Hello Weavers!

I am filled with anticipation of another great guild year for Tacoma weavers.  This year, our theme is “Optical Hues” specifically, of course, color options in weaving.  

AI says, optical color mixing is a perceptual phenomenon where two or more colors placed close together are seen by the brain as a single, new color.  Our brains and our eyes do have a symbiotic relationship and function, but when the brain is encouraged to think what the eye is seeing, that double curved line in the middle of a blue background becomes a seagull flying in the blue sky.  When the brain sees little blue dots and little yellow dots close together, it sees green. 

I remember back in a high school art class, our teacher was teaching about pointillism, and we were required to choose two colors, opposite on the color wheel, and use only those two in small dots, to create a portrait.  Perhaps it was of a specific famous artist, because I remember mine was Van Gogh.  I chose blue-violet and orange, and I can almost remember the painting.  It was amazing to see how just the use of dots could make shapes and shadows, and definitely a portrait of Van Gogh.

A similar concept is simultaneous contrast:  Two colors, side by side, interact with one another and change our perception accordingly. The effect of this interaction is called simultaneous contrast. Since we rarely see colors in isolation, simultaneous contrast affects our sense of the color that we see. For example, red and blue flowerbeds in a garden are modified where they border each other: the blue appears green and the red, orange.

Our weaving is like little pixels or dots, one up one down, so it’s the perfect medium for optical mixing.  In weaving, we can achieve totally different colors from what color each yarn color is, by using yarns in combination.  I was just looking at my sampler from our workshop with Jennifer Moore, Double Rainbow.  The places where two yarns are used form another color.

At our first meeting, we’ll have an activity.  If you choose, you can select some colorful paint chips to get you started thinking about how colors might interact and combine to create optical mixes.  We’ll proceed through the year, and as our May Challenge see results that we all have created using this concept.

I hope you all have had an amazing summer break, filled with weaving and ice dyeing, and you are back at the loom, or the wheel, or your favorite textile techniques.  We hope you are creating items to offer for sale at our Arts at the Armory event in mid November, and that many of you will participate in the Open Studio Day, October 11th.  

Weave away!

Mimi

Mimi Anderson, President