One week ago yesterday I visited the Collections Department of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City, to see the entire series of Archie Brennan’s “Dersu Uzala” tapestries. I have seen them before, both numerous times in Archie and Susan’s (Susan Martin Maffei) home studio, and the last time in an exhibit in Garnerville, NY. In the exhibit the 12 tapestries ran along one long wall in the large gallery. It was my first time to see them all together, and it was exhilarating. The gallery is in an old textile warehouse, a brick building that I remember having dark brick walls in the gallery. I might be wrong about that. Perhaps some of the walls were white plaster. Odd thing, memory.
Here are the tapestries, carefully wrapped in archival tissue with an outer wrapping in something that looked like acetate, nestled in two boxes. I’m not sure I can put words to the thrill of watching each one get unwrapped and laid out on the viewing table.
The light was bright and diffused, a combination I have rarely seen, before being in that room. Between the quality of light and seeing the tapestries laid out horizontally, it was quite a different experience.
Such a thrill to see his techniques up close, the letters, the shadows on each streak of falling snow.
Here is one of my favorite in the s eries. All that beautiful woven surface,the subtle color changes, the wonderful lettering and landscape turning green….the rain. Now let’s take a closer look.
I thought I’d go straight home and practice based on these techniques. Hasn’t happened yet.
Let’s take a moment to watch one the tapestries being unfurled from its protective coverings:
Here is the subtlety of “Dersu” woven into the snowstorm.
Are you feeling the enthusiasm? It is such a unique experience to see these tapestries at this vantage point. All credit for these images goes to my son Chris who is quite smitten with this series. We were both astounded that these pieces will stay in New York. Many of Archie’s other works have gone to Scotland, to the Dovecot Studios and to the National Museum of Scotland.
Let’s look at “The Ravens-An Omen,” which is certainly the most dramatically graphic tapestry in this series.
The imagery is so strong, the colors so saturated. The surfaces are so smooth, with perfect selvedges. Really, I almost needed a break to sit down and recuperate a bit! I was reminded of a statement by one of Archie’s early students, Cheryl Thornton, at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Australia (now the Australian Tapestry Workshop). She said, “I still think of him sitting at the loom and the ease with which he sat there. There was something about his presence sitting…there was no struggle.”
A piece with a meandering slit! How did he do that?
I’d place a bet that all of us want to give this a try. Like his Penelope postcard woven to look like it’s on an angle (Page 103 in Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art). Those selvedges on either side of the slit are a marvel. (The bit of weft showing near the bottom of the slit is just weft that needs to be pushed to the back.)
And here is a view from a different angle. Huge thanks to Christopher for getting these images with so many creative details.
Archie was one with the act of weaving. It seemed to be part of his body, part of his mind and soul. There certainly didn’t ever appear to be any struggle when he sat at the loom. Perhaps all that struggle took place when he thought about a new design, and when he did drawings to express his ideas. I just know that I feel such a sense of awe mixed with a calm contentment when I look at his work, especially at close range.
My son took more than a hundred pictures during our visit. I wish I could share all of them with you. But there is more to this story.
One week later, which was yesterday, I was at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. My guild had an exhibit there for the past five weeks, and yesterday was the day that our hanging committee took down the works. We finished in record time, which gave me time to see another exhibit on view at the museum with a friend of mine from the committee.
This is an exhibition of artworks by the Inuit and Cree communities of the Arctic region of Canada in the far north of Quebec. The region includes Cape Dorset as well as Pangnirtung which sits right at the edge of the Arctic Circle, and is where Archie and Susan taught weaving at the Pangnirtung Weaving Center. Archie wrote a compelling essay about the life style of these people that you can read on page 186 of the book. Now, just one week after spending time with the very tapestries that Archie designed at this very spot, I was seeing all kinds of artwork done by the people of that area. Five weeks earlier I had helped hang our Connecticut State guild’s biennial exhibit without knowing what was on view in a nearby gallery of this museum. There were no tapestries on display in this exhibit, likely because weaving is not a traditional artform there. It’s a land without sheep, for one thing.
The exhibit has hand blocked prints, photographs, drawings, and carvings. I enjoyed all of it, and more so because of knowing that Archie had been in that very place in the early 1990s.
This is the only photo I’ll share from the exhibit. It’s a watercolor by the Canadian man who studied the works of this community, photographed them, and made a documentary about them. He very much reminds of the Dersu Uzala story, where Dersu was hired to be a guide in the Siberian forest for a Russian surveyor who was exploring the area on behalf of the Russian government in the first few years of the 20th century. It was a stroke of serendipity to find this exhibit so soon after visiting Archie’s “Dersu Uzala” at the Cooper Hewitt.
I find this painting particularly compelling. It reminds me of Archie’s “Spring Rain” where the landscape is turning green in blocky shapes, like the blocky shapes of this ice flow. And the mountains rise up as huge blocks of rock. I am pulled to weave this, but we’ll see.
On view in the gallery was one episode of a 7-part documentary called “Leaving None Behind.” You can read about it here. The documentary film was made by the Canadian man who contributed so much to this exhibit, John Houston. Here is a trailer for the series. The documentary is available to rent on Vimeo, which you can access from the trailer.
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