Sea Change

The ocean warms, absorbing the heat of our folly. Ice melts, fish die, sea rises, coastlines change.  Sea Change is a four panel tapestry woven as a reflection of the inevitable sea level rise brought about by climate change and the swell of inevitable grief that change will bring in its wake. 

This tapestry piece is woven of handspun gradient wool on a wool warp. The weft is spun from superwash domestic wool that fades from browns and greys to blues and greens and into turquoise. It was woven in 2019 and is currently available in the shop.

Birth Story

Birth Story weaves together the hand written birth stories of nearly a dozen women, using their words on paper as weft with textural handspun and handdyed yarns. Tapestry techniques combine with a loom controlled multishaft weave pattern, and are accented by braided plaits and twisted fringe to tell a multi-voiced story of bringing new life into the world - combining experiences of joy and of trauma - that pulls from a rich history of “women’s work” including weaving, midwifery, and parenthood while it looks looks towards a future where birthing bodies are honored and supported in their most vulnerable and sacred moments. 

Birth Story physically represents the collective wisdom and life experience found in sharing stories of the birth experience. At times joyful and empowering or even orgasmic, at times traumatic and disempowering, and at times everything in between; birth is often a pivotal moment in the life of the bearer. This piece represents these experiences by literally using the handwritten accounts of over a dozen firsthand birth experiences of women across the USA and Europe as weft. Weaving ink-and-emotion-on -paper into this piece was a profound experience and I’m so honored and humbled that my collaborators were willing to share their experiences in this way.

Birth Story was woven in 2019 as part of the Birth collection. It was exhibited in the 2019 64th Parallel, Fairbanks Arts Association’s annual juried art show featuring Interior Alaskan works. It currently resides in a private collection.

Wombsight

This is a tapestry piece that I began many many moons ago.  It was begun with one person in mind, intended as a gift of love and energy to help navigate a very specific time in her life.  As is the way with time and life, things changed and this piece was still unfinished on my tapestry frame.  It is an interesting thing when weaving with energy, creating talismans of power and medicine: they always find the right home.  It may (or in this case, it may not) be whom we think it is going to be, but it is always right.  In finishing this piece, releasing its energy from the state of suspension in which such energies are held whilst on the loom, I realized that this particular way of working with yarn and spirit is something of which I need to do more.  

It is the stylized representation of the lower half of a divine feminine figure. The womb is pictured as a seed form, representing the seed of new life we carry within. It was not designed as a fertility tapestry, but it definitely carries some of that energy. 

The womb resides in the same space, is the physical equivalent of the energy of the svadisthana chakra - the second chakra, seat of emotion, creativity, relationality, and fertility. 
After we had decided to invite Avery's soul to come into the world through our family, but before I became pregnant (there was an approximate 6 month gap here); I really worked to cultivate what I termed 'wombsight' : a way of perceiving the world from this generative energy center rather than from the compassionate seat of the heart or the intuitive seat of the third eye. It is a way of viewing the world that is difficult to put into words : seeing the world as your child, with all the precious love and fragile incredulity which that entails.
I hope that I captured some small aspect of the Mother Goddess archetype in this piece.

It is a cotton warp with mixed wools/synthetics/cottons for weft. Tapestry is a weft faced weave structure, so you don't see the warp at all except at top and bottom. This was woven with a definite right and wrong side: all the "bobbin changes" hang out of the back, so it is definitely designed as a wall hanging.
It is finished with plaiting of the warp threads - the plaits or braid being another centuries old evocation of the feminine and feminine magic. 
It is mounted on river driftwood, one of which is in the shape of a dowsing rod and adorned with turquoise, tiger's eye, bone, and resin bead the colors of earth and amber. All the beads are reclaimed/recycled from secondhand jewelry and were energetically cleansed before use.