You know how, sometimes, you get a song stuck in your head? For me, that song has been The Preamble to the Constitution from Schoolhouse Rock!. Every time some new craziness has hit the news that song just starts playing in my head. After a couple of months of this I decided to try to exorcise that playlist by weaving something that captures my feelings right now.
The words to the Preamble (and the song) are “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” As I typed these words, yes, the melody is running through my head. You can hear it yourself and perhaps get it stuck in your head here.
The piece is hung in a zigzag that depicts the words to the Preamble from once side and a powerful symbol of welcome for our country, the Statue of Liberty from the other side. The edges of the images on both sides are framed with woven caution tape.
Here’s an elevation view showing the complete piece.
The preamble view looks like this – this image shows a little peek-a-boo of the Statue slices but as you move around to the left those little green slivers disapear.
Here’s the Statue of Liberty side.
This piece was designed in Adobe Photoshop and assembled in Adobe InDesign because I needed to exactly align each sliver (words or image) so that I could weave it with the slivers aligned with the weft like this.
I purchased a stock photo taken by Daniel Hurst of the Statue and worked in photoshop to make it weavable. It would be great if this was a “push a button” process but it just isn’t. I liked the little yellow highlights that developed from color indexing but ultimately decided not to weave them keeping the yellow in the caution tape areas only.
From the layout above it went to photoshop for refinement and then on to AdaCAD to apply a range of twills using the black and white warp with black and alternately yellow (for caution), white (for words) and mint green for the statue.
From there the weaving was washed. The halves were split and pieced together and the hems at the now top and bottom were sewn by hand. I left the layers separate in the hem area to make it easy to turn both sides inward. This made a pocket that I later used to put bamboo stiffeners in to help it hang more crisply. I sewed a small steel rod at each fold to give it weight and to keep it hanging straight. I left the rods exposed on the back. Although they are galvanized, I want to keep an eye on them for any rust that might develop. It gets humid here in Georgia.
The piece is hung with fishing line from a board a few feet above. I used some reclaimed wood we had in the garage. My husband William drilled the holes for me in the wood and the little steel rods (he is so great!). I used 2 different lengths of eye bots to suspend the piece from the necessary points to make the zig zag work.
I’ve entered this in a juried competition so if I get in it should just be a matter of hanging the board and connecting the fishing line to get it hanging right. Fingers crossed.
Do I still hear that song every other minute? No, thankfully. Just every other day. I will say that making this has made me feel a little better, like I am at least doing something, even something as small as this. It may just hang in my attic but that is OK.
I am thinking of another piece based on another quote, this time from the Declaration of Independence, that was suggested by a high school classmate on Facebook – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Stay tuned.