Joan Baxter's tapestry series :: The Weaver

January

Det er en travl tid for mig. Nu med stærk blæst og snestorm er det altid en travl tid; væv en stoflængde i en fart, mand, ellers fryser vi, selv foran ildstedet! Der er ingen mangel på arbejde og handel nu. Jeg lader skyttelen flyve.

Jeg har en anden væv stående, tom. Jeg drømmer om i en ledig stund, at sætte den væv op, kostbar og smuk.

It’s a busy time for me. Right now, among tempests and blizzards, is always the busiest time. Weave cloth, my friend, hurry - or even indoors we will freeze. There is no lack of work and customers now, the shuttle is flying!

I have a second loom. It stands empty. In idle thoughts, I dream of the most beautiful and precious cloth I will weave there.

February

Fiskernes overtøj er aldrig tørt. Det hænger i sol og vind, indtørringen gør stoffet tungt af salt konstant. Skipperen fra ”Tern” banker på. Han standser op i døren. Han går ind. Han kan knapt se i mørket og tørverøgen. Han har brug for et kraftigt stykke overtøj til havbrug. Saltet har ædt det gamle. Havet udenfor mit vindue er som et uldskind af fråde.

Den anden væv er stadig tom. En skønne dag vil den stå med et strålende klæde.

A fisherman’s coat is never dry. It’s exposed to sun and wind and its very fibers are grown heavy with salt. The Captain of the Tern knocks on the door and comes in. He can hardly see in the smoky darkness. He needs a new overcoat, the salt has eaten away his old one. The sea outside my window is a wooly froth.

The other loom is still empty. One day, I shall weave a glorious cloth upon it.

March

Mit garn-lager er lille. Jeg må gå til husmands-stederne, hvor spinde-konerne sidder ved ilden. Plovmænd er ude på hver en mark, skriver fure efter fure. Ingen hilser på mig. Ingen har overtøj på. Det er hårdt arbejde at pløje.

Til minde om det unge mistede ansigt burde mine hænder have vævet gode billeder på den tomme væv.

My yarn supply has dwindled. I have to go to the spinners, as they sit by their fires. The ploughmen are out in the fields, ploughing furrow upon furrow. No one greets me. No one wears a coat. Ploughing is hard work.

In memory of the lost young face, my hands could have woven beautiful images on the empty loom.

April

Jeg kan ikke udholde at være udenfor i april. Det nye lys gør mig fortumlet, de glade lam, grøfterne med deres overflod af påskeliljer, den nytændte forårssol, det glitrende glimt fra havet. Hvor er jeg dog glad for at holde mig inden døre, mens jeg går mellem spind og væv.

Ved påske liljelys kan jeg se en halv snes spindelvæv og gråtonen i mit stof samt den tomme væve i hjørnet.

I can’t stand to be outdoors in April. The new light makes me dizzy - the joyful lambs, the ditches with their abundance of daffodils, the newly lit spring sun, the glittery glimpses of the sea. I’m so happy to stay indoors, keeping busy spinning and weaving.

In the daffodil light, I can see half a dozen spider webs and the grey tones of my cloth, as well as that empty loom in the corner.

May

Et stort skib ankrer op ved øen. Den høje fremmede kaptajn forhører sig hos fiskerne i land. Det er blevet mig fortalt, at du fremstiller meget smukt stof,” siger han. “Engang i min ungdom,” fortæller jeg ham, “vævede jeg andet end gråt klæde.” Men inspirationen forlod mig pludseligt engang for længe siden, jeg væver ikke mere det smukke stof, du har hørt om.”

“Gå ind på kirkegården, på vej tilbage til kysten og dit skib. Der vil du se en sten med navnet Inga af Garth indhugget.” Jeg åbner døren på vid gab. Jeg peger på den tomme væv. “Se der,” siger jeg.

A large ship rests at anchor off the island. The tall, foreign captain asks the fishermen ashore. “I’ve been told that you create the finest cloth,” he says. “Once upon a time, in my youth,” I tell him, “I wove something other than grey cloth. But inspiration suddenly left me long ago; I no longer weave the beautiful cloth you have heard about.”

“Stop by the cemetery on your way back to the coast and your ship. There, you will see a stone engraved with the name Inga of Garth.” I open the door wide. I point at the empty loom. “See that?” I say.

June

Balle efter balle af stof er blevet til i de lange midsommerdage. Jeg stabler ballerne på loftet. Rotterne og møllene har forsynet sig her og der. Tre stofruller er blevet værdiløse. Hvordan skal jeg stå vinteren igennem?

Jeg klatrer ned. Jeg hviler mit hoved på den tomme væv. Jeg drømmer om umulig ubestikkelig skønhed.

Bale upon bale of cloth has come to life over the long midsummer days. I stack the bales up in the loft. Rats and moths have feasted here and there. Three rolls are worthless. How will I make it through the winter?

I crawl down. I rest my head on the empty loom. I dream of an impossible, incorruptible beauty.

July

Denne sommer rammer storme skibe uden søkort og driver dem hid og did uden ror mod skær og klipper. I natten stimler lanterner sammen på klippetoppe og langs kysten.

Jeg drømmer, at min tomme væv er en harpe. En ung konge væver vidunderlig musik på den, og da han er færdig, tager han kappen af sange af væven, slænger den over skuldrene og går ud for at være sammen med prinser og adelsmænd i en stor hall langt borte.

Summer storms strike chartless ships, driving them here and there, rudderless, against reef and crag. At night, lanterns line the cliff tops along the coast.

I dream that my empty loom is a harp. A young king weaves marvelous music on it and when he is finished, he takes his cape of songs off the loom, wrapping it around his shoulders. He leaves to be with princes and nobles in an enormous hall far away.

August

En ung mand er i gang med at klippe Garth’s 20 får. Garths får har god uld. Det er vidunderlig uld - alt for god til bønders og fiskeres arbejdstøj. Jeg gnider en uldtot mellem fingrene. Det er den bedste uld i årevis. “Hvorfor klipper manden på Garth ikke selv sine får,” spørger jeg. “Han er syg,” svarer han. Den døde piges far er syg. Det er tid at bringe tavshed.

Der er uld af en sådan finhed, at den bør spindes af kvindes hænder til en ung brud. Min arbejdsvæv er for grov. “Sig til manden fra Garth, at jeg ønsker ham god bedring.”

A young man is shearing Garth’s 20 sheep. Garth’s sheep have good wool. It’s a marvelous wool - much too good for peasant and fishermen’s work clothes. I rub the wool between my fingers; it’s the best wool in years. “Why isn’t the man from Garth shearing his own sheep?” I ask. “He’s is sick,” he answers. The dead girl’s father is sick. It’s time for silence.

The wool is so fine that it should be spun by women’s hands for a young bride. My working loom is too rough. “Tell the man from Garth that I wish him well.”

September

Jeg har den særlige evne, at jeg kan se på en kvindes ansigt hendes livs afslutning og begyndelse. Engang så jeg et ansigt, der syntes altid at have et lys af højsommer.

Alle øboere er i slægt. Du kan se blik og bevægelser, som har gentaget sig gennem generationer - et særkende skabt af det slidsomme arbejde på denne ø, som har gjort det umagen værd at anvende under pløjning, ved fremstilling af fiskenet, under høstearbejde, ja selv i forbindelse med drukneulykker og brand. Hun er den ene, som tryllebandt mig engang for længe siden. “Jeg er væver,” råber jeg.

I have a special ability - I can see on a woman’s face the end and the beginning of her life. Once I saw a face that had the light of high summer.

All of the island’s inhabitants are related. You can see gazes and movements which have repeated throughout the generations - a hallmark of the laborious work on the island - developed during plowing, weaving of fishnets, during the harvest, even in connection with drownings and fire. She is the one who bewitched me once long ago. “I am a weaver,” I shout.

October

I oktober suser grå vinde omkring huset. Denne oktober føler jeg intens tørke. Det er tid til at tænde op. Hvorfor er ingen tørv sat i stak for enden af huset? Hvad skal jeg gøre for at fyre op i aften?

Der er den væv, den står ubrugt. Se hele trenden! Der vil aldrig blive arbejdet igen. Den vil kunne holde mig varme en nat eller to. Men da jeg tager øksen for at smadre væven, kan jeg ikke gøre det. Jeg støtter mit hoved på den tomme væv. Hvorfor er rammen våd? Kold rystende gråd fra en gammel mands øjne!

In October, the grey winds rage around the house. This year, I feel an intense draught. It’s time to light the fire. But why is there no peat stacked at the end of the house? What will I do for a fire tonight?

The loom stands there, unused. Look at that warp! No one will ever work there again. It could keep me warm a night or two. But, as I take up the axe to smash the loom, I can’t do it. I rest my head on the empty loom. Why is the frame wet? The cold shakes tears from an old man’s eyes.

November

Der er en mand, som fremstiller mere holdbart klæde end jeg kan klare. Han kommer til min dør om natten i det første korte snefald i november. “Den gamle mand på Garth døde ved solopgang,” siger han. “Det er din sag,” siger jeg. “Nej, de ønsker et liglagen. De har søgt på Garth højt og lavt, der er intet liglagen til ham.” Jeg bliver oppe hele natten vævende et liglagen til den gode gamle mand på Garth.

Jeg kunne have fortalt ham, hvem der blev svøbt i det liglagen.

There is a man who makes more durable cloth than I can. He appears at my door in the night of the first November snow fall. “The old man of Garth died at sunset,” he says. “That’s your responsibility,” I say. “No, they want a shroud. They have looked high and low all over Garth and there is no shroud for him.” I stay up all night weaving a shroud for the good old man of Garth.

I could have told him who was wrapped in that shroud. 

December

Det sneede hele natten. Luften knitrede af frost. Solens lys på sneen skærer i mine øjne som knive.

Jeg åbner døren. En vævning genspejlet i lyset fra sneen ligger fold ved fold over væven, som havde stået ubrugt i halvtreds vintre.

It snowed all night. Frost crackles in the air. The sunshine on the snow cuts my eyes like a knife.

I open the door. A cloth shimmering like the light of the snow is draped fold upon fold over the loom which stood unused for fifty winters.

* * *

These pictures aren't great, as the light isn't so good this time of year and perhaps the lighting in the space isn't ideal for displaying such gorgeous tapestries. They are by Scottish weaver Joan Baxter, based upon a short story by Scottish author George MacKay Brown. And I'm uncharacteristically using capital letters because I worked on the texts for each work and they, of course, had to use capital letters. That's also why they are in both Danish and English. It's quite a moving story and the tapestries are exquisite. They'll be on display this weekend (Nov. 23-24) at the magical little museum in Randbøldal. 

kom med mig... / come with me...

my friend christina and i have been planning an exhibition together for over a year. and by planning, i mean we made a pinterest board in january of 2018. we've put it off a couple of times because life and mostly work got in the way and we didn't manage to create anything worth exhibiting, but on saturday, we redeemed ourselves and held an opening - with snacks and drinks and everything! and i have to say that i'm really proud of what we made.

back in october, we had a getaway on the island of samsø, where christina's sister has a lovely summer house. while we were there, i made sewed up this little paper feathery dress that had been rolling around in my head for ages. once i allowed it to come out, it came out very quickly and i had it made in under an hour or so. i had painted abstract atoms on the newspaper and cut out the feathers in advance, so it was just a matter of coming up with a design and sewing it all together. when we were first hanging the works, i didn't think it was going to work as part of the exhibition, but was very happy that we found a way to show it as well.

the centerpiece was this mannequin with a spectacular headpiece/bird mask (more about that below), encircled by long banners of different scenes painted on old book pages and sewn together on the sewing machines in long garlands of 7 pages each. the book was chosen randomly from my collection of old books that i was saving to violate.  it was the right size and the pages were quite thick, decent paper and there were illustrations, so i cut it up and painted a whole lot of abstract atom-like shapes on one side using payne's grey ink. those abstracts are my attempt to try to break out of my fear of placing brush to paper and of making mistakes and being a bit more wild. it's surprisingly hard for me to do that. but after painting a 100 or so pages, i felt a bit more free.

christina then got to work painting her speciality - birds and bits of birds - on the other side of the pages - sticking to a limited palette of payne's grey, bordeaux and yellow, with small accents of a more true red and some black. the book turned out to be biblical illustrations and a retelling of the old testament from 1923. though the book was chosen rather haphazardly and without thought for the subject matter, the pages began to speak to us - causing painted wings to seem like they belonged to angels, rather than birds, and provoking christina to paint a few scenes with breasts.  i painted quite a lot of birds and feathers as well. and a whole lot of small boats came out here and there. i found myself surprised by what ended up on the page when i gave myself over to the process and let it flow.

we knew we didn't want to hang the works on the walls, but have it be more of an installation. we painted ourselves a payne's grey forest on sheets of plastic that's normally used under insulation in building a house. the way the light comes through it looks pretty amazing and we hung it in two rows so that it felt like you had to step into the forest to enter the world of the exhibition. we did one tree in bordeaux, which was one of the other colors we had in our limited palette. the limited color palette helped our individual styles come together and harmonize, despite the differences in the way we paint and the lines we put down on paper.

i spent hours cutting out paper feathers for this mask and enlisted husband's help in forming the headpiece itself - which is a beak. it was originally a mask in our minds, but ended more as a kind of hat. the creative process sometimes takes you in surprising directions. naturally, when husband got involved, he wanted to use wood (i had been thinking paper or maybe papier mache). he used a big hunk of wood and started off what ended up as an absolutely exquisite piece, by whittling down the log with a chainsaw. i wish i'd filmed that.

he also was the one to place the paper feathers i had cut out, taking ownership of the piece and finishing it absolutely spectacularly. it really was the crowning glory of the exhibition, bringing together our vision, which started with this video by thievery corporation. we loved the uncanny feeling of it - the way it was repulsive, yet attractive and fascinating. we wanted our bird woman to be the same, tho' she ended up not at all repulsive, but strong and assured, eclipsing our birdman, who was painted flatly on one of the sheets of plastic. she was the star of the show and although she is beautiful, she is also rather uncanny.

i found a dress for her in a second-hand shop - it had flowers that matched our payne's grey, with a kind of white slip underneath. once we had the headpiece on, the dress was the wrong pattern and took away from the beautiful headpiece, so we stripped her down to the slip and it was absolutely perfect.

at the opening, people could walk in among the works, looking closely at the details on the pages. people noticed things we hadn't even noticed ourselves. like wings on pages that spoke of angels and breasts on a page that talked about the lord's heaven. we had many wonderful discussions with people - about the creative process, about the biblical pages, about the payne's grey, about sewing on paper. it was such a pleasure to share the work and to see how it was received and to once again be reminded that ideas are always better when they are in dialogue with other people's ideas. our work became richer and deeper, even to us, when we shared it with others.

this little boat was another thing that's been in my head for some time and which just had to come out during this creative process. the paper is some very thin but strong chinese paper that we used to make  seaweed prints on the beach during that weekend on samsø back in october. i fashioned the small boat out of fine wire and just glued the paper in place. The boats are light and airy and looked just gorgeous in the window against the blue sky when i took the pictures today.

i'm really proud of this work and this collaboration. we had a few prints done up of some of the best of the small paintings we did on the book pages and there are a few leftover from the opening. i put them in my big cartel shop here, if you're interested in having a look. they're signed and numbered and will only be available in a limited edition of ten of each.

bodies

from a film i took back in february(!!) at the bodies exhibition at experimentarium in copenhagen. there was quite a lot of controversy, because it was very graphic and experimentarium is a kind of science museum aimed at children and they actually included a sex scene. plus, the bodies were real, not models. real people who donated their bodies to be exhibited around the world. at once both horrible and intimate and fascinating and graphic and educational and just too much.

i should really dust off my scanner, don't you think?