New book celebrates the art and legacy of
tapestry weaver Silvia Heyden
Order the book via Pay Pal for $76 (US). $70 book/$6 S&H.
“Movement In Tapestry” by Silvia Heyden, 2022
212 pages, 11” x 11 1/2”
From the Forward by Dr. T’ai Smith, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
– Movement in Tapestry traces, for the first time, Silvia Heyden’s singular, though underrecognized, contribution to the history of modern textile art. The book goes far in opening up a long-overdue dialogue about Heyden’s extensive contributions, commissions, and studio practice, especially as she discovered the thread’s more flexible or curvilinear – indeed its productively unorthodox – capacities. The numerous drawingsand sketchpads that have recently come to light, excerpts of which are included here, along with extensive documentation she had prepared of more than half of her tapestries, provide an overview of her insights into weaving. For Heyden, the beauty and fascination of weaving began with the integral nature of figure and ground, both of which the weaver has to create, unlike a drawing which starts with the background of a sheet of paper, or a painting which starts with a woven canvas. The unique simultaneity of foreground figures and their background forms in weaving leads to numerous further interactions whose balance is particular to weaving, including between technique and aesthetics, between weaving and drawing, between the craft and the art of weaving, culminating in the dialogue between means and meaning, as she liked to say. These dichotomies, between how a tapestry is made and how it is looks, reveal an entire world of profound aesthetic and conceptual ideas.”
“Movement in Tapestry not only provides an extensive documentation and analysis of Silvia Heyden’s work and studio practice, it more importantly places her as a ground-breaking artist of historical significance in the contemporary textile arts genre. This book is a must have not only for browsing through the images of her tapestries, but also for furthering the understanding of designing based on the language of the loom. This book insures that Silvia Heyden’s tapestries, ideas and sense of aesthetic will continue to influence future generations of artists.”
– Elizabeth Buckley, Tapestry Weaver, read entire review here.
