I’m going to debrief for you my latest piece Coimadai Vessel. It used some unusual techniques that might be of interest to you in your own arts practice.
Coimadai is a farming area nestled in the hill just outside of where I currently live in Bacchus Marsh. Coimadai is pronounced cor-MY-da and means “Resting Kangaroo”. If you say it any other way they know you’re a newby and not a full local.
This piece is one I’ve wanted to make for a while. The family of good friend of mine raise sheep on their farm in Coimadai. I love visiting and seeing their photos of the views around the farm. This same friend passed on her wool threads left over from when she used to weave. These same threads she inherited from another friend who worked at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. Apparently she had brought home far more wool than she could ever use.
So they’ve been waiting to be used for a little while.
At this point you can probably see how this happened. I have supplies from a friend who has views I love to look at. Weaving those views seemed the next logical step.
Or is that just me?
I had thought I’d do just a flat framed piece. However I had recently seen some artists making woven vases, by flat weaving then sewing them into the 3D item. Having woven in the round before I wanted to give that a try.
And that’s how the craziness that is Coimadai Vessel came about.
Let me tell you about the loom I used.
I started with a round wooden embroidery hoop. Then cut notches in at regular intervals as channels to help hold the warp string. This was mostly successful, but I’m considering adding a padded tape to help the loom grip the warp threads. Most threads were held reasonably well. However there were a lot I was constantly retensioning. A couple that were held so tightly that the tension couldn’t be adjusted at all. There might be a little fine tuning before trying this again.
I begun weaving Coimadai Vessel with the loom flat, to get a disc to be the base of the piece. I then sewed a wooden disc I purchased from a craft store onto the woven circle. This was to reinforce the base and give it structure.
It was then time to go up. I released all the warp thread from the loom and I placed a vase on the base. I placed two bits of wire I had on hand (from sparklers) across the top of the vase. Then balanced the hoop on top of those. Later I cut some channels in the bottom of the loom to keep the wires neatly in place. From there I had the structure to weave up. It served me well for a while until I was getting too close to the top. Then I replaced the vase with a plastic bottle.
The benefit of the bottle was that I was able to heat the wire and push it straight through. This created a far more sturdy platform for the embroidery hoop. The downside was the bottle was very light. It didn’t hold the Vessel still for me as well as the vase had. Even after filling it with all the marbles I could find.
I think next time I might just start with the bottle and try and find more marbles or other weights.
Under the base I had a small lazy susan. This enabled me to easily turn the whole piece as I worked. It also made it easy to take videos of it spinning for social media.
How I felt about the piece.
As motivation for getting Coimadai Vessel finished I planned on entering the piece in the local Rotary Art Show. At the time I submitted the paperwork I was not even a third of the way through.
I was very worried about this piece. Here I was trying a new technique on a piece where I was greatly invested in the outcome. Which is never a brilliant idea. Test pieces are a great idea, but when you have a piece like Coimadai Vessel nagging at the back off your brain it’s all too tempting to just leap in. While we do always want perfection these are not the optimal conditions.
I was unsure if it would even stand unaided. The warp string I used was very fine so it was purely the packed wool that would hold piece up. Fortunately the wool was enough and Coimadai Vessel sits pretty well. I like the way it is soft and slouchy but holds it’s shape.
When weaving there can be an issue where if you haven’t laid down enough rows the whole piece is packed down the image might be more squat than you wanted. Given I’m a little out of practice the hills are smoother than I’d hoped. Overall I think it gives a fairly good representation of the view, but it’s far from accurate.
I was pretty happy with the piece. It looked pretty well as imagined and had good feedback in social media. I felt the local content of the piece would play better with the Art Show judges than my past submissions. Many of which can be seen in my store. My work tends to sit between their categories. Their main categories are paintings (4 separate categories) and photography. When I first started submitting works there was a single category for everything that was not paint and photograph. My fibre arts were being judged against metalwork and ceramics etc. I’d love to see a category specifically for textiles, but there aren’t many of us who enter.
Not winning a prize is fine with me, it would be lovely, but there are nearly a thousand pieces entered. Since my work doesn’t fit easily into their expectations I had never expected a win. However I was disappointed with the way Coimadai Vessel was displayed when I attended the show. It had sadly collapsed in on itself at the bottom and the fence was not visible. Otherwise the piece stood fine but I was very disappointed to see it like that. My partner put in a complaint and one of the organisers came to speak with me. She said it was standing well when the judges saw it but a child must have messed with it. I’m not sure that’s the case, but I understand the organisers didn’t necessarily cause it to happen. While it’s nice that Coimadai Vessel was ok when the judges saw it. It certainly wasn’t when the purchasing public came through.
It was an advertisement for my work and certainly didn’t win me any potential clients in that state.
Coimadai Vessel will be going to live with my friend. As a recognition of her friendship, and thanks for the wool.
More reels of Coimadai Vessel can be seen on my Instagram dated between February 19 and June 1 2024.
