A.I.R. 2008

The Monday Edition.

I think that it is time to answer a few questions. Questions that perhaps I should have addressed when I brought up the subject of Artist In Residence in the first place.
For the past 6 or so years, a local group called the Fredericton Arts Alliance have been sponsoring an Artist in Residency series. It is funded by grants from municipal and provincial governments and so every year they are unsure of how much of a program can be provided. There have been a couple of years that the residency program has been able to run from mid June until the end of September, but this year they only received enough funding for the months of July and August. Every year at the beginning of April a call for applications goes out to past participants of the A.I.R program and to the general public. We were asked to submit a proposal for what we would like to do during the time that we would be on site, as well as images of our work, a bio, etc. I submitted spinning, dyeing, and weaving of scarves.
Each week has two different artists on site and we are required to put in at least 24 hours each. That is no problem for me because every hour that I am there is an hour that I get to do work. It is also the artist responsibility to talk to the public about what they are doing. Not a hardship for me because I love to educate people about the basics of weaving. It gives them a little idea of why I charge what I do for my weavings. At the end of the week we receive an honorarium (money) and that is always helpful for us artistic types.

Fredericton was first established as a military garrison in the "new world" in 1784. For those of you who would like a more in depth history you can look here.

The case mates, as they are called, are a series of arches that are on the ground floor of what used to be the solders barracks a couple of hundred years ago. They were used to store the munitions. Nice eh? The soldiers used to sleep above the explosives while the officers had their own quarters a couple of hundred yards away. In the rooms now are a series of small artist shops. I took this picture right around 5 when some people had already closed their doors for the day. We are opened from 10 until 5 Monday through Saturday and 12 till 5 on Sunday.
This building is located right across from the Craft College, so I get to go home at the end of the day.

So today I finished making a second warp and set up to start a third. Both warps below will be dyed. The one on the right is silk and the one on the left is merino.

I also rinsed out the roving that I dyed yesterday.
And hung out the roving that I dyed on Saturday. It was almost dry and I needed that bottom of the sign to hang out the green roving (it needed to drip) , so I had to find a new home for the orange. I noticed a couple of big hooks on the door and hung it up.
I also wove a bit, spun a bit, talked to a bunch of people again. I also dyed a bit of roving that I had, along with some feathers for Erin and another small piece of silk for Amber.
Here is some of my stuff under my work bench. It is looking a little disorganized, but now that I am settled in, I know where to find everything.