When poet Naomi Shihab Nye stepped onstage at a Poetry Center of Chicago reading last year, she brought along an intricate and brightly colored box, handwoven on a loom from paper, broom straw, pieces of maps, and silk thread. Laced through the side panels were strips of paper bearing the words of her poem “The Man Who Makes Brooms.” “This is what happens,” Nye said as she held up the box, “to poems that get lucky.”
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The box came from the loom in the Ravenswood studio of Aimee Picard. An admirer of Lenore Tawney and her “free weaving” or “open warp” weavings, which use such objects as feathers, shells, and paper, Picard has been weaving since she was 14 and supports herself by making simple, traditional fabrics for use in the home or as altar cloths and church vestments. She’s also a writer, but says she prefers making tangible objects to working with the intangibles of language. For her own show, which opens Friday at August House Studio, she’s plunged into the business of helping poems, passages, and abstractions “get lucky” by weaving them into hauntingly beautiful objects.
Picard’s currently an artist in residence at the Cliff Dwellers Club, and the work in this show was funded by a Community Arts Assistance grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council. Ohio’s Ursuline College has invited her to display Hair Shirt in an upcoming exhibit of work by emerging craftswomen.
