eine Saite

A rainbow halo around the sun, over the Pacific Ocean at Kalaloch. Here, because somehow I need to share it, and the focus of my wonder keeps shifting like this, from the vast and epic to the miniature and daily - expanding and shrinking, but continuously stimulating wonder and amazement. (And I saw another one again today while composing this post, a rainbow halo around the sun, following a rain storm on an otherwise warm and sunny day.)

Gathering promise from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ *Undrowned* and Lola Olufemi’s *Experiments in Imagining Otherwise*

A glimpse of the table. (Handspun continuous cord from cat’s cradle textiles, a bit of fiber magic)

Daily practice of writing, reading, painting, sitting and watching carries on. Interactions of poetry, paper, paint, birdsong, water, weather, war, wisdom and the lack of it, wrangled through arrangements of objects, words, and thoughts.

I’m reading Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home, a rich, indulgent tome of her brilliance and insight. So much resonance with the backwards-headed people, for those who know this work! I don’t have the capacity to get into it, really - the post title was a working title, but I like it so much I’m just going to leave it at that, with hopes of revisiting the LeGuin when I can be coherent. Let your own mind make the necessary connections in the meantime…

Having cooked two more stitched salvage sketchbooks with onion skins, I once again took an indulgent number of photos while opening them up. The unrolling is the most exciting part, because the colors are most saturated when wet. Each segment has its own serendipitous story to tell, and the unexpectedness of it makes each book a thrill (as I’ve mentioned before). Above and below are all unrolling images from the same two stitched books, as I gloried in the effects, both bright and subtle.

Spiraled to dry in my studio, they look like like a huge rose, and I hate to even move or fold them….

The books, these stitched rolls of paper that are colored and folded and written and painted, keep shifting and growing, in the manner of lichens: multi-textured, slow, subject to weather, force, accident…. One thing I love is the way paper changes when it gets wet, and the way these books can accept water, unlike most books. The texture will change, and things may get very blurry or mushy or require reinforcement, but that’s part of the never-ending assembly project that they are.

The focus on slow growth in silence and solitude is my way of being with the world right now. With offerings of awareness and acknowledgement to Arab women and everything being asked of them. It’s a couple of years old, but I’ve just seen a video highlighting Bedouin women, which features an interview with my weaving mentor from Doha. I knew her as Umm Hamad, but she introduces herself as Noura Hamed Salem Shehayeb in this film. It’s wonderful to hear her stories - we did not have enough language in common for me to hear them when I was there.

Working on a handwoven camel halter in Souq Waqif, Doha, Qatar, 2011

I believe the film accompanied an exhibit at the Qatar National Museum:

Qatar Museums film Woman on the Move

And another beautiful Arab woman whose work I know and admire was interviewed here (Instagram link - the Lebanese film maker’s profile on Vimeo is here). Widad Kuwar’s Tiraz home for Arab dress has been much on my mind, given the continuing destruction of Palestine. Memories of visiting Jordan and seeing the bounty of textiles ten years ago…. there was definitely a sense of needing to preserve and hold the knowledge, history, and beauty of these things, but it did not feel as desperate as now. Nothing from a few years ago feels as desperate as now - is that the right word? It’s a feeling of having the wind knocked out of me, a kind of continuous shock, where it’s impossible to accommodate the understanding of what is actually happening.

But, given that I have the unutterable privilege of peace, home, food, love, and solitude, I make use of it to grow on behalf of all of us, and as I wrote at the beginning of some time alone in February, “The details of things gather around me like patient friends, offering supportive gestures in their mute beauty.”

There were many beautiful and impressive things about the Traditional Textile Craft: An Intangible Heritage conference in Amman in April, 2014. But the most beautiful and impressive were the various women who are dedicating themselves to textiles through research, preservation, support of craftspeople, and the pure enthusiasm and love that goes along with such work.

We were very fortunate to be able to visit Widad Kawar's costume and textile collection at the new home she has created, called Tiraz: a home for Arab dress. Even more fortunate was her participation in the conference, her invaluable presence in this group of textile scholars and enthusiasts. She gave one of the opening talks, in which she explained that she didn't start out intending to collect, but things started happening, and "the more things happened around me, the more I collected." Poignant words from a woman who grew up in Palestine.

Widad also emphasized the importance of documentation, that the collection must be accompanied by as much information as possible. In her case, she conducted extensive interviews with people who created and wore the types of garments in her collection, gathering stories and historical facts. The wealth of knowledge represented by her textiles is awe-inspiring, and international groups and students work with her to help register and retain this priceless store of culture.

Widad is a joy to be around, constantly discussing textile traditions and practices, and eagerly examining any new textile that comes her way, whether in the slide presentations of the conference or worn by the participants (all of whom were usually wearing something interesting and handmade.)

Widad Kamar explains the use of the hanging basket for storing embroidery in progress, showing a wooden bobbin with unspun silk threads from inside the basket. — Widad Kawar explains the use of the hanging basket for storing embroidery in progress, showing a wooden bobbin with unspun silk threads from inside the basket.

Traditional gift from a woman to her betrothed: an embroidered pouch to keep his tobacco and rolling papers.

During our visit to Tiraz, we were also treated to the collection of Layla Pio, an Iraqi woman with deep knowledge of the textiles of her country. She gave us a tour through the examples she had on display, including the Samawah kilim she is showing here, a woolen twill weave with dense chain stitch embroidery. I see these in the souq in Doha often.

Another woman by the name of Laila Tyabji, resplendent each day in different hand-crafted saris, runs a wonderful organization known as Dastkar. She gave an inspiring talk about her work, illustrated with so many beautiful images from India that I wanted her to just keep talking and show them all slowly. Craftspeople in the most difficult of circumstances, but given strength by their skills and traditional knowledge. Laila noted that it was craftspeople who recovered more quickly, after the massive earthquake in Bhuj, than other livelihoods. She said that when the skills exist, it takes very little to revitalize a craft tradition, and she gave delightful examples of the ingenuity and creative involvement of the craftspeople, when they are given the chance to participate in the design. Her work carries so much insight into the process of supporting traditional craft, insight that she has developed through myriad ongoing interactions and observations of what is successful and what is not. Overall, her conclusions were quite encouraging and affirmed that the living tradition simply needs to be allowed to function, in the way the people have learned and taught for centuries, and that this can be a very resilient system that need not be threatened by modern consumerism.

Laila Tyabji blends in with the textile glory in a completely hand-embroidered sari.

Until I have time to write more, I include some more details of this over-saturated week.

le guin onion skin all of a piece

Jordan textile conference