God’s Handiwork
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ~ Ephesians 2:10
As we enter the summer season at St. Barnabas, we are featuring hand work including knitting, quilting, sewing, needlepoint, counted cross-stitch and weaving by some of our very own St. B artists. We are grateful to all of the women who have shared their most treasured pieces throughout our Great Hall, Chapel of the Rose and Gallery Wall hallway.
Each blog post will feature our artists so keep coming back learn more about Mary Ellen Baude, Barbara Burke, Diane Byrne, Ruth Harrison, Sue Hillhouse, Sue Kirkpatrick, Barbara Stout and Bethanie Van Camp.
To begin our series, we feature Master Weaver, Andrea Anderson. When she isn’t travelling the world, Andrea fills her days with creating wearable art and unique wall hangings. We are thrilled to welcome her as the Guest Artisan for this year’s Art Camp. Make sure to stop by the Great Hall this Sunday to see her treasured pieces and her extensive loom set-up for a week of weaving with our campers.
Andrea recently shared her journey:
I started to weave in a high school art class called "Fibers." It was the 70's so it included batik, macrame, stitching on burlap and weaving on looms. Something about being able to create my own cloth just spoke to me. I still have that first scarf that I wove. I have now been weaving for over 50 years and have calf muscles that you would not believe. I went on to get an undergraduate degree in Art Education with a minor in Weaving from the University of Maryland. I have taught everything from Early Childhood to College.
I have two pieces that I am very proud of. One is a wall hanging titled "When Morning Gilds the Sky" that received the Handweavers Guild of America award and this rug traveled around the country for 18 months. The other piece is called "Forest of the Night." It is a series of different trees woven in silver on a black background. Each row is a different tree and I designed all of them. About a year before my son got married, I told him that I could not look like every other mother-of-the-groom, I was not going to wear beige and stand in the corner. He said that he understood. I wove the material for a top, skirt and jacket.
I just love the challenge of combing different fibers/colors/patterns to create cloth.
Like a shepherd’s tent my house
has been pulled down and taken from me.
Like a weaver I have rolled up my life,
and he has cut me off from the loom;
day and night you made an end of me.
When you dress (set up) a loom you tie the warp to a stick and the warp is wound around the warp beam. As you weave the warp keeps moving forward and the woven cloth is wound around the front beam. When a warp is finishing you see the stick come over the back beam which signals the end of the warp. This passage always comes to me when I finish a warp. Sometimes a warp seems to go on forever and I want it done so that I can start another on. Sometimes I see the stick coming over the back and I am upset because I want to keep weaving and will not have enough warp to finish what I am currently working on. To me this is like life, sometimes things end too soon and sometimes things just drag.
You can see more of the studio and her work by visiting these websites.
https://www.weaverhouseco.com/books/a-weavers-book-of-8-shaft-patterns
