Line Dufour

"Osmosis" Handwoven tapestry by Line Dufour
www.tapestryline.com

I am a fiber artist and tapestry weaver who is interested in having exhibitions in public and private galleries. I  welcome those who would like to commission a site specific work or purchase existing tapestries. I also create unique one of a kind fibre fashion accessories using a variety of techniques such as weaving, knitting, felting and sewn constructions.  I have a studio and show room. The Guild Shop in Toronto also carries my work.

Artist's Statement:  To be whole, is described as being healthy, entire; recovered from a wound or injury; restored; free of defect or impairment; mentally and emotionally sound; constituting an undivided unit; constituting a person in their full nature; not having omitted or disregarded anything; a coherent system or organization of parts working together as one; Referenced from Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

I have been exploring emotion  through colour, shape and form with my weaving and fibre related activities and I have been continuously experimenting with various materials within the structure of weaving or inspired by it. My own great need to be creative through fibre and tapestry weaving is a vital part of who I am and what I do. 

The two distinct groups of weavings are united in their theme – giving visual expression to the wide range of human emotion and states, and this includes our shadow/dark side as well as our more pleasant emotions. The pleasant emotions, the Well Being series,  are shown as bright and intense colours, simple in their composition and convey the lightness and buoyancy they bring to our spirit, body and energy.  Our darker side/reflective side is represented by the pieces in the Turbulence group, and they incorporate black as the dominant colour, and also a three dimensional technical aspect. This dimension of ourselves is more complex, and full of surprises and things to reveal to us if we are receptive and willing to heed its message.  If we  grapple with our inner uncertainties, fears and uncomfortable emotions in a way that honours them, those emotions and thoughts can be transformed and we can grow and change. This is represented in some of my tapestries that are three dimensional which are also interactive and are able to be hung in different configurations.

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Blogs:

   tapestryline
   tapestryworkshops
   linedufourevents

Memberships:

   American Tapestry Alliance
   Ontario Craft Council
   Handweavers Guild of America

Languages spoken: English, French

Weaving by Line Dufour

Tags: weaving, tapestry, fiber art, fibre art, wall hangings, fashion accessories

Anna Kocherovsky

“Passage” tapestry by Anna Kocherovsky

21”x 61”

www.tapestrystudio.com

“Floating” tapestry by Anna Kocherovsky

36”x 48”

Educated at Moscow’s School of Visual Art, I turned to hand-woven tapestries in the search of a fresh visual language and a distinct process I could call my own.  

Resident of Michigan from 1989, I am working as a studio artist, designing and weaving tapestries. From that time, I exhibited my work in the numerous shows in Michigan and as well nationally. I also participated in the special projects, such as “Inaugural Lady Liberty Project” for ACLU of Michigan (2006) Detroit, Memorial Tapestry (2003), Purim Flag for the JCC in Manhattan, NY (2002) and completed several commissions.

My work is soft, quiet and reflective. I am very much interested in mythology, especially Jewish mythology and traditions; because it is very vivid and reflects who I am.  I love to read and often it gives a starting impulse for the new work.

Artist's Statement:  When exploring the theme for my new tapestry, I produce numerous drawings to experiment and clarify the idea for the new work. I enjoy the energy and spontaneity of process of drawing and want to carry the same element of excitement in my tapestries. 

Location:  West Bloomfield, Michigan, USA

Membership: The American Tapestry Alliance

Languages spoken: English

“Tree of Life” tapestry by Anna Kocherovsky

40”x 43”

Tags: Tapestry, weaving, wall-hanging, gobelin, textile art, art, contemporary tapestry, studio, gallery, hand-woven, drawings, mythology, torah studies

Ulrika Leander / Contemporary Tapestry Weaving

”Downtown” by Ulrika Leander

58” x 128”

http://www.ctw-tapestry.com

Contemporary Tapestry Weaving specializes in large-scale hand-woven tapestries in a contemporary European style and weight with a strong Scandinavian flair. Primarily my work is for site-specific commissions for corporate offices, public buildings, religious environments, health care facilities and private homes. However, I also weave some tapestries that are available for sale and are exhibited in my studio and on my web site.

After receiving a MA in fiber art and design in Stockholm, Sweden, I taught weaving and design at the course Center at the University of Lund before moving to the USA. My present studio located in Bellevue, MD opened in 2000 and my largest hand-weaving loom has the capacity to produce tapestries up to 12ft. in one direction and over 30 in the other.

In addition to designing and weaving tapestries, in the summer I convert part of my large studio into an art gallery showing work in a wide range of media including textile, glass, ceramic, precious metals and wood. I find my artists at major art and craft shows and by travelling in Scandinavia visiting studios during the annual art tours. Located an hour and a half from Washington DC and Baltimore, The Gallery By The River is a popular attraction for visitors crossing the Tred Avon River using the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry, the oldest operating ferry in the country.

Artist's Statement:  I grew up in South Eastern Sweden where to this day textile art is one of the most frequent forms of artistic expression found in public buildings and in private homes. The rich history and tradition of textile art and design became part of my consciousness at a very early stage of my life and the Scandinavian design aesthetic is a strong influence to this day. Most of my tapestries are woven for clients who have formed, to varying degrees, their own concepts of theme, space and color, and I find this confluence of ideas and personal interaction both artistically challenging and very rewarding.

For me, painting is the gateway to tapestry and as I create my water color images, I am thinking of the fiber experience to come, the range of colors and fiber characteristics that will be needed, the intensification of colors that comes with the scale-up to a very large surface and the technical challenges of faithfully weaving the details of the design. I believe that I am drawn to weaving tapestries by the endless fascination of watching the gradual unfolding of the chrysalis that is my design into a mural-scale tapestry that will uplift the spirit and bring new life to an architectural space in a way that fulfills my client’s expectations for a work of enduring beauty and worth. From my personal point of view, weaving a tapestry draws on many parts of my being, the artist’s imagination, the weaver’s skill and the human ability to create.



Location: Royal Oak, Maryland, USA
Membership: The American Tapestry Alliance
Brick and Mortar: The Gallery By The River
Languages spoken: English and Swedish

”Lovers” by Ulrika Leander

72” x 45”

Performance at Ulrika's The Gallery By The River:

Tags: Tapestry, weaving, wall-hanging, gobelin, textile art, art, contemporary tapestry, studio, gallery, hand-woven, art gallery

Donna Loraine Contractor

"Koch Snowflake Fractal"  
Univeral Language Series, by Donna Loraine Contractor
www.donnalorainecontractor.com

Donna Loraine Contractor was born in Waukegan, IL and came to New Mexico to attend St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Since she moved to Albuquerque 23 years ago, she has won over 30 art competitions and commissions throughout the state and country. Contractor’s work incorporates the landscapes and colors of New Mexico with bold contemporary architectural frames that create depth and optical illusions. 

The late Douglas Kent Hall, in The Thread of New Mexico, said, “Contractor combines unlikely dynamic forms with a scintillating palette to achieve an evocative and compelling style of weaving. She utilized traditional....concepts as well as certain graphic constructs that fueled the work of many twentieth-century painters and brings to contemporary tapestry a freshness that is sometimes startling.”

Artist's statement: Why do I weave?

First, I love machines. The loom won out over the pottery wheel with the coming of children. Once I walked into a loom room, saw way it looked, the things it could do, its parts, etc., I was hooked. I now own and weave primarily on an AVL professional 8-harness rug loom with a dobby mechanism, pneumatic tensioning system and a worm gear. See how I love the parts!

Next, I love the materials. From the strong smooth cotton warp to the luster of hand-dyed wools and the sparkle of silks, I continue to be enraptured with the feel and look of textiles. I’m becoming captivated by some unusual materials - stainless steels, paper and UV changing fibers. These will find their way into future work.

Color is a source of constant joy for me and I delight in the full range of its use - bold and surprising color combinations and the subtle gradations of a single color. The colors and the unique quality of light in the Southwest, and the diverse forms of its land and sky scapes, make up a rich and diverse palette.

Finally, I love metaphor. The very act of weaving has become metaphor – the web of life, weaving a tale - and is entwined with my choice of imagery and the use of the window set within a frame, a view to another place, another reality as a motif in my work. I try to achieve a blend of the representational and the abstract and to keep a geometrical contemporary feel in the frames.

ABOUT THE WORK

I usually work on several pieces concurrently. The various themes and motifs of the pieces cross-pollinate each other, the patterns and pleasing ratios found all around us: the golden mean, the spiral of a seed head or the placement of branches on a tree The three specific bodies of work that I am working on concurrently are:

The “Architectonic Series” challenges me to create three-dimensional imagery from a two dimensional plane. M.C. Escher and other optical illusion artists inspired me to create surprising architectonic spaces that seem to change just when you feel you’ve figured them out. Hand-dyed and tightly spun wool, with its particular and beautiful light reflecting characteristics produce a texture and luminosity that no pigment on paper could.

The “Universal Language Series” draws from my background in liberal arts at St. John’s College, and my and studies of Chinese mathematical images. It’s a challenge to make clear what mathematical concepts means without words. Circles, curves and fractal patterns explore the concept of nets or webs, all in order to showcase the principles that order our world.

The “Feng Shui Series” is a meditation on color, balanced energy and finessed design, combining symbols found in the I Ching with geometric forms and vivid hues.
Feng Shui, based on the Taoist vision and understanding of nature, particularly on the idea that the environment is alive and filled with influential energy. The colors in the Feng Shui Series are an expression of one of the five Chinese elements: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. The I Ching symbols describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs, centered on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change.

All the pieces in this series celebrate the precision and elegance of geometric forms and formulas and the beauty of color and balance.

Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Online shops:  

   Tapestry Gallery

   Weaving Southwest

Blog: Donna Loraine Contractor
Membership: American Tapestry Alliance

Languages spoken: English, and a little Hindi ( My husband is from India)

 "Fractured Squares 3"  

Fractured Squares Series, by Donna Loraine Contractor

Tags: Tapestry, Fine Art Tapestry , Tapestry Artist, Hand woven Tapestry, Southwest, Geometric