Tien Chiu

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More design sketches

The last week got eaten up by preparations for my Black Friday sale, but now that that’s almost done, I’m back to work on “Seasons of Creativity”!

I’ve been experimenting with some sketches in Photoshop. I tried some sketches with the leaf motif, starting with this one.

“Seasons of Creativity,” sketch #1

There were a couple concepts behind this sketch. The bottom left represented the dying leaves of autumn, followed by the blue of winter, and then the resurgence of creativity in the spring, leading to a burst of free ideas (represented by the flying leaves and the explosion of non-leafy colors). I was thinking I could also make the leaves three-dimensional, weaving them with a silk/stainless steel weft (or some other stiff weft) in a double weave structure, stitched in a single layer down the center of the leaf stem, and then cutting them free from the backing layer in strategic areas. That would be fun!

I didn’t like the sketch, though. The flying leaves felt too constrained, the brown and blue felt uninteresting, and I didn’t like the progression from bottom left to top right, and…well, lots of “ands”.

I went back to the previous sketch, which I liked a lot better:

Why did I like it better?

I thought about it and decided that I liked the sense of freedom in the leaves in this sketch. In the other sketch, I had eliminated all the overlapping leaves, and shaped the flow of the leaves fairly tightly, sending them upward (which is against the natural downward flow of a falling leaf). The result felt stilted and stiff.

The leaves in this sketch, on the other hand, were floating down freely, playfully, and felt much more open.

But there was no tension in the image, no sense of progress. It needed something to give it tension. What?

Now, my friend Osnat had suggested using butterflies instead of leaves for the original sketch, because butterflies and creativity, right?

I had felt that was too cliched to use.

But…what about leaves falling, dying, transforming into butterflies, and flying off?

"Seasons of Creativity" design sketch for my next piece

I like this idea!

It’s still just a concept sketch, but I think this one has a good bit of meat to it. There are two concepts layered in here. The first is the idea of the natural cycle of birth/death, applied to creativity and creative projects. The completion of a project on the left, followed by a fallow resting phase (possibly with a bit of moping and depression, which usually happens to me for a few weeks between major projects), followed by flights of fancy as a new project takes form.

The second concept is the evolution of ideas. On the left, fairly staid, stable ideas – leaves in autumn, the natural world, things that have been going on for millions of years. Those ideas fall into the mind, compost, cocoon, and emerge as free, fanciful, colorful ideas that flutter off and create new things. (Okay, butterflies are still kind of cliched, but work with me here, OK? 🙂 )

Technically, this could be created with two or three painted wefts. I’m tempted to use a thicker thread that is wrapped with metallic glitter, or to use a carryalong metallic thread, to make the butterflies glimmer.

There is still quite a bit of work to do to arrive at a final sketch, let along a workable, weavable file. Also, I’ll have to drag the knitting machine out of the closet and knit some knitted-blank samples for dyeing…lots to do!

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“Seasons of Creativity”

I’ve been dreaming up new ideas over the past few days. None of them seemed particularly worth exploring, until I got to this one:

falling leaves

This is just an initial sketch, but I like the basic thesis. The theme is the changing seasons, represented by light blue for winter, light green for spring, darker green for the mature leaves of summer, and orange/brown for autumn. The variety of colors comes from three different painted/color gradated wefts; each leaf is woven with one of the three painted wefts and so there are three different color gradations in the piece.

(Why painted wefts and not painted warps? Because the warp is already on the loom, and it’s black. Not much room for messing around there.)

It’s a little hard to visualize the subtle differences in color gradations, so I did an illustrative mockup in rainbow colors to show an exaggerated version of the color gradations:

Here the color gradation is exactly the same but each set of leaves is at a different place in the gradation, so the differing colors are much more obvious.

This sketch is just a starting-point. From here I’m playing with a bunch of ideas/questions. The biggest one is, “What is the essence of this design, the central theme that I want to build this piece around?” Because the answer to that question determines how I answer most of the other questions I have, many of which are basically technical, either in design or execution.

(Examples of the technical questions are, “Can I work texture into this?” and “Do I want to use detail in it, such as shading the leaves realistically using 8-end satins, or should I keep the leaves abstract?”)

I think, tentatively, that the answer to the theme question is that the design has a sense of playfulness, freedom, and change – I actually like the rainbow version better than the autumn colors version, as it feels less constrained.

Revisiting the Convergence theme statement,

Exploration of outside influences, changes in environment, harmony with nature, and the rhythm of natural cycles inspire the work for this mixed media fiber arts exhibit.

I wonder if the theme for this piece might be something like “Seasons of Creativity” and the analogy might be between the cycle of a creative project and the cycle of the natural seasons? I find that when I take on a major project, there is a natural beginning, spring growth, maturity, ripening/harvest, and then a resting phase before the next project starts again. So perhaps there is a theme to be found there. It may not be the theme for this project and these falling leaves, but it seems like a meaty theme, and a good starting-place for new work.

If so, the leaves might be a piece unto themselves, and also the first of four pieces, “Spring,” full of creative freedom and possibility.

Food for thought!

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Some thoughts for new work

I’m starting to think about my next piece. Show season is coming up, and I need some work to submit for Convergence (deadline February 5, 2020) and Complexity (deadline March 15, 2020). Because those shows run concurrently, they need to be two separate pieces.

I also need to produce a new piece for the Complex Weavers Designing Fabrics Study Group, whose theme this year is “Texture”. My article isn’t due until October, but given how busy my schedule has been, better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later.

I looked at the prospectuses for the exhibit for constraints, which can be a source of inspiration. Complexity doesn’t have any constraints except for size, but the Symphony of the Mountains Mixed Media Exhibit had some interesting guidelines around themes:

Exploration of outside influences, changes in environment, harmony with nature, and the rhythm of natural cycles inspire the work for this mixed media fiber arts exhibit.

In addition, looking at the Designing Fabrics Study Group page on the Texture topic yielded (among other things) this intriguing snippet:

What then to do about color?

….Create a multi-dimensional experience: visuals showing one design, tactile another.

This raises an intriguing possibility: woven shibori to create crinkly texture (like a topographic map of the mountains?), combined with two painted wefts that gradually change colors along the length of the piece to give the impression of changing seasons. Combined with some sort of imagery, perhaps, though I don’t know what yet. Or I might just make it abstract – woven shibori provides enough patterning that adding more patterning on top of that might tip the whole thing into chaos.

Conceptually, not entirely unlike the work of Itchiku Kubota (below), except very, very different, and not nearly as complex or masterful. This is a simple, early exploration, not a masterwork.

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Grace is ready to go!!

It’s been a looooong time since I wove anything on Grace. Four and a half years, I think, since Bipolar Prison came off the loom. After that I rethreaded, wove some samples for a project that never came to fruition, and then gave up. And poor Grace just sat there for several years, because I was starting a business and didn’t have the time or the emotional energy to face rethreading AGAIN.

Then Ricki appeared, like manna in the wilderness, asking if anyone had a TC-2 and was willing to teach them how to design for and weave on a TC-2 in exchange for studio assistance. Hot dog! A deal was struck and we were both in business. Ricki threaded up Grace, working over the course of many months. Then we slowly worked our way through a number of mechanical issues, culminating in my shipping module #8 off to Norway for inspection and repair. (Each module controls one set of 220 threads. Grace has 12 modules, Maryam has 4.) The wonderful folks at Tronrud Engineering got it fixed and winging its way back to me in just one day (how’s that for service???). It should arrive on Friday.

Meanwhile, however, I have four extra modules – on Maryam. It turns out that modules are interchangeable between the two looms, so while Grace’s module #8 was off for repair, I simply swapped in one of Maryam’s modules, and everything is working fine! So I have been spending small snippets of time here and there fixing broken threads, crossed threads, and mis-sleyings. I’m not 100% done, but I’m pretty close.

This is what Grace is weaving now:

Debugging fabric pattern on Grace

This is nothing particularly exciting, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a 2/2 twill, double weave, in 20/2 cotton, black warp, white weft. Its sole purpose is to be so regular and boring that any irregularity, like a missing thread or a thread that isn’t lifting correctly, will be glaringly obvious. I’m doing double weave because the cloth is sett at 90 ends per inch, and if I tried doing a single layer twill the cloth would be too dense to make out individual threads. So I’m weaving and inspecting one layer at 45 ends per inch, and then I’m bringing the bottom layer to the top, and weaving/inspecting it. This allows me to inspect all the threads, just in two batches rather than all at once.

With the exception of about eight threads, this whole debugging process is now complete, so Grace is ready to go. Dave and I are still figuring out velvet equipment, so I’ll probably start with some non-velvet pieces, just so I have something to show at conferences this year. I have some ideas for new work that I will talk about in upcoming blog posts.

And Maryam? We have gotten her talking to the laptop but not to her modules (yet). In anticipation of getting her working, I’ve dyed the first warp for her. I’m putting it on in 10/2 cotton, at 60 ends (threads) per inch. That is double the usual thread density for the fabric I’m planning to weave, but it’s okay – I’m planning to weave two layers of fabric at once, one on top of the other, so it works out perfectly.

Why am I doing that?

Because I’m a masochist, duh. (You didn’t know that yet?)

No, really. It’s because I want to monkey around with things like stripes of color in the warp, and with some structures that require alternating colors in the warp (shadow weave, double weave). If I were weaving with a single layer of warp on a conventional loom, the only way to do that would be to put on a new warp for every sample I wanted to weave, or at least unthread, rethread, and hang off the back of the loom every thread I wanted to change. Pain in the butt.

If, however, I have TWO layers of warp, one in color A and one in Color B, and my mighty loom controls each thread individually, I can just tell the loom, “Okay, put this stripe pattern of Color A in the top layer, and make the rest of the top-layer threads Color B. Put everything else in the bottom layer.” BOOM! Done.

And then, if I want to change to a different stripe pattern, I can just tell the loom what new stripe pattern to use, putting the colors I want on the top layer and dumping all the colors I don’t want into the bottom layer. On the fly. According to my all-powerful whim. Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

(Why yes, I am easily entertained. And no, I don’t get out much. Why do you ask?)

Here’s the warp:

Painted warp for Maryam
First warp for Maryam

It’s mostly in very boring solid colors, but that’s because I plan to do extensive sampling in different weave structures, stripes, and weft colors. All of which I can do, thanks to Maryam’s incredible powers, more or less instantly. Weavers will understand just how miraculous that is!! She really is a magical loom.

All of this, sadly, is going to have to wait some time. My stepfather, George Birnbaum, has unexpectedly passed away, and I’m flying to the East Coast for his memorial service this weekend. I miss him, and I wish I’d gotten a chance to say goodbye.

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Upgrading Maryam

We’re still working on getting Maryam talking to my laptop. It turns out she needs the controller card replaced, which means changing out the back beam because the strain gauge built into the back beam, which controls the warp tension, is not compatible with the latest generation of controller cards. (Maryam is one of the early-model TC-2 jacquard looms, and many design changes have taken place since.)

I’ve ordered the parts (Tronrud generously offered a discount on them, which was nice of them!), along with a kit for upgrading the beater and some small replacement parts. Shipping from Norway is so expensive that if a package is to be shipped, I want to pack as much as possible into the package!

Dave (the electromechanical wizard who put together the loom) also came by yesterday to discuss some changes to the vacuum tube pumps and wiring. We want to try wiring up both vacuum pumps to Grace in an effort to give her more thread-lifting oomph. At the moment, she has a tendency to leave some threads down when opening a shed, and we think that’s because she is right up at the maximum number of modules they recommend for a single pump – 12 modules. So she may not be outputting enough vacuum to pull up threads that have more friction. Attaching a second vacuum pump might help with that.

Of course, attaching a second vacuum pump creates some logistical problems. For example, now we need to run two vacuum pumps at once, which means putting in a second 220-volt electrical circuit to the garage. It also means wiring both pumps up to Grace AND one pump up to Maryam, and figuring out how to flip switches appropriately. And it means figuring out a system of hoses and valves such that two pumps’ worth of vacuum attach to Grace and one pump’s worth attach to Maryam, but not at the same time.

None of which are impossible, but which I’d have to do a LOT of digging to figure out, as I am not electromechanically inclined. So I am grateful for having both a spouse and a friend who understands these things.

Dave came over yesterday to discuss all this and to sketch out the design for the hoses, valves, and wiring, so I grabbed the opportunity to take a proper photo of the two of us with Grace and Maryam:

Tien, Dave, and the two TC-2 jacquard looms, Grace and Maryam
Tien, Dave, Grace, and Maryam

The delay in starting up Maryam isn’t really going to delay my weaving on her, though. It will take about a week to get parts from Tronrud and get them installed, but that’s fine – it will take me that long to prepare the warp to go onto her, anyway. I’m going to do a pretty complicated pair of warps to go onto her, which I will talk about in my next blog post.

The warps are for the painted warp class I’m developing for 2020. I bought Maryam because I can develop my color samples infinitely more efficiently on her – I can change weave structures and color striping very quickly using her ability to control each thread individually – and I’m very excited to see what our future will bring.