Plain Cloth Productions

press release: For three months this summer, Marianne Fairbanks and a small team of students will be converting the Image Lab into a Weaving Lab: Plain Cloth Productions. This lab will serve as a site of textile production, exploring the creation of simple cloth on domestic floor looms. Five looms warped with simple yarns will become sites for creating experiments around labor, process, production, meditation, math-based structures and garment production.

Weavers will be present and producing cloth in the lab but also will be available for set times each week to teach visitors how to weave on floor loom #4, the learning loom. Community members can sign up for hour-long sessions to learn to weave on the floor loom, or join us for our public weaving workshops. Visitors will be able to take away small tapestry looms where they can continue producing cloth in their own homes. Hours of operation: The public welcome to visit any time during these hours to observe the weavers, experience weaving on a floor loom or set up individual small tapestry looms that they can take home.

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, 330 N Orchard St, Madison, WI 53715

June 1- August 25

Wednesdays 9-4pm -- floor loom weaving demo at 1pm

Thursdays 9-4pm -- floor loom weaving demo at 1pm

Weaving Lab Events:

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 24th 4-6pm

Closing Reception: Thursday, August 25th 4-6pm

Join us for these Weaving Lab receptions to see some Plain Cloth Productions, weave on a floor loom or tapestry loom and enjoy some light refreshments. The public is welcome to weave with us, to sign up for weaving time on a loom please contact Marianne Fairbanks mfairbanks@wisc.edu.

Marianne Fairbanks is a textile artist and faculty member in Design Studies and that her exhibition Impractical Weaving Suggestions was on view earlier this spring in the Ruth Davis Design Gallery.

History:

In the early 1883, William Goodell Frost, President of Berea College in Madison County, Kentucky created a program called “Fireside Industries.” This initiative was inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and sought to encourage handweaving and to create a fashionable marketplace for the crafted goods. The program provided women with a place to sell the goods woven on their looms, inspired many other craft programs, and served as a model for other weaving cooperatives in the Appalachian Mountains.

Floor looms were used for years in a cottage production of cloth but after the civil war, many families put away their looms as more industrially produced woven fabrics became commercially available. Inspired by “Fireside Industries” Weaving Lab: Plain Cloth Productions will be a site of experimental textile fabrication exploring production concerns beyond labor and value into less concrete inquiries into time, process, materiality and meditation.