Thrums — Gleanings From the Fiber World
Cathy Koos
Bay Area Basket Makers. Their “Twinings” newsletter is always a welcome read. In addition to their regular meetings, they have Zoom Art Days every Saturday. They have announced a show at the Gualala Arts Center August 11 – October 1, 2023. Enjoy a day at the coast!
Substack is a fairly new online blog and journalism platform that is really taking off. Easy to use, bloggers connect directly with their followers. Sarah Swett (see her interview here) uses the platform as her delightful muse.
The Thirsk Yarnbombers of Yorkshire, England, have been busy yarnbombing their charming little town again. You can follow them on Facebook.
Thirsk Yarnbombers, Facebook
Andy Warhol: The Textiles is being showcased now through September 10 at the Fashion Textile Museum. Some textiles never before seen by the pop design icon will be on display in London here on 83 Bermondsey Street, London https://fashiontextilemuseum.org/
Ocean Secrets
Silk gown, ca 1600 Museuem Kaap Skil
A Dutch merchant ship filled with chests of luxury goods sank off the coast of Texel, the largest island in the North Sea, nearly four centuries ago.
The unidentified ship has long since deteriorated, but chests protected lavish clothing, gilded leather book covers and silver items that likely once belonged to an affluent family on a voyage to live somewhere else.
Many of the recovered items, now housed at the Netherlands’ Museum Kaap Skil, are virtually as pristine as the day they went beneath the waves. Included in the bounty was a trunk filled with two silk dresses – one for every day and one clearly a wedding gown, as it included silver threads, lace and other finery.
Perhaps the most remarkable items are two virtually intact silk gowns, including a wedding dress interwoven with sparkling silver disks.
Coming soon to the Fashion Institute.
The Fabric of Democracy, two centuries of textiles, September 29, 2023 – March 31, 2024. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/news/archive/2009/fashion-and-politics.php
From Tapestry Weavers West.
With Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, author Anne Newlands returns one of Canada’s most accomplished and respected visual artists to the public eye. ($49.95)
Born into a large French-Canadian family in 1926, Mariette Rousseau embraced her passion for creative expression through wool and weaving at an early age. She studied art and weaving at l’École des beaux-arts in Quebec City and then worked at the California studio of ground-breaking American textile designer Dorothy Liebes. Back in Canada after an art-inspired trip to Europe, she and her husband, artist and ceramist Claude Vermette, joined the growing movement of young French-Canadian artists in their embrace of abstraction and new forms of art and their rejection of the conservatism of Maurice Duplessis’ mid-century Quebec.
By the early 1960s, Rousseau-Vermette had forged collaborations with fellow artists, designers and architects with like ideas about public art. Over the next 40 years, she scaled the heights of her profession, weaving hundreds of radiant large-scale tapestries that complemented the cool interiors of modern architecture. She exhibited across Canada and internationally and attracted prestigious commissions from the private and public sectors, including commissions for theater curtains at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Yet three years after Rousseau-Vermette’s death in 2006, Newlands discovered there wasn’t a single book that told her story as a pioneer of modernist tapestry and one of Canada’s most prolific and influential artist-weavers.
Chatahoochee Handweavers Guild Course Announcements.
https://chgweavers.org/chg-spring-class-listing/
San Francisco School of Needlework and Design.
International, membership-driven nonprofit dedicated to the art of the needle, SFSND offers both classes and exhibitions at low or no cost. Their Lucy Barter Needlework Library is open to the public for research and online through libib.com . They offer intensive mentorship programs as well.
850 Battery Street, Second Floor, San Francisco 94111,
Tuesday – Saturday, 10-4 https://www.sfsnad.org/library 415-605-1104