Beth Emmott | artist

Weaving on the Road…

June 28th, 2018

Off to Virginia to stay with Fletcher and Cooper while their parents were away and I took my Hokett Loom, yarns and design materials. I knew the boys would have their noses in the World Cup and I would have time to indulge in weaving.

I pack my weaving supplies in translucent bags that all fit into a larger bag. One for my Hokett with the tray I use it on, one for a selection of yarns and one for little bits of equipment. My design supplies go in a small shoulder bag with watercolors, sketchbooks etc. With these two bags I could set up a little studio space and was set!

Got out my sketchbook and watercolors and came up with my design. I’ve been sketching trees and leaves lately so decided on stylized leaves. Next to warp my little loom and prepare my weft yarns. I did bring the little spinner thing that I got from Rebecca Mezoff to un ply my Harrisville yarns. BUT… my design called for black and I forgot that while I needed to un ply the blue and green yarn, I needed to double the black and didn’t bring enough… You can see where I ran out of black yarn in the image above!!! Always something!!!!

I did have more black at home and was able to finish!!! So all is well with one part of my world, at least…

Playing with Food!

June 10th, 2018

Moore College of Art reunion yesterday – brunch in the am – workshops in the afternoon…and the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Awards presentation, (my friend and former student Harshia Lohia received an award as did Janice Merendino) followed by the Alumni Exhibition Opening in the evening.

I signed up for “Art Forms in Nature” workshop lead by Karen Fuchs which I thought was going to be drawing but instead was a discussion of forms and patterns found in nature followed by stamping designs with supplied food – cut lemons, garlic, cabbage, etc. – Pretty basic stuff but we had a lot of fun. Here are some of my results:

‘Twas fun!

Abstraction workshop

May 23rd, 2018

Decided I needed to get back to painting and to try a new direction. Val Rossman‘s course, “Exploring Abstraction” at Woodmere was just the kick I needed. She let’s members use what ever media they wish and encourages each to explore their own path. I decided that since abstraction was out of my comfort zone, why not go all the way and explore new media. Sooo…, the first three weeks I worked in pastels and the second in acrylics. Also, since I tend to be a low chroma gal I thought I’d push color. Here are 3 of my first pastels:

All my professional life has been about telling stories. Now there is no story. Just paint what I am feeling. I work fairly fast, before I can think about things – ideas – content… and then once something is there I consider composition etc. I’ve used scratching, glazing, thick medium. I usually gesso the support first in colored gesso and then paint over it.

The last three weeks I decided to work with acrylics and here are some of them:

Once I get over the feeling of being cut loose with out any plans etc, this is rather fun! Some of these images may be finished and some may get more work. The more I do, the more I learn, the less I know, but, I do feel they do have voices. I just have to learn to listen. I have one more class to go. Then I plan to add this new way of working/thinking to my previous work. We’ll see.

Sketching Tulips

April 6th, 2018

Been tied up with weaving for a while and felt I needed to get back to sketching. These tulips (from a super market, not my garden) were on their last legs (stems) and I loved their nearly spent – never give up enthusiasm.

Watercolor and ink

Dyeing Tests

April 1st, 2018

I have been exploring natural dyes with my Harrisville Koehler Yarn to use in mixed bundles for my tapestry. These small balls were dyed with madder, and iron & black tea.

Samples of dyeing with madder, and with rusty iron and tea

The one on the upper right is just iron and tea in a jar left to set for days. The others use madder from a plant I grew and harvested years ago. The top left ball is pre mordanted with alum and a bit of cream of tarter – the lower left was a mixture of iron, tea, and madder all together, the lower right was pre mordanted with alum, then soaked in the just the tea/iron mix for days and then into the madder dye overnight.

I’m not going for exact dye recipes as I did years ago but rather letting the magic take me where it does. And it is magic!!!

First Real Tapestry

March 22nd, 2018

Well, I’ve taken the little looms class and attended the little looms workshop in the mountains of Colorado- both with Rebecca Mezoff. I’ve done a number of small tapestries on my Hokett looms and felt I knew what I was doing enough to sign up for the Unjuried Small Format Tapestry Exhibition through the American Tapestry Alliance. I worked on my design, did some samples on my 8 epi Hokett and ordered yarns from Harrisville. I thought I had simplified my design and thought Harrisville would be good as I do know I’m a beginner. WELL, the real world works to keep me humble. I still like my design, but should have explored more ways to do the veins in the leaves. There are slits all over the place to the point of making it unstable. I’ll try stitching them but…

Anyway, here’s my process – I do still like my design and will rework it after I pick my self up… I may do a series – I like the simple concept of friendship and nature. I call this one, “Have a Cup of Tea with Me”.

I had a watercolor sketch that I had done of leaves in a jar and liked it’s spring like quality and colors. I selected my colors based on it and ordered them – it was exciting when they arrived!!! Much of my work is with low chroma colors so these bright hues were a big deal for me!

I knew the watercolor was beyond my abilities as this was my first real tapestry so I redrew it, cropping in and eventually cropped in a lot more. I wanted this to be a friendly, cosy, spring like design, so the jar changed to the suggestion of a cup of tea. I then scanned the color sketch and redrew it in Illustrator to flatten it and to simplify it even more. Once sized, that became my cartoon.

I made samples. First, testing how yarns could mix to extend the colors I have, then adjusting the values of the greens to get the feeling of the tea cup under the leaves and finally exploring various angles I could achieve. I considered weaving this side ways, and perhaps I should have but I thought I could get away with a vertical design as I wanted the texture to be vertical and not horizontal.

Finally I got started. I had warped my new loom when I got it to make sure I understood how. I didn’t use the shedding device as I used my fingers and it doesn’t seem to make a very large shed anyway. Also when I attached the cartoon to the back it made the shedding device unusable. I attached it with some bag clips from my kitchen – need to research how others do this. I re did section after section as I began to understand how the weft packed down – think I might be packing too hard??? My main problem was the vein lines in the leaves. My original design didn’t have them but I felt they were important to describe the leaves. I tried different blues (limited to the blues I have) and eccentric lines, and wrapping a single warp yarn. I ended up using anything that seemed to work – resulting is a fabric with too many slits. I thought I could stitch the slits but there is a problem with the wrapped warps – perhaps if I had stitched as I went along…but I didn’t. When it lies flat the problem doesn’t show but when I took it off the loom…

So, I have a lot to learn and I learned a lot.