Impatient For Spring

Kelly Walsh

Interview by L. Valena
February 14, 2023

Let's take it from the top. Can you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

It was a very abstract video with a mottling rainbow of colors that slowly transformed from something that was very diffused and blurry to some sharper shapes. It had no audio, so it was a very single experience in an interesting way. The first thing that popped into my head was from the subtle flickering that happens over the course of the video. It felt very much to me like dappled light through tree leaves. You know, that feeling of when you close your eyes and you turn your face to the sun in a wooded area. It was cool and not what I was expecting.

Where did you go from there?

I went in about six different directions because I'm very bad at narrowing myself, which is always something I like exploring in art. First, I considered taking it in a very different direction, going very nature-inspired and playing on that idea of light through leaves. I'm not an audio person at all, but if I were, I'd want to make music that fit the video. Part of me wanted to because I felt like the silence was a void waiting to be filled. But I'm not an audio person, so I didn't start a new field of art or anything. Finally, I decided that what I really wanted to play with was that evolution of color over the piece and make a more literal interpretation. I guess I felt like I was in a very rainbow place and it met me there.

What happened next?

I have a variety of different looms, and so my first decision was what scale of piece to make, because that would dictate which loom I used. I'd recently gotten these very tiny, like seriously 3-inch wide, toy or educational looms. I wanted to start there because they were new, and I wanted to play with them and just really explore layering color deeply in a small space. My thought was to maybe do a couple of them since the video transformed from blurry to sharp. I could pick a beginning, middle, and end, and have a three-piece that spoke to that transition. But I got in way too deep over my head. Since I started with small looms, I started with small thread, and it was very clearly going to take me too long to fulfill that vision.

Instead, I took it up a step to my tabletop-sized loom, pulled out my paints, and just played with color that way. I wanted to see if I could get the color blending that I envisioned through a combination of multicolored painting. The first threads you load on your loom are called the warp threads, the ones that go vertical in the loom. I thought if I colored those in a rainbow way to play with that “diffusedness,” then I could play with multicolored weft, as well, and just play with color and texture together.

That's so cool. This piece is just freaking gorgeous. Is that something that you've experimented with before? Coloring the warp thread and layering color into it?

Not really. A little bit. I’d played with coloring the warp threads before, but generally because I was going to use a solid-colored weft. You know, something bright, and the whole point would be to make the pattern and the color transition pop more. So this was a new experience for me, and it really excited me because that’s why I signed up to take part in this. I wanted things to push me outside of what I normally do or provide an excuse to strike inspiration and just play. And so that's what I really feel like I ended up with. This piece is definitely not like anything I've made before.

Isn't that the best? Aside from the rainbow gradient stuff that's going on, there's also a patterning here. Can you talk about that?

Absolutely. I was trying to capture that flickering going on and the sharpness that emerges in the piece with these white areas that almost bleed through in a kaleidoscopic way. Inlay is a technique where your weft thread doesn't go all the way across. It only goes part way and it's inlaid with the cloth. It forms a different pattern as the weave structure changes. You know, how many threads I'm going over-under-over-under at a time. In a similar way to painting the warp, this inlay technique is something I've played with before but not in a combination. I was really excited to bring it in.

Does that mean that you can see the same pattern from the other side? I’m trying to envision what would be going on back there.

You can see the pattern a little bit on the other side. The nature of this kind of weaving is that your thread is always either on the top or on the bottom. Any bit that's not visible from the top is going to be visible on the bottom. With this design in particular, the front and back are very similar because they're just interlaced diamonds. So it's almost the same on the back.

Weaving is one of those things that's really complicated to talk about. I'm a talk-with-my-hands person and I just start doing finger motions, asking “Doesn't this make it make sense??”

[laughs] It does to me! So it sounds like there were a couple of different things that you were playing with in combination. Do you think that you will explore any of these things further?

Absolutely. This piece uses more tapestry weaving techniques, and I'm usually a bigger, whole-cloth person. I definitely want to play more with this tapestry wall hanging effect. It's a slower style of weaving, and I usually spend a lot of my time doing production stuff: very long runs where my goal is to be fast as well as good. This process really slowed me down. Tapestry by nature is a much slower style of weaving and I really enjoyed that forced slowness. It really encourages more thoughtfulness in what I'm making. I want to play more with that style of weaving. Also, this inlay effect and layered color have been emerging in some ways in things I've been making, and I want to combine those more and continue playing with those ideas.

This piece is so exciting. Even though I know that it’s very flat because it's one plane of textile that you've created, there's just so much texture and depth in it.

Thank you! I really love playing with texture. I’m a very tactile person, which I think is why I became a weaver. Everything is about how it feels. It's super exciting to know I can evoke that even in a particularly visual piece.

What haven’t we talked about? What would you ask if you were interviewing yourself?

One of the classics that people ask is, “How did you get into weaving?” Weaving sits in this fascinating place that throughout history has straddled industry as well. A lot of people wonder why anyone bothers to learn to do it in the modern era when we have giant computerized looms. And like any craft, obviously because I find it fun and I can create beautiful things.

I used to be a web developer. You could argue that looms were the very first technology and that actually computers were directly inspired by looms. We wouldn't have computers in the form we do today if the guy who invented them hadn't actually been looking at looms and the way they’re programmed with punched cards that create a design and thought, “Hey, I could do something even more complex with that.” So you should thank the loom for that phone in your pocket today. I really enjoyed coding and I built websites using code, but I don't do that anymore because I'm too in love with an even older style of programming now.

When I think of weaving, I think about how it was such a pillar of the Industrial Revolution.

Exactly! The term ‘Luddite’ comes from people who went and smashed big, industrial looms because they thought it was destroying their industry, which I partly get. I could pull out a different soapbox and we can spend the next four hours talking about fashion and how the fashion industry is ruining the world because it's one of the least sustainable industries and fast fashion and all of that. So any chance you get to slow down and actually appreciate a craft is very special.

That's great. And I will get on that soapbox with you. [both laugh] You talked a little bit about this, but can you say more about how this piece relates to the rest of your work?

Most of what I like to make is functional art. We actually use textiles every day of our lives. There's not a moment, maybe just in the shower, when you're not in contact with textiles, but otherwise it impacts so much of our lives. I like my stuff to usually be functional. I mostly make things like kitchen towels or blankets or scarves that you really interact with. So it’s an interesting diversion for me to make something that is mostly intended as a wall piece to just be looked at. But because of just focusing on appearance, I was able to bring in multiple things that I'd used individually in my functional work but had never combined together. I was purely thinking about what it looked like instead of “Are the colors going to wash out over time?” or “Is this inlay going to come apart if it’s in a blanket?” It was interesting to turn off that functional part of my brain and let the other side really go wild and see what happens there.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

The two-week deadline hurts, but it's good. Otherwise, what I would have done is: I actually had a dress planned in my mind. I was going to weave the fabric and then paint the yarn and then sew it... and that was never going to happen in two weeks! So yes, let yourself think realistically. Limitations inspire creativity sometimes. I think this piece is different than anything else I would’ve created and it's more interesting than that dress I first envisioned if I'd had all the time in the world. So enjoy the time limit. And like you say in the prompt email, this is not about being the best, it's just about making something cool. I think all artists have that tiny voice of perfectionism in their mind that they always have to battle. Let go of that. Just play, have fun. I really enjoyed it.

Call Number: M67VA | M69VA.waImpa

Kelly Walsh is a hand weaver living and working in Durham, North Carolina. She worked as a web developer for years before deciding to leave the tech industry to follow her textile artist dreams. She loves exploring the intersections between technology and art, function and decoration, math and color.