Morning Journal/ Kristi R. Garabrandt Local weaver Besty Wells works the loom she purchased in 1990 and continues to use to craft a sofa throw to be raffled off to raise funds for the Museum of Ceramics.
CALCUTTA — Artist/Weaver Betsy Wells has had a lifelong passion for art. She was exposed to art at an early age by her father who was a designer and artist.
She attended Ohio University (OU) as a fine art major. It was at OU where she discovered her passion for weaving.
“We had to take a certain number of hours of crafts. I took ceramics, pottery, photography, jewelry making and weaving, and well, I just fell in love with weaving,” Wells said. “I just fell in love with it and with working with the yarns and I just loved it for so much I took it for two years down at OU.”
With a focus on weaving, Wells graduated from OU with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in 1969. After graduation she was accepted into the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York where she would receive training for becoming a master weaver.
“I don’t know what I was going to do with that, but that’s where I was heading,” she said.
Wells never made it to RIT, because the summer after college, she met her husband and the closer the time came for her to leave, the less she wanted to leave him for New York.
So she stayed, got married and raised a family. She never became a master weaver.
While she continued with her weaving, she did take a hiatus from it when her three children were little due to a lack of time and space. The room that would eventually become her weaving room served as a nursery at that time.
Her children are grown with children of their own now, so she is back weaving on a regular basis.
She has a weaving room set up in her residence with the loom she purchased around 1990 and has been weaving on ever since. Her loom was made in Quebec, Canada and is the same brand of loom she learned on in college.
When asked how common weaving was, Wells responded that for some time she thought nobody was doing it, but there’s actually a lot of people who do. She also noted that mostly people in rural areas do rugs, rag rugs and items like that.
When asked what types of items she weaves, Wells said that prior to the last five years she was making whatever somebody wanted her to make, items such as placemats, scarves or pillows.
Then she got into making sofa throws and, according to her, after that, that’s all anybody wanted, so that’s what she’s been primarily making for the past six to seven years,
“Fortunately, there is always somebody out there that wants one and that’s great,” Wells said.
Wells noted that she loves to work with cotton fibers and uses a mercerized cotton that produces beautiful colors and holds its color. The throws can be thrown in the washer and dryer and do not need delicate care with the cotton she uses.
Between the time involved in selecting the colors, setting up the loom, doing the weaving and finishing the throws with a twisted fringe, Wells can have 70 to 90 hours invested in the creation of one approximately 44-inch by 64-inch throw.
“But I’m slow, though, I’m very slow,” Wells said. “I don’t care, if I’m doing something I enjoy why would I want to do it fast, so I just take my time.”
There are days when she doesn’t weave at all depending on what is going on in her life and what else she has to do, but there are days when she can spend three to four hours at her loom weaving.
Wells said that as far as people wanted one of her woven throws, the deal is they purchased the yarn and she will make the throw.
“There’s no way anybody can pay for my time, so my deal of purchase the yarn and I’ll make you a soft throw is win-win as far as I’m concerned,” Wells said. “It keeps me busy weaving. I just do it because it’s my recreation and certainly with COVID, it was nice to have something to do.”
The yarn for her throws is sold by the ounce and can cost approximately $120 to $130 for a throw that weighs around 3 pounds.
“That’s just for the yarn. That’s not my time, that’s just the yarn,” Wells said. “But I refuse to use anything less in quality. I’m not going to spend that much time on something with inferior yarn.”
Wells is donating the throw she is currently working on to the Lady Slippers for a raffle to be held probably in the spring.
The Lady Slippers, according to Wells, is a group that promotes art in the community and raises funds for the Museum of Ceramics to support the activities they have for the community and children and to pay for repairs and such for the museum if they can’t get money from the state.
The group works to help keep the museum going and keep projects in the community and try to drum up interests in the local arts.
One of the reasons Wells had agreed to donate her throw for the raffle is so people can see exactly what she does and the work that goes into it.
“You can pick up any catalog and see hand woven this or hand woven that and they are very inexpensive and you know there’s probably some poor child in India making 12 cents for a week,” Wells said. “I would like to think that mine are a little more.”
The raffle for the throw is expected to take place in the spring and tickets are anticipated to sell for $10 a piece with proceeds going to the Museum of Ceramics.
"artist" - Google News
November 28, 2022 at 01:57PM
https://ift.tt/udfwG0E
Local artist/weaver finds satisfaction in weaving and supporting local arts - Morning Journal News
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/RbdOuJD
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Local artist/weaver finds satisfaction in weaving and supporting local arts - Morning Journal News"
Post a Comment