Archie Brennan & Susan Martin Maffei workshop, May 2011, Georgia

Members of Tapestry Weavers South spent an enlightening few days with master tapestry makers Archie Brennan and Susan Martin Maffei from May 10 through early afternoon on May 15, 2011.  The workshop location was Camp Mikell near Toccoa, Georgia and the weather was beautiful for the entire time with chilly mornings and warm afternoons.

Archie and Susan challenged us with pears... our task began as we were asked to bring two pears to the workshop, along with drawing supplies, colored papers and glue sticks.  We first looked carefully and made line drawings of our pears.  Then we put the drawing aside and cut freely from the paper to make the pear shapes.  Next we began to arrange the cut shapes within an 8" square format.  We considered the relationship of the shapes to each other and also to the edges of the format.  We thought about adding a shelf or table-top to give another quality to the simple composition.

Finally, we warped looms and began to weave color samples of possible color combinations to use to render the suggested pear design from the collage into a tapestry.

During the week we spent time each evening looking at tapestries.  For instance, we were able to see pieces the students had with them either through projected images or the real thing; we viewed a bit of the new DVD about tapestry that Archie and Susan have done (more about that in a minute); Archie showed some of his tapestry pieces from the past few years; and Susan shared images from her body of work.

It was a tremendous learning experience and everyone left with something, whether it was a new bit of knowledge, inspiration and insight or a new friend-in-tapestry.  Many thanks to Archie & Susan for their continuing efforts to educate about the process of tapestry making.  Thanks also go to all of those who worked behind the scenes to cause the workshop to happen so smoothly!

Now... about Archie and Susan's DVD.  It's called "Woven Tapestry Techniques" and holds 16 hours of instruction about tapestry, contained on eight DVDs.  It will be available through their website in the very near future; those of us at the workshop were lucky to be able to purchase some of the first ones.  So far, I've watched DVD 1 about looms, warping, basic weaving and leashes, as well as part of DVD 8--the section about four selvedge weaving.

Can't travel to a workshop?  Well, this series now gives an incredible chance to have a workshop experience with Archie & Susan... in the privacy of one's own home studio, where ever that might be!  The depth of knowledge about tapestry making that both Archie and Susan have is being very generously shared through these DVDs, adding to their grassroots efforts to educate in tapestry.  I very highly recommend it to anyone interested in furthering their understanding of tapestry making.