First and most important - I wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row to donate my Woven Olympic Haori to Art and Crafts United for Japan to be auctioned April 8-10 on eBay to benefit Global Giving's Earthquake and Tsunami Relief. My young friend Anastasia helped me by photographing my haori on one of her friends. We had hopedto do an outside shoot against one of the beautiful weathered walls in Savannah... but it poured just as I got to town (& even hailed later.) We found a conference room with some natural light (gray rainy light...) and got to work. Her photos were much better than the ones I had taken with my iPhone. I NEED to get a decent camera! Outdoor photos are usually pretty good on an iPhone... but indoors, forget it!
Here are the photos I submitted...
To complete the submission I needed to get to the Post Office to find a box and to weigh it. Mission Accomplished... and I was able to get my digital application in two days early! It was fun to see the photos on their Facebook page. After midnight EST tonight when the deadline for submissions passes the challenge will be to tell as many people as possible about the April 8-10 eBay auction so the group makes lots of money to help the Japanese people! A similar group, though mostly potters - Handmade for Japan - made over $75,000 in their March 31st auctions. Hopefully we can do as well... or better!
Auction Begins: April 8, 12:00pm EDT/4:00pm GMT/
Auction Ends: April 10, 12:00pm EDT/4:00pm GMT/
People from all over the world have submitted work and are "attending the auction!" Please help by sharing the information with all your friends... through email, facebook, twitter, etc etc etc!
The second reason for my busy - ness.... was helping our Fiber Guild of Savannahs set up our brand new Weaving Studio - Oatland at Oatland Island Nature Center. Oatland was the guild's home for many, many years and the guild had to move to Armstrong Atlantic State University when the administration building where they were housed was condemned! Ten years later the building is beautifully renovated and we were offered a room in exchange for working with children and adults in the community to share our knowledge of weaving, spinning and other fiber arts.
We welcome the chance to have our looms and equipment all together in one space - a beautiful space to work. When it looked like we couldn't get our looms from AASU, the guild members rallied and loaned looms, warping reels, a spinning wheel, etc. etc. etc! What a group! It is now FULL of wonderful equipment after our last minute move with Two Men & a Truck yesterday transporting 3 large floor looms - 2 counter balanced and one wonderful 12 shaft 45" Leclerc (we'll be fighting over THAT one!) and lots of other equipment including a huge warping reel, reeds, raddles, lease sticks, inThey are still disassembled (unless Bonnie and her supportive hubby AJ got over there today to re-assemble them.) but soon we will have an organized working weaving studio to share with the Savannah community. HOORAY! It is really VERY exciting! Take a look...
Look at all the looms and that huge warping reel in the back corner with Bonnie!
Warping reels, spool racks, bobbin winders, and 2 wonderful looms, etc. are on this wall.
Yes... that's a dogwood tree outside our windows!
Wouldn't bookshelves look great on that back wall? Have any to donate?
our moving team less AJ (Bonnie wonderfully helpful hubby) & Rachel at AASU
me (Suzy), Annie from Oatland, Bonnie & Anastasia
Our members will have an opportunity to weave and work on projects here - 7 days a week between 10am & 4pm with additional hours possible. We are anxious to begin to teach young and old members of the community the fine crafts of weaving, spinning, and other fiber arts here in our wonderful new space. Plans are underway for a Summer Fiber Arts Camp at Oatland! Stay tuned.
My other busy-ness was getting ready to present a program to our guild this Saturday - Fiber Arts of the Bauhaus. I've organized some hands on activities and will have a slide presentation of work created at the Bauhaus. The material was from research I did for my book, Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir. It should be fun!
PHEW... tonight I'm going to a presentation put on by the SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Fiber Department on Mayan Weaving. Tomorrow afternoon there will be a workshop and demonstration of back-strap loom weaving.
What a weaving-full week. Now... if I can just get to my loom!!!
Your woven haori is just superb! It should fetch a great bid for the cause.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for visiting my blog. Judy's work is amazing, no? I'm definitely still digging deeper into this creative side, and it's been very enlightening.