For me, the focus of this exhibition was two-fold from the start: a retrospective of Mom's 25 years of weaving; and showcasing her two students' works over six years, (and our family's sincere thanks for their continuing friendship with Mom, because for the last two years they've taken either two trains or a train and a bus to journey to the high rise every fortnight.)
Mom's reason for the exhibition was to showcase different techniques under the heading of "weaving". Combining all three was a cinch as, goodness me, they and another past student tried their hands on many styles, end-products, fibers, and sizes. Visual coherence had to be created with color clusters. I chose three main focus pieces:
Mom's New Zealand moss-inspired tapestry;
Mrs T's yellow and green knotted piece, which I thought had the strongest visual impact in the first instance; and
Mrs E's rag-woven grocery-shopping bag, recycling her mother's (?) silk kimono. This bag is old and the original navy blue handles came apart, so she put on these new lighter ones, which I think work better. I had to hang this from Mom's living room light fixture with fishing lines to photograph, confirming my 10-year-old niece's believe I am the oddest adult she knows.
The store/gallery is up a steep set of stairs.
A large window gives a good view of the inside as we approach the store.
Mom described the walls as pure white, but they had a slight green tinge. She also said we can't touch the walls, so I was obsessed with how/where things could be hung.
The larger part on the street-side is a lovely, light cashmere garment shop.
Mom always described "the gallery" as a tiny, tiny space, and then rang
just before I left to say, upon another visit, it was bigger than she thought. After a recon, we needed more pieces to show; we asked everybody to bring anything they made that they could get their hands on.
I threw out my notes on my last day in Japan, but from memory the space was about less than three meters wide by a little over four long.
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