Weaving Water
What does the ocean feel like?
Dear Friend and Fellow Maker,
As I weave this tapestry triptych, I am enjoying the challenge of weaving water. There are sooooo many kinds of water - a running river, a still lake, a churning sea. The story of these small tapestries takes place at the ocean. That, in and of itself, presents numerous options, yet I am wanting to depict a slight shift in the waters from the first tapestry to the final one. My goal is to depict the ocean waters progressing from choppy waves close to shore (Tap #1), to the area beyond the breakers (still moving but not calm in Tap #2), and the final one (Tap #3) will be calmer waters as it approaches the land in the distance. I will share with you the entire story of this envisioned triptych once I have woven them all. It is possible I may be weaving four of these, as I am being pulled, like the ocean’s undercurrent, to create one more. We shall see.
(Current state of Tap #2 in a series titled Her Sacred Rite of Passage.)
For now, let’s talk about weaving ocean water. I have watched once again, The Weaverly Path, a favorite film I purchased several years ago.1 It is a film about the renowned tapestry weaver Silvia Heyden who, for a time, lived in Durham, North Carolina. It was part of her daily practice to visit the Eno River and she was fascinated by the forms she saw therein. Silvia had been weaving tapestry for many years and her mind and fingers worked together without a need for a guiding cartoon (the drawing behind the warp). She could “feel” it in her hands as she sat at her loom and held the wool. I marvel at her expertise, at the deep level of creativity which she had gained over many, many years of dedication to one craft…the art of tapestry weaving. Would that I too could have years ahead to learn and gain this kind of intuitive weaving skill.
(The appearance of a dark color for that swoop of a wave was surprising. I let it be and have decided to weave others in this manner - from light to dark, or all dark.)
So I have been asking myself what the ocean feels like in each of these three stages of water activity. I have first-hand experience from going to the beach each summer of my adult life, thanks to my in-laws who rented a house on the ocean for a week for all the kids and grandkids to have a beach week every summer. I know what it feels like to be tossed by the choppy waves at the shore, to not be able to stand up very well, to be knocked off kilter by incoming waves expected or unexpected. I also know what it feels like to be just beyond the breakers, where the water is still moving and swelling but isn’t crashing over you so much, driving you into the sandy shoreline. I do not however have a personal experience of swimming in deep, deep ocean waters. But I can imagine. It must feel expansive, huge - an awe-inspiring calm, yet still very much alive. I have yet to weave this last depiction of the deeper waters away from shore. It will be interesting to see how this progresses.
(The swirly goodness of hand spun yarns undulating and moving across a grid of vertical warps. 😍)
It is likely universal to think of the ocean as wavy, undulating, and even swirly. I guess that is where my curly lines and small waves of color come from as I ask myself how water feels. When I’m actually in the water, it seems that it indeed curls around you, swirling in wavy arcs up, down, and all around. Near to shore, there is always foam and spray and a sense of frothiness. Yarn seems to have a unique way of communicating these things and tapestry is just the medium for its expression. I’m sure there are as many ways to depict ocean water as there are artists who paint and/or weave tapestry. What an entrancing2 endeavor!
(Tap #1. You can compare and contrast this one with the first image above of Tap #2. I’m not sure that I have achieved my goal of Tap #2 being calmer. There are fewer defined swirls. I’m going to let that be as it is. 💖)
Well, I have gabbled on about water and the challenge of weaving it. What remains to be determined is whether or not I will actually achieve this sense of the ocean waters growing a bit calmer with each image. The second tapestry might not seem significantly calmer than the first.🤷🏻♀️ It is possible I needed to weave the water in the first tapestry with more churning in the waters. As I wove the second tapestry, I happened upon the idea of weaving some of the swirling lines in a dark color. At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted this. But I decided to give it a chance - to see if my hands were indeed choosing to weave what my mind and heart were dictating for the story that was unfolding in these images.
Now that I am nearing the “end of the ocean”, before weaving the sky and land beyond, I see the darker swirls as a nod to these “middle to late years” of Alzheimer’s that my mom has been in. Dark and light, bad and good, painful and beautiful, all in one swooping wave albeit smaller and less frequent than those early years of confusion and resistance. Perhaps even I myself cannot fully understand why I choose the shapes and colors in these tapestries…I am in many ways just letting my eyes and hands do the work, letting them leave on the warp what they think is best in the moment.
Next time you are near a body of water - be it river, lake or ocean - take notice of what forms you see, how the light interplays with the moving or still water, and consider how you might depict it in yarn or paint or collage. Surely water is a never-ending fascination one could weave over and over again. Just as Silvia did.
With gratitude,
Jennifer
If you are a tapestry weaver, or just interested in the ways creative people work and think, you must purchase this film! It is a treasure!
Entrancing - beautiful or interesting in a way that means you cannot stop listening to or watching someone or something.
This is the definition from the Cambridge English Dictionary. I love this word. It holds so much magic in it. Much like enchanting, spellbinding, enthralling… yet it likely derives from the word trance and watching water can certainly induce a lovely trance-like state of wonder. I have a feeling Silvia Heyden felt this way about her beloved Eno River whenever she walked there.