From the Heart: A Weaver's Journey Part 1
/Recorded at the 2007 Maiwa Textile Symposium on October 16, 2007
During a symposium in Chicago in 1993, Bhakti Ziek ended her talk with these words:
“This is my present soap box. Change, moment to moment. Breathing in, breathing out. Warp up, weft down. Their intersection is the present.”
Bhakti Ziek has the ability to talk to a group about her life as a weaver while making it seem as if she is sitting talking directly to each person about their own lives and intimate experiences. In this talk, she updates her journey, sharing how a tenuous, fine thread grew into her life line and the sometimes unpredictable path it has taken. Sharing both the triumphs and knots, periods of intense curiosity and spells of disillusionment, she will talk about ways of staying connected that she has found helpful in her struggle to remain involved, creative, and hopeful as an aging weaver, artist, and human being.
Bhakti Ziek
Bhakti Ziek is a weaver, teacher, writer, and lecturer. Currently based in a solar, straw-bale house in New Mexico, she has travelled around the world for the last 40 years collecting and studying textiles as she goes. Her expertise ranges from backstrap weaving to current digital textile processes. Recently she co-authored the book The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop with Alice Schlein.
Bhakti’s weavings have been exhibited extensively for thirty years and are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City. She has inspired others through numerous lectures and workshops, and her writings on contemporary fibre have been published in journals such as Surface Design Journal, American Craft, and Fiberarts. A former college professor (University of Kansas and Philadelphia University), she has a B.A. in psychology from SUNY at Stony Brook, NY; a BFA from the University of Kansas; and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
