Past Events • 9-11 Memorial Tapestry
Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Project
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Current Activities 9-11 Memorial Tapestry Many tapestry weavers from around the world are weaving a piece for a 911 Memorial Tapestry. The idea is spearheaded by Monique Lehman and is beautifully expressed on her website at http://www.tapestryart.org/MemorialTapestry/english.htm. You can see the submissions from others here too as she posts them. She will mount the works together into one long wide banner and it will be exhibited in the U.S. and around the world. The exhibition schedule is as follows: Kansas City during the Surface Design Conference, June 2003; at the show of Tapestry Weavers West in Santa Rosa, California, July & August; Pasadena City Hall, California, September; Florence, Italy to be part of Bienniale Internazionale dell'arte Contemporanea http://www.artestudio.net/casa1.htm December; Warsaw, Poland and during the Trienniale 11 of tapestry in Lodz, Poland http://www.muzeumwlokiennictwa.pl/indexe.html; and during Handweavers Guild of America Convergence, Denver, July 2004. There will be a catalog available and plans are underway to do a documentary on the making of the memorial. Janet Ducote Writes on Her Participation: My son Justin, and I created our piece together-he was the artist and I the concept designer and weaver. I considered many ideas of what to weave, but none felt right. (Those ideas centered around my personal experience that day.) Exhausted and almost giving up, I began searching outside myself and then I recalled my feelings for Justin's playmate at nursery school-he was so young and lost a precious parent. With Justin's help, I knew this was what our tapestry should be about-our good wishes for one small boy who must live with his terrible loss everyday. In order to protect the boys at this age, I purposefully chose a non-tragic image and wording. Justin drew himself and his friend and the words--a child's picture and a child's sentiment. The adult level of emotion is in the title. It can be read to the boys when they are ready, or they will read it for themselves when they are older. I still cannot bring myself to tell Justin what happened to his friends father, although he does know that he lost him and that this was a special nice thing to do for his friend.
Concept Designer, Weaver: Janet Ducote Title: Dedicated to FS, Justin's Playmate At Nursery School, Who Lost His Father on Their First Day of Class, 9-11-2001. Date: 2003 Technique: High warp tapestry Size: 10" x 10", to be mounted into one large banner Warp: Cotton Weft: Wool, cotton EPI: 6 & 12 back to top Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Project The New York Guild of Handweavers is currently working with The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum in setting up a textile study program for their school visits. It has been a year in development and we recently made a significant break through.
When Darby Downey and Terry Henley did get there they found something neither had ever seen. It was a Harris Loom about thirty-six inches wide with an absolute tangle of old linen tie-up cords and improvised other things. It had a warp on it which looked as though it had been abused by some rather naughty children. It could not weave. But Darby and Terry did not dispair. They tinkered with it, crawled around on the floor a lot and did a lot of head scratching. It looked to be a counter-march loom and it needed a lot of work. They decided to try and replace all the old linen cord (they must have been original with the loom) with texolve and arrow pegs. But that meant another visit. So supplies were ordered and another attempt to get it running was made. No go! It was just too tricky. They even called our resident loom expert, Myra Dorman to see if she could help over the phone. She could but still the cause seemed helpless. We agreed to go home and think about it some more.
A lot of scrubbing and polish later payed off. They had a terrific looking loom. The question was would it weave. Darby and Terry were called again to check it out. What they found was a forty-eight inch LeClerc "Fanny" Counter Balance Loom. It was missing a few things but it looked like it could work. They used the texsolve that they got for the Harris loom to tie it up in a 2/2 twill. They cut a quick warp out of carpet warp, baemed it on, threaded the heddles in straight draw and sleyed it and tied it on to the cloth beam. And, Hurrah, it weaves! The Curator, Laura Chmielewski, was thrilled. She sat at the loom for a while and wove about six inches before Terry and Darby left. She later told us that she could hardly break away (we've got another fiber junkie hooked!).
If you would like to find out more about Dyckman Farmhouse Museum go to their website at: http://www.dyckman.org. back to top |
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