Tag: contemporary fiber art

January 25, 2025

Portraits in 2025

While 2024 was a year for making fiber vessels, 2025 is quickly turning into the Year of Fiber Art Portraits!

By the way, if you’re new here, welcome. This isn’t just the first post of 2025, it’s the first post I’ve made in six months! I’ll try to be better, but to see what I’m up to on a daily basis, see my Instagram page. (For now; that could change, but I’ll let you know.)

Stitched portrait — Mid-project: Stitching up my mom.

Back to the portraits at hand. Last year, the Adobe Wool Arts Guild here in Albuquerque, began planning to host a 3-day workshop with Tammy Pavich for 2025. If you’re a hooker, you probably know of her. My favorite book of hers is HERE. We’re in the midst of full-out planning for the class right now, in fact, as it’ll happen in March. The topic? Impressionistic portraits. I’m still debating what to do: Bowyn? Tom? A selfie? Gotta get my sh*t together and let her know ASAP!

Meanwhile, In the Studio Online’s Workshop Week 2025 looms in less than two weeks from today. Yay! While I’m not teaching a class this year, I am the administrator of the school. Yes, there’s still plenty of work ahead of me making sure it all goes well. And, yes, there’s still time for you to register. Find the info HERE. As administrator, I can attend the classes and talks. Guess what Wendie Scott-Davis, instructor extraordinaire, is teaching? How about Creating a Value-Based Portrait from a Photograph. Yep, another hooked portrait! Again, to feature Tom or the dog???

BTW, Wendie’s opened a second session of that initially sold-out class for Saturday, March 8. Again, see the link above.

A couple of weeks ago, TextileArtist ran a free online workshop. I try to avail myself to all of their free classes when they happen. They’re that good. In fact, if I had more time and wasn’t soooo into rug hooking, I’d join their Stitch Club in a heartbeat. But I digress. The free workshop: Get Started with Stitched Portraits with Susie Vickery. Yep, more portraits, albeit stitched, not hooked. While I haven’t finished that project yet, I decided to do my mother. Sadly, she’s falling further into aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. I’m trying to grab what I can of her now. But it’s hard with her living back east in Connecticut and me here in the desert.

Lest you think I couldn’t find any more portraiture opportunities, you would be wrong. Most mornings I do yoga and various forms of PT (that ankle reconstruction last year really did a number on my whole lower body) to YouTube before I ever leave my bedroom. Want to know what showed up in my feed four days ago? The ladies of the Expressive Stitch Collective: Liz Bessel and Hayley Perry. If you haven’t tuned into them, you really should.

Hooked art, "Bowyn's Mule" — “Bowyn’s Mule” was hooked and sold last year. (21.5″x12″; hooked with repurposed textiles and wools on Scottish burlap)

While both are accomplished artists and teachers, they like to try new things and invite us to go along with them. Find their YouTube channel HERE. BTW, Hayley’s taught for In the Studio Online before and Liz will be participating in WW2025!

Anywho, the Expressive Stitch Collective is just beginning their first challenge of the year. Wild guess on what it is? Selfies! In your fiber art medium of choice. So, there’s that now too.

I’ve done animal portraits before but haven’t had the opportunity of a human face thrust upon me. Or even come up. Looks like the art gods are making up for that. It’s gonna be a longggg 2025 (for so many reasons, really). Portraits demand more of your time and attention. There’s choosing a medium, a style, drawing the face, colors, textures, backgrounds… The list goes on and on. At least I’ll be distracted this year. You can’t watch the news while you’re concentrating on getting someone’s face just right. Especially if it’s someone you know and love.

Hooked or stitched a portrait yet? Maybe we can show it off in the next post.

March 4, 2024

Stories Are Made Loop By Loop

HOLES to be part of STORIES ARE MADE LOOP BY LOOP, curated by Susan Feller

Stories Are Made Loop By Loop is all about contemporary rug hooking being done with fabric, yarn, and plastic and how an “old” technique is still being used to tell stories and for self expression. Susan premiered the exhibit last year in Virginia. A few months ago, I shipped Holes (hooked in 2020) to Susan in West Virginia, so it could join in at this traveling show’s second stop.

Hooked art — “Holes,” 68″ x 33″, monk’s cloth hooked with recycled textiles and silk sari ribbon. See her in Stories Are Made Loop By Loop in WV.

This Friday, March 8, the exhibit opens at the Juliet Art Museum, part of the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia. Participating artists include: Cheryl Bollenbach, Meryl Cook, Susan Feller, Elizabeth Miller, Karen D Miller, Domenica Zara Queen, Terri Todd, By Jane’s Daughter, UnitingUs, Grue Shackleford, and Laura Salamy. See the artists’ social media accounts to see their stories and ongoing creative journeys. More information about the artists can also be found HERE.

If you’re like me and can’t get to Charleston, Susan has generously made the catalog available HERE. Topics taken up in the various pieces of art include: healing; cancer and mental health issues; motherhood and how it changes a woman; homelessness and addiction; environmental destruction and loss of natural resources; one’s sense of identity and finding a voice; and veterans’ advocacy.

Like many fiber arts, rug hooking is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, with artists applying more modern sensibilities and trying to bring attention to today’s social causes and passions. See the show, peruse the catalog, and observe how we’re all taking an old art form and using new/old techniques and materials to tell our stories. But like the artists who came before us, we’re still appreciating the colors and textures of this slow, meditative form of loop-making.

January 7, 2024

Cheers – it’s 2024!

Happy 2024! I hope that everyone toasted to love and life at midnight a week ago. Tom and I did, albeit at about 6:00 PM. Drinking late at night doesn’t work well any more. LOL Besides, even after more than eight years out here in New Mexico, we still celebrate the New Year on East Coast time.

Happy 2024

My 2024 will be a big teaching year.

Classes are scheduled for the Española Valley/New Mexico Fiber Arts Center up in Española, New Mexico, this month (1/27, hooking) and in February (2/24, punching). The hooking class is full, but they’re opening a second session that should be on March 9. It hasn’t been posted yet, though, and probably won’t be for another week or so.

In Aril, we’ll be up in Loveland, Colorado, for the Maker Festivals Colorado/Yarn Fest Again, I’ll be holding workshops in both hooking (4/13) and punching (4/12). I love Colorado, so I’m pretty pumped for this trip.

And in July, we’re off to Wichita, Kansas, for HGA’s Convergence. Hooking’s up (7/13). I remember the marketplace when Convergence was in Providence 10 or so years back. Read about that HERE.

And while I’m not teaching at In the Studio Online’s Workshop Week 2024, I am the Administrator, so very much in the middle of things. If you’re looking to work with teachers you see on social media but couldn’t travel to, check out our offerings right this minute. Prices are right, and no travel is needed! Classes are filling. We’ve got some great bonus events too like a talk by Liv Aanrud sponsored by Sauder Village. And if you’re interested in attending Rug Hooking Week at Sauder Village in 2024, Deb Ridgway will be giving a free talk on that and more. (BTW, some of the SV teachers this year are teaching at WW2024! Again!)

Fortunately, all of these events are at least a few weeks away, as I’m still recovering from a much too busy December. And the kid arrives tomorrow from Seattle to have her holidays. Sadly, in the hospitality industry, one does not often have Christmas off. So, I will be busy with family this week but still available if you have any questions.

My wish for you all is a 2024 filled with kindness and creativity. Learn something new; risk a bit and maybe you’ll surprise yourself!

April 30, 2023

In-Person Class May 20!

In-Person Workshop May 20, at EVFAC/NMFAC!

If you live in central or northern New Mexico or will be visiting later in May, and you’ve wanted to learn to rug hooking, now is your chance! I’ll be running a class up in Española at the Fiber Arts Center on May 20, 1:00-5:00 PM. Registration info can be found HERE. Any questions, please give me a yell at Laura@highonhooking.com.

Hope to see you there. I promise that we’ll have a truly excellent time hooking rugs and saving the environment!

January 4, 2023

The Angel of 2023

The ANGEL OF 2023: SHE PRAYS FOR RAIN

Every year – usually in the late fall – I create an angel for the coming year. See 2022, 2021, but not 2020; not sure where she went.) This year I was a little tardy and finished her up on January 1. Given everything HOLIDAY going on and the passing of another year, I’m thinking that I’ll keep this schedule from now on. It gives me a break after festivals, sales, and late fall teaching.

Fiber art, ANGEL OF 2023, SHE PRAYS FOR RAIN — THE ANGEL OF 2023, SHE PRAYS FOR RAIN
Hooked (various fibers) and embroidered (bamboo yarn and cotton embroidery floss) on 4×4 monk’s cloth; mounted on a black canvas.

In my fiber art practice, I focus on reuse and repurposing, especially of textiles of all kinds. Better to use something than let it fall into landfills. Sadly, this is particularly the case in this time of fast fashion and its concomitant waste. I will never run out of raw materials for my work.

At the same time, I live in the American Southwest, a land still wildly beautiful but suffering from a megadrought. You’ve all seen the pics of Lakes Mead and Powell. No need to repeat it here. Our uncompromising thirst for water and other resources has brought us here. Truthfully, I don’t think that much will change, but if it’s going to, WE better get to it right quickly to help with water and all of our other environmental crises.

In the meantime…SHE PRAYS FOR RAIN.