“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -"
- Emily Dickinson
For years, I kept telling people that I was a weaver-hatchling, a barely feathered bird, trying its wings. For the first weaving in my new studio, new home, new life was supposed to be a quiet aquiescence that this part of my weaver life was perhaps behind me. That it was time to fly.
A simple idea: something simple, getting more complex, with a bird taking flight.
A draft inspired by Escher's Metamorphosis II, overlaid with a bird in the style of early photographic studies of movement - a sitting bird, a bird opening its wings, a bird flapping its wings downward, etc.
It took me a couple of months to slowly put all of the above together and to figure out how I wanted to weave it. Then a week of intensive thought and about 20-25 hours actively drafting in Fiberworks (including side-quests) to put the draft together.
I do not have to over-explain the draft to you. There is nothing, there is something, there is more, there is too much and then it reverses.
Over drafting and the next few weeks, when I did not have time to weave, the bird has changed into a flock of birds. Crows, to be more specific - birds are almost always crows or ravens or starlings in my head. I found a photograph of an actual flock of crows by fotokostic on Getty Images and edited it to suit my needs.
The flock flies on one half of the weaving only, the furthermost bird marking the middle. The second half is... Anticipation. Freedom. Hope.
Where do you think birds fly?
Where do you think a human life flies?
In the process, the wrap stopped being about me and started to be about itself.
I have no better words to explain it.
And the poem "Hope" by Emily Dickinson filled in the gaps.
