mapping the weave

Bathed in spring sunshine and overlooking the city, pictured here are some of the looms that I and a couple of volunteers recently set up recently in the YMCA garden in Darlington. Inspired by a loom created for Stave Hill Ecological Park, these are part of part of an ongoing project, started a few months ago, which I’ve contributed to and written about in a number of previous posts on his blog.

The looms were installed to allow visitor to the garden to weave with natural materials and create tapestries illustrating their responses to the site and findings within it. My interest when choosing where to place these was to complement the fedges recently created in the garden as part of the same project (see flying fedges post) and also have them interact with the site as 'interruptions' or ‘punctuation marks’, drawing the visitors' gaze over the city skyline.

chemically treated japanese knotweed on site

Since installing the looms, Sally Reckert who runs the project has been experimenting with various recipes to create coloured bio plastics that can be used to coat plant material and be used as wefts. Some of these have already been woven into the warps and I am due to go back to Darlington next month to add to this, working with community groups, so expect more pictures to come.

weaving with the left over weed