"Weaver as collector?"

In response to my Numbers post from a few weeks back, my Fiber studio mate Aaron left a wonderful comment that's had me thinking:

"The validity of repetition is definitely something to ponder. Knowing your work, it is a good thing for you to ponder. Your first complete work in grad school was all about some repetition, and now your second big project is all about the discreet object. Or is it? Weaving is an accumulation and organization of hundreds, thousands even, of strings of yarn. Even though they are mostly one long connected strand of yarn, their treatment is as individual threads (weft variations). Rhythm, the flow of individual parts put together, is integral to weaving. Weaver as collector?" (Aaron McIntosh)

There are so many aspects of weaving that I enjoy, the process rich in metaphor and symbolic content. My loom is a meditative space, where action is slow and rhythmic. I go there with purpose: to create a cloth structure which captures my idea or contains the qualities I desire for further manipulation off the loom. I have woven a lot of cloth. I have sat at my loom for hours at a time passing thread back and forth through the opening in the warp. The low shimmering hiss of steel, wood tapping wood, a soft friction of threads moving against each other: these sounds create the familiar score which plays each time I work. With this as my backdrop, I have had a lot of time to contemplate the significance in the action and product of my labor. It is so important to me that the woven aspect of my work is necessary to the concept, and I feel that the themes of my work in general are very much related to the metaphors I see in weaving. My work is introspective, evocative in some way of a human presence. I reference the body, figure, or spirit, playing between senses of sadness, loss, quiet strength, and hope. As I weave, I believe I infuse these elements into cloth: each pass of the shuttle records the action of my imperfect hand. Time builds cloth, thread by thread, row by row. Collecting. Time. My handwoven material becomes the collection of moments, meditations, the warp and weft like an undecipherable text, a secret, something to be sensed but not necessarily understood. If I could look at all the different cloths I have woven, would their variations tell a story? Though I have ventured off on a romantic tangent here, and do not require that these thoughts occur in the mind of someone viewing my work, they are the fuel which drives me to weave and occupies my imagination as the thread occupies my hands. A careful record, taken down slowly: weaver as collector.