The 6pm Pre-Meeting:
This virtual event TBA

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If you have an idea or suggestion for a future upcoming pre-meeting program contact
Marguerite Wolfe to discuss your presentation and available dates.

Upcoming Meetings:

February 21: Mikayla Patton, paper art, beading
March 20: Barbara Shapiro, indigo and baskets
April 17: TBD
May 15: Joell Baxter, printed & woven paper installations
June 19: Members’ Work
July 17: Carole Beadle, fiber sculpture

VIRTUAL MEETING
JULIA BLAND
Weaver
JANUARY 17, 2024 aT 7PM
Member Registration
Guest Registration

“Painting and weaving are two kinds of binding: the warp to the weft, and the image to the object.  My materials work as a lexicon.  Canvas, linen, wool, dye, ink, and oil paint each have their own qualities, processes, and histories.  When canvas is pulled apart it becomes threads; when it is twisted together it becomes ropes.  The distinctions are directions; they are syncopated memories of something whole.

I weave the fabrics I use on a handloom.  I prime and paint, tear and twist.  I push needles through rough bundles, sewing layers of silk to their edges.  I cook Belgian linen, wool, an old dress, a sheet, all together in the same red dye.  I wash and iron, cut and sew.  The materials mimic each other as a form of recognition.  The distinctions develop in the context of this intimacy, like a baby mimicking the shape of her mothers’ mouth, or like the organs of a body all animated by the same blood.

The work is very large and very small at the same time.  I am satisfied when the relationship in scale between the tiny threads and the large overall forms is understood in the mind, but cannot be physically observed all at once. As I work I am concerned with the edges, the boundaries, when one thing becomes another, and then is suddenly beyond reach.  The process is cyclical in that after a certain point of making and combining the materials I start unmaking and dividing them.  This also happens naturally, like the way repairing something repeatedly suddenly destroys it.

The images and patterns emerge from the structure, my body, from use and reuse; like the way a memory becomes a story, through unconscious sifting and longing.  I want the surfaces to be like the skin of an animal, to protect and reveal, to seduce and repel, like eyes painted on the wings of a moth.  When does red me predator, and when does it mean prey?   When does an appearance communicate an interior and when does it disguise one?  Illusion has two sides, like a surface, front and back.  The meaning is layered and keeps layering, discovering its own permutations in another process or weight.   

 The boundaries formed by the ropes, cuts, and seams embedded within my surfaces are made, like the boundaries that surround us in our daily lives, out of the differences, desires, and negotiations of the entities they bind.  There are moments of resonance, and moments of hardening.  Then the questions become: Who made this?  What makes something yours or mine?  Whose fault is it?  How do we live alone?  How do we live together?  Weaving makes visible the different ways human beings ask and answer our own questions about ourselves.  How we are tied together, truth unravels, lives intertwine, cut it out, etc.  A few threads are pulled from the edges of a loose knot.  This is how the center tightens, leaving the single strands of desire lashing in the dream of union.”

- Julia Bland