Artsy Fartsy

A friend and I went to visit the Northrup King Building in old "nordeast" last night. This old building used to be a seed factory. The Northrup King building has four "L" shaped stories and is about a block long. As we walked up the stairs, the door had automatic closers on them consisting of a chain, a counter weight and a pulley. The automatic door closers still worked and I think it's cool that they kept them. Pictures on the wall showed workers filling bags of seed corn (not genetically modified, I'm sure) and rows of typists seated at desks in an open room. Now the building houses art studios. My friend and I focused on textile arts. We looked at looms and rugs and wall hangings. Some rugs were made from rags, old jeans, sparkly threads, organic hand dyed yarns, and cord. We looked over the rugs and tried to figure out how they were made. Some of those looms were very complicated. A couple looms had computers on them to help with complicated patterns. On most rugs, the pattern comes from what is woven back and forth. In one studio, that pattern was in the warp- the vertical threads that run the length of the rug. The look of the rugs was very different but it took us non-weavers a long time to figure out why they looked so different. One room had rugs made in Peru. The colors were bright tangerine, red, turquoise, yellow, purple, green and blue - that was my favorite room. Some of the images had depth and were tapestry more than rugs. They also made pillow covers, table runners, place mats and purses. I looked at all their rugs. The prices on the clearance table were too high for me. Besides, the rugs were too beautiful to put on the floor. I don't think I could walk on something so pretty. We saw some woven clothing that was very attractive. We saw some unusual children's hats made to look like knights from the round table, queens complete with crowns and long braids, a fish, and a hen sitting on a nest. Beside the textiles, we were drawn into some other rooms. One room had kinetic sculptures that moved back and forth in a comforting motion and made sounds. These sculptures were huge - the size of a SUV. One had pipes that moved up and down and reminded me of my grandparent's well house on the farm. Another room had mosaics that were fantastic to look at. Some mosaics were made of glass but most were made of hand-made ceramic tile that incorporated sliced agates, pieces of quartz, river rocks, and even some fossils. By 9 p.m. we were overwhelmed by all we had seen and had to go home to relax.