To Peter and All,

Glad you're back, too! Besides your weaving mastery for our minds, the
incredible British wit and humor to your email missives tickle my heart,
even the former M.D. in you comes through. (Hope this is an ok thing to
say.) I missed your teaching in Vermont years ago, but it lives on in some
masterful weavers here.

Yesterday I climbed up in the newly hayed meadows beyond our home
overlooking the Green Mountains, thinking about New England and England.
Stowe is to the west and the Groton Mountains to the east, we're up on a
plateau close to the later. And I marvel that there is a system (the
Internet) connecting all of our "studios" and the thoughts and work that we
pursue in them, whatever their size and location of electricity (which is a
pertinent topic for me as we are building on here).

Survived the dynamite (Fire in the Hole! and a vrooming sound, about eight
blasts, the tire-tread mats woven in the Montreal area worked to protect our
house) and dug up some really fine rocks, one the size of a monolith! This
morning I am watching six guys pour our concrete foundation flooring, like
kids playing in the mud. After jumping up and down in it (in big yellow
galoshes) to test the consistency, they use these long boards to smooth it
out, there is a hand-craft to it.

Because I'm working with a lot of color, I've hauled in my secondary
sectional back beam trailer attachment for my older 60" Norwood to act as a
horizontal warping drum (we'll see) to warp my air-powered loom, to keep the
warp organized in the cramped space. Thanks to weavetech, Ruth & Amy, all
of these conversations are a learning experience for me.

Jyoti

Jyoti Coyle, artist-weaver of Patternland
Email: jyoti@... Website: www.patternland.com

p.s. The fiber as art dialog is poking through -- the issues I ponder are:
Realizing the incredible time and mental energy it takes to architect a
woven statement as fine art (as in the work of Lia Cook, Emily Dubois, Lois
Bryant, Cynthia Schira, Janice Lessman-Moss, etc.) is fiberart now
considered part of the current art movement? Are fiber artists accepted as
the painters and sculptors they are? Is the art world becoming a more
enlightened community? Where does Fiber Decorative become Fiber Art? How I
experience receiving American Craft and The Surface Design Journal vs. Art
in America, for example. Beauty vs. shock value. What is the experiencer
of fine art or fine craft being asked to do by the artist, which gets
philosophical. Fine art and fine craft seem to be operating on the same
level esoterically to me. I've been viewing fine craft glass exhibits and
pondering the intersecting of various craft media, such as the use of woven
threads, real weaving being embedded in glass, possibly woven of
fire-resistant fiber-glass filaments, I believe in Lino Tagliapietra's work.
Is anyone knowledgeable about this?