This past spring we were asked to be a part of a very special magazine called What Women Create. The magazine features women creators from all walks of life. The images in the publication are gorgeous (ours are by Williams-Prior Art + Design) and the stories are by the artists themselves. Ours is a mother and daughter story about creating, art, and Mirrix Looms.
Here's an excerpt from our article:
[The world of creativity is not linear. It can lead you to places you never expected or take you in endless loops. One day you might be craving color and the next can only think in black and white.
Making a living in this realm, but not directly as artists, means we straddle two worlds. We are creators and we are businesswomen. We are family and we are business partners. We support communities of fiber art and of beads and jewelry making. We create our art and we create tools to help others create theirs.
Our art, and our business, is weaving, an ancient process that has helped to define many cultures. It can take a multitude of different forms from cloth to mixed-media. We create in two weaving realms: tapestry and beads.
Tapestry is a type of fiber weaving that is weft-faced (that means you can see the threads going horizontally across the piece, but not the warp threads that go vertically up and down), not woven edge to edge and usually pictorial in nature. Typically tapestries are hung on walls as fine art but can be functional, too, and used in pillows or purses or even jewelry. Tapestry is woven on a loom with high-tension and is a very slow, meditative art. Different techniques produce different effects on the weaving. For example, a technique called Pick and Pick produces what looks like a repeating pattern of vertical columns and one called Wavy Lines creates just that.
Bead weaving is a very different art form. It is weaving with pixels. Once you’ve learned the skills to weave beads, the challenge lies mostly in design. The weaving of beads is slow and methodical. Typically, it is done by stringing up beads, placing them behind the warp threads and then sewing back through them on top of the warp threads, essentially stitching the beads to the warp. Weaving beads can be simple or complex, but the process is always a refrain of memorized hand movements.]
Want to read more? You can pick up your own copy at Barnes and Noble, JoAnn Fabric, Books-A-Million or Michael’s Arts and Crafts. You can also purchase a copy on our website here.
