Category Archives: Speaker Profile

Jackie Abrams: Simplifying the Form

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TSGNY: How has your work as a basketmaker evolved over time?

Jackie Abrams: In 1975 I apprenticed to an 81-year-old traditional white-ash basket maker. For 13 years I made traditional and functional baskets, primarily of natural materials. Since 1990, I have been working with painted cotton paper as a weaving material, using both traditional and sculptural basket techniques.

I’m currently working on two different series. One is called “Women Forms,” which I started around 2004. These pieces are woven using painted archival cotton paper and wire. (I paint the paper, but don’t make it.) I was exploring the technique of using paper and wire together, to see what was possible. As the semi-completed pieces sat together on my worktable, they seemed to represent a group of women, gathering strength from each other.

"Sisters of Color," 5", 6", and 7" high; woven with cotton paper and wire, covered with sand from Eastern Long Island.

JA: I weave these forms to be sculptural, rather than symmetrical, shaped by our life experiences. The forms are covered with encaustic wax, textured acrylic mediums and paints, or sands and earth. The visible woven inside is always a contrast to the outside surfaces. The series continues to interest me, both emotionally and technically. The inside and outside surfaces present interesting challenges and possibilities.

"Talking Sisters," 14" and 15" high; woven with cotton paper and wire, covered with layers of encaustic wax.

JA: A more recent series, started in 2006, are my “Spirit Women.” They are coiled and stitched, using fabrics, often recycled, or plastic bags. It is an adapted and simplified ancient technique that is found almost universally. My core materials are visible, an important part of the piece.

"Wisdom," 9" high, 7" wide, 7" deep; stitched and coiled using recycled dry-cleaner bags and VCR tapes, silver ribbon, thread.

TSGNY: What prompted this venture into coiling and recycled materials?

JA: Since 2005, I have been working in Africa, primarily in Ghana. To date, there have been eight journeys. I have helped to develop sustainable micro-craft industries using recycled materials. I’ve also been hired as a basket consultant and have worked with basket makers in both Ghana and Uganda. I observed that the technique of coiling was used over and over again, by many women, in many African countries.

My most recent project was in Pokuase, Ghana. I taught the women to crochet with discarded plastic bags that litter the environment. In the evenings, during my ‘down’ time, I picked up the bags and started to coil. I wanted to capture the spirit and energy of the women with whom I worked. My first pieces were made in Pokuase, using the materials on hand – much the way the African women make do with what they have.

"Small Spirit Women," 4" to 6" high; stitched and coiled using fabrics, plastic bags, threads, sand.

TSGNY: What first took you to Ghana?

JA: I have always had an interest in Africa. In elementary school I remember creating an African village. When I started making baskets in 1975, African baskets were the ones I loved and slowly collected. I always knew that was where I wanted to go.

TSGNY: Did you decide ahead of time to work with women, or did that happen once you got there?

JA: I have found that working with women, rather than men, has more of a direct influence on a community. On my first few trips, I started working with children and a few men artists. Although it was rewarding in many ways, I knew that if any changes were to be made, there were most likely to be made through the women. Most of them were not going to spend their income at the local bar. The women cared more about their children – using the money to pay their school fees, or buy them food. I knew that any changes I helped to make would be small, baby steps, and I also knew that working with women would have the most impact.

"Grounded," 12" high, 10" wide, 10" deep; coiled and stitched using fabrics, waxed linen thread.

TSGNY: What do you think you’ve learned from the basketmakers in Ghana and Uganda?

JA: Working with these women has changed my life forever. One very obvious thing is how much ‘stuff’ I have. It’s good stuff: art, books, crafts, textiles. There’s just too much of it. Since I returned from my first trip in 2005, I get rid of at least one thing a day. (I take Sundays off.)
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The other things I have learned are not quite so obvious. I’ve learned that a simple life is just as rewarding as a more complicated life. I’ve learned that joy, good spirit, and appreciation can be found anywhere, even in a one-room home. I’ve learned that I am comfortable hanging out with these women, being dusty, letting them laugh at my social gaffes. When it is not totally frustrating, it is very, very good.

"A Woman of Consequence," 16" high, 11" wide, 11" deep; woven of cotton paper and wire, covered with acrylic paint and medium.

TSGNY: Has your intent changed as a result of working with the recycled materials and the coiling process?

JA: I have deliberately simplified my techniques. I want to work directly and intuitively with the materials and techniques in different ways, and let the piece talk about its own spirit and energy.

My process is simple. My materials are simple. I am trying to focus on the energy, and the interactions between the materials and stitches, how one supports the other. It does not need to be complex; it just needs to “be.”

TSGNY: In spite of their simplicity, do your process or your materials pose any particular challenges?

JA: I love technical challenges. When I get a little bored, I just try something new. Sometimes it is really ugly, and never gets repeated. Even these failures are worthwhile, an important part of the learning process.

This year (2011) I did seven collaborative pieces with a glassblower, Josh Bernbaum, for a museum show called “Dialogue.” Josh initiated the project. He owns one of my baskets, and was interested in creating it in blown glass. The museum curator was interested, and our collaboration was born. We had seven pieces/groupings, each one a challenge in a different way. Some were unexpected. I loved trying to solve the problems, adapting techniques and materials as we went along.

"Captured Reflections," 8" high, 8" wide, 9" deep; copper wire and blown glass.

JA: For “Captured Reflections,” I wove (twined) the basket using heavy copper wire; Josh blew into the vessel. For “Material Conversation,” Josh blew an asymmetrical glass form. I recreated it using recycled plastic bags, primarily newspaper bags, and waxed linen thread.

"Material Conversation," both vessels 10" high; blown glass and coiling.

JA: This piece was my greatest technical challenge.  I wanted to work with plastic bags because I like the idea of working with recycled materials, and felt that plastic might capture the same reflective qualities as glass. I have never seen the type of work that I visualized, and so had no clues about where to start. At first I thought I would coil each section individually and attach them but that created more problems than it solved.  I spent two days trying new ideas, and then discarding them. I was determined. Each failure took me one step closer to what I was trying to achieve. Finally, at the end of the second day, I found a process that allowed me to create what I wanted to create.

TSGNY: So in the end, working in this technique doesn’t impose limitations?

JA: I’m happy to say feel pretty unlimited in what I’m able to do.

TSGNY: Finally, are there any living artists who inspire you who you feel we should know about?

JA: Lissa Hunter is my idol — both her words and her works are heartwarming.

TSGNY: Thank you, Jackie. You can see more of Jackie’s work on her website. She recently won Best of Show at the 2011 Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

 

Mary Zicafoose: Weaving in Code

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Mary Zicafoose with a fraction of the wrapped ikat sections required for a single tapestry.

TSGNY: Which textile techniques do you incorporate in your work?

Mary Zicafoose: I am a rug-weaver-turned-tapestry-weaver who developed a fascination with ikat about 25 years ago. What began pretty innocently with a few scraps of a Hefty garbage bag knotted around a hank of yarn has evolved into complex tapestry imagery created by very intricate and layered ikat wrapping and tying techniques.  The process now demands months of wrapping, tying small pieces of japanese ikat tape — a brittle cellophane tape — around individual strands of mountains of silk and wool.

Wrapping ikat before dyeing. The weft section shown here will become approximately 3 inches of the finished piece.

MZ: For the last 10 years I have produced ikat tapestries almost exclusively.  I’m currently working on a commission for a home that will require about 80,000 ikat ties.  When done tying I will dye the yarn and then untie all 80,000 design sections.  The weaving is almost a secondary process: literally just what holds all the ikat-dyed yarn together.  That said, the weaving is a monumental and time-consuming activity unto itself, since the pieces are large in scale. This particular tapestry will be a panel about 10’ x 10’, woven in silk, dyed the colors of the prairie sky before a thunderstorm.

At the Loom: "Blueprint" in Process. All three sections of the triptych are woven simultaneously, row by row.

TSGNY: Was that first experiment with a shredded Hefty bag the result of an aha moment when you knew ikat was something you just had to explore?

MZ: Yes, of course.  I was working on a pretty involved classical tapestry piece, struggling to make it appear painterly and more spontaneous.  Just for the record, the words “spontaneous” and “weaving” are rarely used in the same sentence — they occupy two different universes, coming from completely different hemispheres of process.

I was very frustrated, feeling gridlocked and constrained by technique and the limitations of my equipment.  Then I flashed on a scrap of ikat cloth my aunt had given me as a child –a memento from some exotic junket she had been on — that I had held onto as precious.  I thought that’s where this needs to go: I need to embrace a textile process that allows some element of surprise or chance to occur.   This was in the 80s when there wasn’t much ikat going on anywhere. And so began the study.  I went to the Fairfield, Iowa, public library to get a book on ikat applications for tapestries and rugs, only to discover that no books on ikat process existed.  To date, almost 30 years later, there might possibly have been three books written on the subject.  I think I may have drawn the card to write the fourth.

"Ancient Text - Chain of Command" (diptych), 76" x 45", Weft-faced ikat tapestry.

TSGNY: What are the particular challenges of the ikat process?  How do you overcome them?

The Ikat cartoon: the design "exploded" in preparation for dyeing.

MZ: Ikat is a synonym for challenge.   A bolt of hand-dyed silk ikat fabric,  whether a beautiful 18th-century adras ikat robe or one of my ikat tapestries, is the composite visual solution to thousands of tiny complex problems. Ikat is based on math, geometry, dye chemistry, and the ability to think and design abstractly — expanding shapes and images at the ikat board to then severely compress them at the loom.  It also requires an abnormal otherworldly amount of patience with process–an actual fascination or addiction to process, I would say.

Unwrapping Ikat

MZ: I used to teach a lot of ikat until my process became so complex and layered that I could no longer explain it within a workshop context.  Also, very few weavers were interested enough in the visual product to invest and go where this takes you.   Weavers already have a time-consuming and totally demanding and economically unforgiving process–why take it to the 10th power?

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Silk Ikat sorted and collated. Each ball of yarn is numbered with its place in the weaving sequence.

MZ: My undergraduate degree was in photography and my graduate work was in clay.  The sculptor in me is waiting for the day I’ve tied that last ikat wrap.

TSGNY: Clearly ikat has its rewards, because you haven’t tied your last tie yet. What does ikat enable you to do that you had not been able to do in other techniques?

MZ: I always describe ikat yarns as being “coded.” Understanding the mechanics of this code has enabled me to create work that was never within my grasp, pieces that I would not have dared dream of creating. Recently I’ve been working almost exclusively in black and white, offset by sections of saturated color.

"Ancient Text - Indigo and Ochre" (diptych), 2007, 58" x 62", Weft-face Ikat Tapestry.

MZ: What is the visual difference?  Well, for one, complex ikat carries an energy, a frequency that makes it resonate differently than other textiles.  Perhaps it is the layers of overdyeing that produce more complicated and compelling saturations of color, perhaps the massive amount of human handling and touch that imbues it with so many layers of the “handmade,” but the element of magic is the serendipitous alchemy that happens when miles of wrapped ikat are submerged into vats of dye.  What sections resist the dye and where dye wicks up under the tape is random and uncharted and defies all plans and promises to clients.  The dye ebbs and flows and seeps and creates new and unexpected colors. The moment that the wrapped yarn slips into the colored waters of the dyepot is the precise moment the muse is invited to enter into the process. It’s as though another hand, another breath, has entered.

"Blueprint #7" (triptych), 2009, 84" x 88", Weft-face ikat, hand-dyed silk/bamboo on linen warp.

MZ: I am endlessly intrigued by this process and its applications.  I have had the great pleasure and opportunity to crisscross the globe traveling to ikat-producing countries and cultures.  I have wrapped ikat on remote islands, in Andean mountain villages, in factories, mud huts, and on horseback.

Matching colors. Zicafoose dyes all the yarns, referring to her library of more than 1,000 dye recipes.

TSGNY: Are there artists – in this medium or in others – you’ve come across in your travels who inspire you and who you’d like us to know about?

MZ: Besides my ethnic contemporaries a few artists in the UK are doing contemporary ikat.   I purposefully don’t follow their work.  Is that foolish?  It’s too easy to be influenced by your peers within your medium and field, actually to be deeply influenced by what they are doing. For me visual influences are as powerful as auditory–like when you hear a song you can’t get it out of your head.  It’s best if I just do my work and tell my story and not read too many other stories while I’m at it.  Yes, that may be foolish.  Ptolemy Mann is a UK ikat weaver of talent and note. American ikat weavers include Virginia Davis  and Polly Barton.

Early on in my rug-weaving days Mark Rothko was my big inspiration.  We all are familiar with how he treated large fields of color–how the edges collided and bled into each other–so very ikat.   When my husband Kirby and I traveled extensively in Peru and worked in Bolivia I fell under the spell of all things ethnic and ancient.  It took years behind the loom to weave South America out of my system.  When I finally emerged from that I fortunately had a strong sense of who I was as an artist and as a weaver and was very freed to be inspired by and to build my work on non-textile influences such as the visually powerful works and writings of Meinrad Craighead, the visionary Catholic nun;  Mary Oliver, the beloved Northeastern poet: the sculptor Martin Puryear, and the architect Phillip Johnson.  Sources of inspiration are an endless craving.

TSGNY: Thank you, Mary.

You can see more of Mary Zicafoose’s work here.

"Blueprint - Wine & Willow," (diptych), 2008, 48" x 76", Weft-face ikat.