November 1st - 5th there is the annual Art and Craft Fair in Reykjavik. This year I applied and have been granted a stand. I will take my Rag Rugs along and see if I can charm the visitors :) If you want to see more about the fair I think the best option is to look at their website . There is a lot to prepare for such an event. Not just the pieces but also pictures, chair, table ( how high, how wide etc?), brochure or not, visiting card what size and so on. This also forces me to scrutinize myself, how I present myself and my work. I am very lucky to have a friend who will aid me with these arrangements. Her name is Þuríður Helga Jónasdóttir, she is an interior architect and she has a website . Her website is in Icelandic but if you press on the different options on the index bar you will see pictures and they describe what she is doing. This picture on the left might be one of the pics that I will show at my stand at the fair. This is myself weaving. I think I have succeeded with an autumn piece. Look. I set it up in the garden with the grass that is still green and the leaves of the birches that are the colours I was looking for. Also the colours are in the blueberry bushes that I told you about before. The spring piece is also out of the loom, blue and cool with the faint colours of the spring life contemplating getting out of the winter slumber into the embrace of the sun. I am pleased. I hope it doesn't sound like bragging, I hope it sounds like being simply pleased with many days thinking, toiling, wondering, hesitating and making decisions. Being a creator. If you look further down this blog you can see photographs I made during a spring hike that was the inspiration for the spring piece. The blue of the sky and faint colours of the earth and plants. The decision being made
the dice is thrown the rags will be assembled starting the task of beating the rugs in the loom into being I have finished the spring piece. I finished it tonight and celebrated with a wee dram of a splendid whiskey. It is till in the loom though. Three meters to go and there is another piece cooking in my head. I had been stuck in the work but during the goat visit I found the solution.
I was weaving yesterday until late about eleven pm. I could hear the blackbird had started it's song sitting in one neighbour's spruce so I decided to take a short walk before I went to bed after a successful day at the loom. I have been falling asleep listening to that black bird for a few nights. All through my 15 minute walk I could hear the blackbird singing, It was fabulous and the evening was so still and mysterious and nobody was about but the blackbird and other birds singing their hearts out and a grey striped cat that I met. When I got back and set my alarm clock it was 2.30 am!! I had only guessed the time when I went out. These bright summer nights confuse the mind and are intoxicating. A marvellous drug, summer nights. During the weaving of these two days I have been listening to an audio book that I would never had chosen to read but as there is a limited amount of audio books in my favourite library in Reykjavik I take what I find, start listening and if I can't stand it I turn it off. This book is called Hotel on the the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Marvellous book. It introduced me to the evacuation and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during world war two but also was the story of love and loyalty. This is a picture taken by Stéphanie Morissette, a fellow artist living in Montréal. She photographed me at the loom in 2002, when we both had residency in the art centre Straumur in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland. I was weaving the piece "A proposal for a new coat of arms for the republic Iceland." Stéphanie was drawing, animations. She makes great political animations. You can have a look at her website .
The weaving is in a bit of standstill today. Need to solve a small problem concerning how I am going to let one blue turn into another one. The weaving proceeds slowly but that is the way. Sometimes I have to take a brake to observe and of course, to think. There are various things that help the thinking like talking to the neighbours cat or to observe plants and the sky. I mean these things help the clogged thought to disintegrate and new thoughts to emerge and solve the problem that lurks in the loom. Lurks in the loom. I wonder what the readers of this blog think when they get this glimpse of my own loom-universe. Is it weird?
Það fyrirfinnast litir í hinu föla vori sem eru bjartir og sterkir eins og gulvíðirinn. Ekki skrýtið að hann heiti gulvíðir. Og blár litur himinsins eins og var á myndinni sem ég sett inn í gær. ég er byrjuð að vefa verkið. 10 cm komnir, heils dags vinna. Þetta gengur hægt fyrir sig en mér líður vel í vefstóls veröld minni.
There are items in the bleak spring that are bursting with colour like the tea-leaved-willow. It's name is yellow willow in Icelandic, no wonder. Another strong colour in contrast to the faded ones is the blue sky. As was in the pic I posted yesterday. I've started weaving the piece of the spring colours. 10 cm, a whole days work. The procedure is slow, but I love that universe of mine in the loom I am thinking. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I am thinking of the weft. I am thinking of the colours I collected two days ago when I went hiking. I have been cutting rags and thinking. I am getting there. The warp is empty and the mind is full of the spring colours, the bleak spring colours of Iceland. I will fill the warp with the spring colours.
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AuthorAnna María Lind, MA Textile Art Winchester School of Art. Archives
March 2024
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