still small voice

It began simple enough. Take the pinwheel window, find a pleasing portion of the pattern and try out some colors. It even became a great puzzle and how I LOVE puzzles - how many colors did I need? where are they involved in the transparency? which colors are better to overlap and which should not?

I wasn't real pleased with the software I've got available to me. I think something new will be on my after Christmas shopping list. Suggestions are always welcome!

I played with a rectangle and a square that was taken out of the original window. But then I was compelled to look at reinserting it. I had a list of contrasts between the window and the inserted rectangle - B&W vs color, opaque vs transparent, rough vs smooth, low vs high epi, "leading" vs no "leading" around the blocks... The list went on and on. I even was looking at limiting myself to my little loom and creating the leading by sewing the woven pieces of glass together.

Then last Friday, I spent the day quietly meditating. The intravert in me thrives on those moments and it's a luxury to take a whole day. There were many things to pass through my mind. I fought hard to not dwell on new color combinations, but to spend time elsewhere. In the end, I succeeded in staying on task and I was rewarded with a moment where the weaving concept changed.

The window is full of groups of threes. That can only be seen in the whole window. So now there are three vertical rectangles each a third of the width of the window. By themselves they are interesting, but together they have meaning and place. I'm excited to see where it goes.

Fiber Glass?

My weaving thoughts keep turning to transparency - which was one of the drivers for the color blending sampler. I wanted to see what could be done with colors. Now I'm at a point of seeing what I can try in transparency. I thought about simple geometrics - maybe even just dropping some squares on the floor to see where they land. Everyday - at least twice a day - I look through a stained glass window I made a few years ago. It attempts to mimic the pinwheel tile pattern in that room. The "twist" I put on the pattern was to make various sizes of the pattern that intersected. As I started working, the studio artist quickly pointed out that the glass would shatter if I stayed that way. So the design then morphed into three layers that decreased in size and later, each layer was placed at different angles like a spinning pinwheel.

What I love about glass is how light brings the piece to life. With the layers of glass, I have the bonus of seeing light change each layer's texture individually and combined. It's one of those things that I discovered after the window was installed and the sun rose the next day.

Now I am sensible enough to know I am not in a position to recreate these glass patterns in my tapestry weaving. (That challenge is for another decade! ;-)) But the pattern begs me to ask - what if these were plain blocks of glass - and what if the blocks were different colors? What effect would the layers bring?

So I've headed back to my CAD package I used to design the window and updated it to how the window really turned out. Now to play with some colors...