In-person events. Can you imagine it after over a year of hiding out from each other? But it’s starting to happen!
High on Hooking and friend Catherine Kelly will be vending our first in-person show since November of 2019! We’ll be at the SPRING & FIBER FESTIVAL at EL RANCHO DE LAS GOLONDRINAS June 5/6. It’s an outdoor venue, so if you’re vaccinated, you probably won’t even need a mask! If you’re in the area then, please stop by to chat and fondle the rugs. Mention this blog post and get a 5% discount on anything you purchase from High on Hooking. (See our other events in the Calendar.)
Spring’s just busting out all over! It’s been a big week here in the HoH house. We entered the modern age when we traded our 2003 Honda Accord in for a much newer “old” car, a 2019 CR-V. All those freaking electronics! Fortunately, I still have my little Fit to tool about town in and keep my gas usage and emissions to a minimum.
Wednesday, Cathy (above) and I took the new vehicle for a spin up to Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art. Other than the need for a mask, it was like pre-Covid times! An in-person museum visit! I was so excited early last year when the museum announced that they’d be having an exhibit of the Afghan War Rugs from summer through the fall. And then the Coronacootie struck! No fears – they were able to extend the exhibit through September of this year. Since I had my second Moderna vaccine last week, it was finally time. And the carpets did not disappoint. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pics, so I stole the one below from the museum’s website.
For those who aren’t familiar with the Afghan War Rugs, at first glance some of them look like typical, traditional rugs woven in Afghan and other areas of the Middle East, but when you take a second look, you realize that the Cypress tree motif is a…missile. A “boteh” (paisley) is really a helicopter. Look a little harder and you’ll find pistols, machine guns and grenades. In some of the rugs, though, the artisans went full on war-rug. You can’t miss the tanks.
Afghanistan is known for its rugs, though many of these rugs were created by Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran after Russia and then the US waged war in the country. They offer, certainly, an artistic commentary on what’s happened in (primarily) the last 40 or so years. (Russia invaded in 1979.) But they also demonstrate a commercial response to war in Afghanistan and the effect on its people. The carpets have proven popular with journalists, military personnel, foreign aid workers, and such.
The emergence of war-related imagery in Afghan rug design has clearly aided the economic survival of area weavers and displaced craftspeople through years of armed conflict and cultural disruption. What war rugs mean to individual weavers is less understood. Are war rugs a celebration of modernity or a rejection of war? Are they a witness to shared trauma or a commercialization of violence? Are they testaments to ingenuity and a spirit of survival? Perhaps they are all of these things at once.
(Museum of International Folk Art)
Over 40 rugs hang in the exhibit. Some look brand new; others have clearly been used as…rugs. All are fascinating to view. And, of course, being textiles, we desperately wanted to touch them. To turn them over and examine them. Yeah, that would’ve gotten us booted out. Unfortunately, too, there’s no real info about individual rugs or artists. Though this isn’t surprising.
If you ever get a chance to see this exhibit, make sure that you do. If you’d like to read more about the War Rugs, there’s a great article here. The Museum of International Folk Art has a virtual exhibit available here.
What events are you excited to get back to in-person this year?
