poplar i.p.

Am on the 4th of 9 and starting to get into the rhythm of it.

Have a look at absolute tapestry.com

le troc

There's much talk of le troc (barter) in these times of la crise. (I've got a good bread for eggs arrangement going with a neighbour!) Over the years we have been lucky to exchange paintings and tapestries for other artist's paintings, pots, sculpture. The textile piece in the picture is the latest. It's a gorgeous embroidery made by a friend Colette Bessac-Lefranc and one of my tapestries is now hanging in her dining room. How satisfying is that?
I'll take some close up photos of it to show if the sun ever shines again!

aino kajaniemi

Aino Kajaniemi's tapestries here.

susan mowatt

I tell you it's all happening round here - Spring that is - trees in leaf, wild flowers everywhere, birds singing like crazy, enormous black bees on the wisteria and lots of rain in beween the sunny spells. I have just potted on 37 tomato plants. It is impossible to have too many tomatoes...!

Have a look at Susan Mowatt's blob, I love it.

Tapestry 08 catalogue available here

abbott and ellwood

I started my day with a smile - lots of smiles actually - looking at Mike Abbott and Kim Ellwood's metal sculptures!

guernica

A woven version of Picasso's Guernica is on show at the newly reopened Whitechapel Gallery in East London. Be sure to read the last paragraph of this.

cornelia forster

Cornelia Forster 1906-90. I had never heard of this artist (thank you Kathy) and while there's more going on in most of the tapestries than my little head can deal with, there is a lot of beauty too. It seems she worked with Jean Lurçat in the 40's just down the road from here in Saint Céré.

annika ekdahl

See Annika Ekdahl's extraordinary lush tapestries here

my little helper!

Tilleke Schwarz has updated her website and now also has some work for sale. See it here

1/9

I've started weaving the first part of Poplar. It feels odd to be weaving again - there's no excitement as yet which is unusual for me. I don't think there's a tapestry weaver alive who doesn't sometimes shake their head and question the validity of a process which frankly seems so tortuous sometimes. Or if they don't they should. When I was at art school in Edinburgh once you had decided on a design to weave you had to really sell it to the course tutors. Convince them that it was worth weaving, that you could sustain interest in the design for the months it would take to weave, that it was worth the investment in materials, that it would gain something from being woven.

In her piece in Art Textiles of the World : Great Britain, Sara Brennan says 'To be a tapestry weaver it helps if you're a tactile person. But there's a risk with tapestry, that people get carried away with the making. It becomes a way of life and then everyone's too cautious to criticise. Constructive criticism is very absent.'

I don't want to make tapestries just because that is 'what I do'.