Veronica Pock | Handwoven textiles

Potential

As summer softens into autumn, the mornings are liminal with mist and bejewelled cobwebs. The flowers of high summer are beginning to fade, and dahlias come into their own, brash, loud and brazen in their blaze of colour. As August tails off and September takes over, there’s a sense of movement as nature prepares for the months ahead, fruits and seed heads in abundance, the hedgerows full. I feel poised on the edge of a new phase of work, my creative flow lying fallow over the summer break, but replenished by my travels and now ready to begin again.

And I’m missing my loom, the action of weaving, the meditative motions of creating fabric. It’s time to start weaving…

Studio view

I produce all my work on a Swiss-made Arm loom, more than 20 years old now and bought secondhand with my Start-up grant awarded in 2006. The Swiss manufacturers no longer exist, but Handloom Holdings Ltd now produce updated models and support older models.

I program the weave designs manually into the Selectron control box – I’ve never managed to connect to a computer – but as my primary interest is the material rather than highly technical; weave structures, this works fine for me at the moment, and I have a collection of designs that I refer to and are more than enough for me to explore on the loom. Sometimes limitations are necessary.

Once the pattern has been input, the loom is operated by foot pedals which raise the relevant shafts (and hence threads), through which the weft threads are passed. I have 24 shafts, which gives a huge potential for design. Once into the rhythm of passing the shuttle between the warp takes over, weaving can progress quite quickly, although this depends on the particular threads I’m using in the weft. Paper, for example, takes much longer as it has to be fed in by hand. And of course the setting up of the loom is time consuming, threading each warp thread through the heddles. Each action has its place and can’t be rushed.

And that’s what I love about weaving – it’s a matter of organising the unruly into something with structure and balance, that can be both beautiful and useful.

Arti-Pop Gallery, Den Bosch

If you are ever in Den Bosch, deep in the heart of The Netherlands, do try to make time to visit Arti-Pop Gallery. You will enter a haven of tranquility and calm, housing changing collection of pop-up artworks and home of LOA, the brainchild of Anne-Claire Martens, a curated collection of pieces by artisans working in ceramics, wood turning, Japanese shin work, textiles, crystal ‘alchemy’ and more… Several of my handwoven wall-hangings and cushions are in the collection. You can view them online here.

Summer colour

I love the late summer colours. Dahlias are one of my favourite flowers, and the dahlia border at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire, UK, is always stunning. A last minute trip there in the pouring rain was well worth it as the colours were glowing. A contrast was the previous day with a walk at Beacon Hill in brilliant sunshine, with the wild carrot flower heads and grasses catching the light which is already beginning to reflect the lowering of the sun’s path through the sky. The final picture below shows Wast Water in the Lake District. The deepest lake in England, its bordered on one side by steep scree slopes, full of colour from the rocks but also scraps of negation that manage to cling to the ever-moving surface.

Exhibition stateside

It was very exciting to have work on display in the Hamptons, New York, during August. Several of my pieces were shown, along with a number of other artisans specialising in weaving, thanks to FJ Hakimian, New York City’s purveyor of luxury rugs, carpets and all things woven.

New work

Although I haven’t produced any new work during August, I have finished the pieces I took off the loom in July. A linen, silk and lambswool scarf in delicious blackberry shades is now available online, and an experimental piece using painting techniques on the warp will soon be available. As autumn draws closer, you can explore more of my handwoven scarves online at LiminalWEAVE.

Thank you…

…so much for your support and for joining me on my creative journey through the seasons. Your support and interest really does make a difference. If you’d like to see more of my work and inspirations, I post regularly on Instagram @veronicapock and my work is available online at LiminalWEAVE on Etsy and Saatchi Art. I also have a mailing list; if you would like to keep up to date with latest events and updates you can join by clicking here.

Looking forward to seeing you again in late September,

with warmest wishes, Veronica