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May 15th, Meeting Program: Gretchen Hoff, who raises alpacas and llamas on her farm in Maple Ridge, covered the process from harvesting to spinning their hair. Susan Forsyth (www.woolcombs.com) demonstrated how to comb the hair to separate out the coarse hair from the more desirable soft fine hairs and showed several lovely garments made from the spun and dyed yarn. There were lots of samples for spinning demonstration and for sale.
Bettina’s textile artwork has a strong focus on narrative. She showed digital photos of her work over the years and discussed how she portrayed her and her family’s life experiences using mainly embroidery and fabric collage. This has led to an interest in cartography. Cartographic designs are now being incorporated into her art as a means for telling stories and navigating through life.
http://www.cabc.net/mem_sect/CrafthousePortfolios/matzkuhn/matzkuhn.htm
Maria shared her appreciation and knowledge of Indonesian Weaving in a fascinating slide lecture based on her ethnographic fieldwork for her master’s thesis. She was able to spend time with the people in the villages of South Sulawesi and learn from them directly. Maria also showed us many textiles and garments that she collected during her experience and some woven pieces that she made inspired by the Indonesian textiles and techniques that she encountered.
Our presenter, Felicia Lo, discussed photography for textiles. There are plenty of practical and artistic reasons why we take photos of our textiles. The photos may be for personal record-keeping purposes or for professional use. Felicia emphasized that we first need to understand our focus — what aspects of the fabric or fiber do we want to portray in the photo? Then she discussed the variables that make up a good photograph, including shutter speeds, aperture, film, and especially lighting. A diffused natural light is best and can be achieved with several different set-ups. Composition of the photo must also be considered. An object off-center may make a more interesting photo. Felicia then presented a number of examples of good and bad photos as well as references for further study. She summarized with a quick list that will help us improve our photos:
A copy of the lecture handout is available in PDF format at the sweetgeorgia yarns blog here »
Due to unfortunate circumstances our scheduled speaker, Bettina Matzkuhn, was unable to join us. She is rescheduled to present at our April meeting.
In her stead we viewed the latest DVD documentary from Maiwa Productions entitled: In Search of Lost Colour — the story of natural dyes. This lovely documentary described the main sources of natural dyes from both plants and animals, the use of mordants and the importance of dyes in the history of exploration, trade routes, farming and development. Given current the competition with chemical dyes, the challenge of maintaining the recipes and expertise of natural dyeing throughout the world was also discussed.
This DVD is in our library so members may check it out for a more in depth review.
Our annual Christmas Party with potluck goodies and a gift exchange. Much laughter ensued as some members really got into the spirit of the exchange where you could snatch a gift from another rather than choose a new one from the table! The hottest item appeared to be a lovely pair of hand-knit fingerless mitts which changed owners several times. It’s always enjoyable to have a chance to mingle and chat with our fellow fibre enthusiasts.
Jo Anne Ryeburn and Dorothy Cross showed slides and textiles that they collected on their individual trips to India. Jo Anne also had the opportunity to attend the UNESCO Symposium on Natural Dyeing.
Debra Sparrow is an acclaimed weaver who has been weaving for twenty years and is deeply involved with the revival of Musqueam weaving. Her Musqueam blankets are displayed at the Vancouver Airport, and at UBC. She is active in a program at the Museum of Anthropology designed to teach grade four children about Musqueam culture and history. She helped with the design of the Queen of the Night costume in the Vancouver Opera production of The Magic Flute.
Debra and her sister, Wendy, felt a need to find their roots; they wanted to know what their place was in the world. Their grandfather had told them that they had to know who they were and where they come from; otherwise they were nothing. They decided that their path to this knowledge was through traditional crafts. Wendy revived traditional Musqueam blanket weaving, a craft which had been neglected for eighty five years. Debra chose to pursue jewellery making, but later found herself involved more and more with weaving.
Wendy and Debra organized a local group of Musqueam weavers who wove traditional blankets. They were inspired by an old blanket passed down in their family, by blankets owned by museums in Washington, DC and New York City and by a book on Salish weaving by Paula Gustafson. Now Debra is involved with the commercial production of blanket designs in clothing as well as blankets.
The program finished with a brief slide show showing some of Debra’s blankets as well as some traditional spindle whorls and combs. Submitted by Jo Anne Ryeburn
Barbara is a foster parent through Plan Canada and began her trip with a flight to Lima to visit her 9 year old foster child’s family. Thanks to Barbara’s help, the large family, living in very small quarters, is doing fairly well. What is more, she is engaged in a fund-raising effort to clean up the water in the community and add clean bathrooms to two local schools. According to Barbara, “As to how funds are being raised, I have been to two other guilds, set up a booth at a craft fair, sold lots of photographs and cards and have had some big donations from supporters. So far I have given Plan Canada $35,000.00 and I need another $15,000.00. The building is more than half complete and the children are already using the completed sections of the project. It is very exciting to see.” After this visit to her foster family, Barbara embarked on a three week tour of Peru. She showed us slides of many craft activities, including knitting, spinning, braiding and tapestry weaving. We saw the colourful abstract tapestries designed by Maximo Lora (featured in the Nov.-Dec. 2006 Fiberarts). Lora hires deaf weavers to weave his tapestries. We also saw more traditional tapestries designed by Alejandro Gallardo. These are sold at fair trade prices which benefits the village in which he lives. We saw pictures of a knitter named Rufina who knits garments using bicycle spokes as needles and also pictures of tape being woven using “toe weaving” Finally we saw examples of back strap weaving at the Centre of Traditional Textiles in Cuzco.
Barbara concluded by urging us to invest $30.00 a month in supporting a foster child through Plan Canada. According to Barbara, children who are supported in this way “do not fall through the cracks.”
Submitted by Jo Anne Ryeburn