loom http://www.tronrud.no/index.php?id=58&L=1

Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles http://www.textiles-mtl.com/

Lisio Foundation http://www.fondazionelisio.org/index.php

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Weaving in Technological Time

Six Colour Warp Workshop at the Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles.

computer simulation of 6 colour warp, two colour weft double cloth colour test

In the beginning at the computer you work, you work at understanding not only how the software works, but how your own software (brain) works. There still seems to be a mistaken incomprehension as to the makers hand involvement in digital driven design and production technologies such such as those used to produce jacquard weaving. Believe me as a maker your "hand" or rather bother hands are never removed from this processes, except when you have a coffee in one and a cigarettes in the other, at which point your brain is juggling the endless the possibilities


Once you understand how and that the software does work. Using this sequence of six colours repeated across the width of the warp as your base it becomes a process of designing weave structures that draw the weft threads (two or more shuttles) across, underneath or hidden in the middle the warp to bring colour. texture and pattern to the surface, front and back of the cloth being woven.

using this design


here are weave structures for 6 of the 9 colours created using two weft threads black then white

In the simplest way, think of threads crossing as pixels, in the images above there are two wefts drawn across in the same direction, a black square is a warp thread on top of a weft thread, and this spread of six are stacked/ shuffled together up for black or below for white and compressed to be seen / taken as one pixel of colour.

These black and white squares are instructions for the loom

Simulation of design above ( it is a mirrored vertically)

You create simulations, get colour test woven, tweak line, shape, shade, design. As in all creative work you are involved in on going decision making until you achieve the piece of cloth you envisioned.

this a scan of the sample of part of the design that was woven (Click on it for a larger view, use back button on browser menu to return to blog)

For your viewing and listening pleasure a commercial, i mean a mini movie

The weaver/loom technicians at the Centre, in this piece of "Video Art" the weaver is Dahlia Milon.

after all that its time to relax