Category: Creativity Q+A

Terry Wooten, 72, is an oral poet, a bard in the truest sense. This Antrim County artist has authored more than 500 published poems, and memorized 567 poems. Until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wooten regularly traveled to work with school children throughout Michigan on an array of poetry and oral history projects. And, every summer for more than three decades, he lit the fire that illuminates Stone Circle [1], an 88-boulder, three-ring circle on his property 10 miles north of Elk Rapids. Before COVID, under the summer stars, anyone who wanted could recite a poem or tell a story at these Saturday evening gatherings. Unlike the petrified stones, poetry is a living thing and a way for Wooten to talk about everything that interests him in the world. And, by the way, April is National Poetry Month. This interview took place in January 2021. It was conducted by Sarah Bearup-Neal. GAAC Gallery Manager, and was edited for clarity.

Describe the medium in which you work.

I’m an oral poet. I’m a performist poet.

Your work seems to be divided into three boxes: Your own writing practice, working with school children, and Stone Circle.

Actually there’s four boxes. I do the column [2] for the Record-Eagle, too. A lot of times I’ll take the prose of my newspaper columns, and after it’s published, maybe a year later, I’ll concentrate it, change it around into a poem. So I use some of those columns for poetry.

Sometimes when I’m working on a poem and I haven’t finished it, or there’s a line I don’t understand what to do with yet, I’ll perform the poem to kids anyway, and will make up something while performing the poem. After I’ve performed it three or four times, I’ll take the one [version] I like best … and that’s what will become the finished product. Also, you get a lot of insights into your poems when you perform them in the schools and Stone Circle. There might be a line the kids don’t understand, or seems vague to people, and I’ll realize I have to touch it up a bit … [Once, while] working in the Traverse City schools, [a sixth grader who] was born on Sept. 11, 1990 and turned 11 on 9/11 [September 11, 2001], told me the story of going to school and waiting for her mom to bring the [birthday] cupcakes … And it didn’t happen. She felt so violated. During my workshop, I teach kids to talk to write. I told her she should talk that and write it, and she did … I came home and wrote a poem in her voice, and sent a copy to the school. The teacher called me a couple days later and said, You’ve got to come back [to East Elementary]. The Record-Eagle has come to interview Jessica, and we want you there …  

Describe your writing practice.

Very seldom do I get an idea for a poem writing at my desk. That’s where I write them, but I might be sitting out in the sun behind my garage … My granddaughter, Annie, we have a game she likes to play. She’ll sing a song from Frozen [3] and then I’ll do a poem, and then she competes with herself, jumping. One day she jumped so hard she fell on her butt backward, she got up and sat on the swing, wouldn’t look at me or cry, but turned around and said, I landed so hard my front baby tooth hit my shin. It’s loose. Now I have two teeth I can wiggle. The Tooth Fairy will be coming soon. She doesn’t have the [COVID] virus. No fairies do. I was sitting out behind my garage later that day and I thought what a beautiful insight into a 6-year-old, and how they’re dealing with the virus. Fairies are immortal. And so, I came into the house and wrote it down real quick; if I didn’t, it would disappear.

What draws you to poetry?

That changes as you grow. When I was a youngster — 8th, 9th grade — there was a controversy in our school about the books Catcher In The Rye [4] and Lord Of the Flies. [5] Both of those books were banned in my school. The same teacher assigned Walden [6] by Henry David Thoreau— she wasn’t even my teacher. She was in the high school. I got a copy of Walden before they banned that, too … and I read the essay “Civil Disobedience,” [7] and it really touched me — that you could disobey civilly against authority. I remember … walking down this main street in Marion, Michigan, my home town, right in front of [Marion] Hardware, thinking, I want to be a writer. I want to disobey. Civilly. [8] That was the beginning, although I procrastinated two or three more years before I really got into it. But I kept it hidden for three or four more years. I started writing about my senior year; but I was a football player, and I didn’t think that football players were supposed to write poetry. One of the messages I give high school kids is: Go ahead. If you’re a football player, write poetry.

Did you receive any formal training?

No. Other than that one teacher who assigned those books. She was a closet beatnik. Didn’t last too long in my hometown. She was too progressive. She opened me up. She insisted you write your own feelings, and I became addicted to that idea. I only lasted two years in college because my family couldn’t afford college for me. After two years, I quit Western [Michigan University], but I had this attic apartment that my boss-friend [rented] to me for $40 [a month]. I used the university library. I went through a heavy Shelley/Keats/Byron [9] phase, and then I remember when Ezra Pound [10] passed, I went up to the library to look Pound up, and was blown away by the Imagists [11] — some of the first poets besides Walt Whitman [12] who didn’t rhyme … I lived in that attic apartment for seven years in Kalamazoo and read voraciously. I was just fascinated by lines. I even keep notes in lines. [13] I’m somewhat dyslexic, so the line structure and the stanza structure makes my poems a lot more accessible for my eyes. I’m writing more now, more than I could memorize.

You immersed yourself up in the attic, and read, read, read.

Yes. It was a nice little apartment. I have fond memories of it. Sometimes I wish I could go back there and stay there for a week.

Describe your present studio workspace.

I have a wood stove. And I built the stone wall behind it. I have three, 4 ft. x 8 ft. bookshelves. I have a window looking out west, and there’s a lot of boulders out there. I’m into visual feng shui. I love the arch of them. Behind that is a white pine forest. I’m constantly watching deer walk by. Squirrels that drive me nuts. There’s a bird feeder. To the left of the wood stove is a big glass door so I can step out. I have three pear trees out there. I’m constantly watching deer, coyotes, porcupines … It’s about 16 ft. x 24 ft. [interior].

It doesn’t sound like your studio space is confined to the four walls of that room. It sounds like the outdoors is as much a part of your work space — at least in your mind.

Yes. I’m an outdoor person. I’m not well suited to be a writer. You’re not going to catch me at my desk all day long unless it’s bad weather in the winter, and I’m transcribing interviews for my Elders Project [14].

What is the work that happens in that studio space?

Very seldom do I do any memorizing in here. Most of my memorizing is done outside when I’m doing odd jobs around the farm or my home or my mother-in-law’s [15]; but once I get the idea for the poem, or a few lines, I work on my computer. I do most of my composing on the computer. I’ve taken to writing a lot of haikus during the pandemic, and usually I write them out on a piece of paper, and type them out.

What is about the pandemic that has prompted a lot of haikus?

They’re healing. A lot of people really like them because you can remember the beginning by the time you get to the end. Sometimes with a 30 or 40 line poem, you have to read it a few times; you have amnesia, and forget as you go down the poem.

They’re healing and uplifting. A lot of people are dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression. Even as I’m writing something that’s serious, I try to keep it upbeat. I love to use humor. Mark Twain [said] that one of the greatest thing we can do about the human situation [is] that we’re here, and we really don’t know why we’re here, and not going to be here someday, and one of the greatest weapons against that is you can throw your head back and laugh.

Does your workspace facilitate your work?

I do a lot of pacing when I’m writing. And this big glass door is nice. You just get up and stare out the window. I can see the Stone Circle from my room. So it gives me room to walk around in.

How is pacing part of your process?

I’m writing when I’m doing that. I’m constantly composing and memorizing. I like to observe people. And before I became really well known, my wife [Wendi] used to get this question: Now, what does your husband do? It doesn’t look like I’m doing anything. I might be standing on the street, listening to people. I hear the human voice like music. Sometimes, something will come out of someone’s mouth, like: Get a job! When I mowed over my wife’s grandmother’s flowers by accident, she said, What’s wrong with you, you’re a poet. Poets are supposed to love flowers, not mow them down. And that, of course, became the idea for a poet: “What’s Wrong With You.” 

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work?

My themes go all over the place. The first few years, when I was young, the theme was myself, my experiences. [Other ideas came out of] the Elders Project. I would bring 8 – 10 elders from the community into the school, and I teach the kids how to interview them, and the kids will listen to the tapes, and take one story and transcribe it. You never know what the elders are going to tell you about … Sometime I run into veterans. There were two teachers in Elk Rapids and they’d both been at Iwo Jima and they didn’t know because they didn’t talk about it … When I was listening to the tape, transcribing it, one of the guys got really shaky. When I found out about this, I called him and asked if I could come over and talk to you about this? It was the beginning of a good friendship. I wrote a whole series of poems on Iwo Jima and his battle experiences. He was on the beaches for five-and-a-half days with what they called a “Beach Party Group.” It wasn’t hot dogs and potato chips. They worked with explosives … He lost his rifle in the first five minutes.

The themes that are the focus of your work could be anything.

Yes. You just don’t know what’s going to come out of someone’s mouth … I got started on the Elders Project by interviewing my wife’s oldest uncle, who was on the Baatan Death March [16]. They were always told not to ask question it. I ended up doing five or six interviews with him, and ended up writing a book called Lifelines. It healed him. He’d never gotten those words out. He’d carried those words around with him for 60 years, and it changed him; but it depressed me …

It sounds like you need to be a very present listener, or you might miss something.

I use tape recorders … I have a friend who produced a film about Stone Circle [17] but he said the first time he met me he had the sense I was very, very aware of the space around me. I guess I am. I hear voices. It doesn’t have to be a World War II veteran who experienced the Baatan Death March. It could be a little girl telling me about how fairies don’t have the virus. All conversation has that potential for a poem.

How much pre-planning do you do in advance of beginning a new project or composition?

When I write my own poems, very little pre-planning. An idea might just come to me, or something will happen that I’ll want to entertain. With Elders Project — a lot; I have to teach the kids how to interview … Then I have to transcribe the recordings. Once I get all the rough prose down I put switch things around … There’s a lot of satisfaction in taking someone else’s story and turning it into a poem of it and giving it back to them. It helps them tell their story. A lot of them can’t write … It’s healing, although it can be dangerous for me.

Do you work on more than one poem at a time?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Visual artists sometimes have more than one thing on their studio wall. When they hit a block, they’ll move over to the other things, and work back and forth.

I don’t do that so much. I have things in a folder, and I’ll pick things out. I go through phases.

What’s your favorite tool?

Pencil and paper and computer. Another one of my tools is my voice. Just saying the poems, and using your ears. I’m efficient with paper [he cuts an 8 ½” X 11” sheet into quarters, and writes notes on a quarter]. I’m just writing down the initial idea, and then I’ll switch to computer.

When did you commit to working with serious intent? 

I was 18, 19, my freshman year in college. I was already doing things I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to be doing my homework, but I was writing a poem instead.

There are two rules at Stone Circle: No swearing, and poems must be recited by memory. Why by memory?

You can swear down at Stone Circle, but I don’t want the big bad swear words. It depends on the audience, too … As far as the memorization, rules are made to be broken. If a little girl or boy would come to Stone Circle with a poem he or she was going to read, and I said you can’t do that, it would cause more damage than good. I do allow some reading, sometimes.

Why is reciting poetry valued at Stone Circle?

You really get to know a poem … when you memorize them. I take a poem on a piece of paper and carry it around in my back pocket and memorize one or two lines a day. As you’re memorizing a poem, you might realize that a word isn’t working right, or you don’t like the rhythm, and I’ll change that …

Memorization has something to do with embedding the poem into your DNA.

For a while you see the words, and after a while you don’t see the words. It’s just there. It’s interesting — you mention the word DNA … I think fire and telling stories is in our DNA. When people come to Stone Circle you can’t sit around the fire and not want to hear stories. It’s there. We’re wired that way.

There’s a lot of competition for people’s attention today. We’ve moved from making our own entertainment to consuming it. How does Stone Circle stand up in the 21st Century?

It’s something about sitting around on those boulders, in a communal atmosphere and listening to those words that sound like songs and seeing the pictures in your imagination — it pulls us back to an early time. What goes on down at Stone Circle could be 40,000 years old. When we captured fire, it expanded our time. And when we expanded our time, we didn’t just curl up when it got dark. We started sharing stories. There wasn’t TV. There wasn’t radio. And with language came stories and poetry. It’s almost like a psychedelic experience: expanded consciousness. I think people, whether they realize it or not, when they’re down to Stone Circle, it’s something really old that touches them. Some people — they’re not so impressed by it. Fire is a very simple tool, but it’s very old. Consciousness and language have grown up together.

What role does social media play in your practice?

Very little. Every now and then I’ll post a poem on Facebook, just to say, Hey! I’m still out there. It’s kind of like frogs singing in a pond. There’s a January poem I post every year, and people have come to expect that. I post my [Record-Eagle] columns.

How did the column come about?

I wrote the editor of the newspaper and told him about my Elders Project, and asked for a column to expose that. That’s how I got started. I own my columns. I can’t give away the copyright to my art.

What do you believe is the writer’s/poet’s role in the world?

Percy Bysshe Shelley said writers are the unacknowleged legislators of the world. I like what Gary Snyder [18] said in his book The Real Work — that we give voice to animals and critters. They don’t have a voice. I can write and give those animals a voice. They have spiritual rights. To me, it’s the poet’s job to give voice to the birds, to the wooly worms, to the frogs — as well as the other people who don’t write and can’t share their stories.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

I write in lower Northern Michigan, so a lot of that appears as a background in my work. I think rural Michigan is my voice. I write in that vernacular, too.

Did you know any practicing poets / writers when you were growing up?

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

Two people. Undoubtedly, Max Ellison [19], who recited his poems by memory. I met him Labor Day Weekend in 1980, and had 20 poems memorized by the next weekend. He blew me away. And, Glenn Ruggles, [20] an oral historian who was recording voices and writing down in interviews. There wouldn’t be an Elders Project without Glenn Ruggles …

You’ve incorporated elements of both these people’s work into your own practice: reciting by memory and recording oral histories.

Max — I’d never met anyone who recited poetry like he did, or made a living at it. I’d been writing for 25 years and still struggling, I had a little boy, and working on my wife’s [Antrim County] family farm, but within four years I was making a living as a poet. Unfortunately Max passed. Glenn opened me up to oral histories, or HERstories. It’s not just HIS story; it’s HER story, too …

What was it about connecting with Max that put a booster rocket under your poetry practice?

I just didn’t know you could make a living outside a university. And, because I didn’t have a degree, I was being shunned by university poets. Max had been working in schools for years. When he passed, everybody just picked up on me, and invited me [to teach poetry in schools]. One of the reason I dropped out of college, other than there wasn’t a lot of money, is there was a [required] class [in which] you had to teach people how to write and sing a song and get up in front of an audience. I quit the class, and here years later, I make a living as a professional speaker. Where’d this come from? Max.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

That’s easy: My wife. I get mad at her half the time. Especially my columns. She criticizes them, and at first I’ll be disgusted, but then realize she’s right. Not much with my poetry. Feedback for my poems comes from my audiences. I have an advantage over other poets. I’ve been touring for some 30 years in schools and Stone Circles, conferences, and festival. There’s built-in feedback.

Beside the feedback you receive from audiences, what is the role of the performance in your practice? 

It makes the poem come to life. If you do write something down, it’s there. But if you say to them, there’s the power of the oral tradition: You pass them on … Someone asked me once why I broke with tradition by doing my poems orally. I didn’t break with tradition. It’s very old. Chaucer [21] went to Italy and discovered The Decameron tales [22]. He memorized them went back to England and wrote The Canterbury Tales. He couldn’t have done that without the oral tradition. People have passed things down for thousands of years through the oral tradition … There’s a power to the spoken word. I catch that too with my Elders Project. The people say the stories, I transcribe them down into poems, then you turn around and re-memorize them and put them back into the oral tradition. They’re more crystalized. Tightened up. When I teach kids to write, I talk about power words and nerd words. Nerd words are words like: and, really, very, almost, about. Try to get rid of as many of those as possible. Power words are: turtle, trout, belt.

Do the power words hold up better when spoken out loud?

Yes. When you write something like: That’s pretty tough. It’s not “pretty”; it’s tough! We’re sloppy like that when we talk. [When teaching kids] I compare it to making maple syrup. You’re tapping into yourself or you’re tapping into an elder. You’re getting the sap, and you boil it down during the writing process to get the poem …

Will Stone Circle return in 2021 after going on COVID hiatus in 2020?

I hope so. I was at a loss last year. Depends upon the new strains of the virus. I don’t want Stone Circle to end because of the pandemic. We did three or four small [Stone Circle gatherings] last year, but it’s not the same as when you get 100 people. A lot of our audience come from hot spots downstate. You could social distance down there, but at the same time, I blast, I push the words out in the air. It just depends on the pandemic ….. and the red shouldered hawks. If they start nesting down there, it’s going to be a real problem. Two years ago we had some Red Shouldered Hawks build their nest about the Stone Circle wood pile. They’re aggressive birds. I talked to Rebecca Lessard [23], and she said to acclimate yourself to them. Talk to them. Take a radio down there and play it. Recite poetry to them. I still got dive-bombed five times. It’s like being buzzed by a 10 pound hornet … That’s the only times we’ve been closed — for Red Shouldered Hawks and COVID 19. I’m still healthy. I’m a year older than Max when he passed, and that’s a sobering thought, but the fire still burns in me … Not bad for a football player.

Footnotes

1: Read about Stone Circle here.

2: Terry Wooten’s Traverse City Record-Eagle column is Lifelines. It is published the third Sunday of every month in the Northern Living section. He began writing the column in 2010.

3: Frozen is the 2013 animated Disney film based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale “The Snow Queen.”

4: Catcher In The Rye is a novel by J. D. Salinger, partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 and as a novel in 1951. It was originally intended for adults but is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst, alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society.

5: Lord Of The Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.

6: Walden is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. It was first published in 1854.

7: “Civil Disobedience” was published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy an individual’s conscience, and that they have a duty to avoid acquiescing to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.

8: Terry writes: “You’re not supposed to be able to make a living with poetry without working at a university or academy … Being a folk or peoples’ poet was my form of Civil Disobedience. The essay also came in handy when I was resisting the Vietnam War. I was drafted three times, kicked out of Fort Wayne and finally visited by an FBI agent. Turned out my draft board had broken as many laws as I had, and the FBI got me a deferment. Recently I wrote a few poems about my resistance.

9: Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822], John Keats [1795-1821], George Gordon Byron [1788-1824], all English Romantic poets.

10: Ezra Pound [1885-1972] was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry  movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II.

11: Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.

12: Walt Whitman [1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism.

13: Terry writes: “Strong lines of poetry were also something I wanted to emulate. When I was trying to write Lifelines, the story of Jack Miller’s experience of the Bataan Death March and being a POW for the entire war, the story was so gruesome I had to find a more accessible form or eye friendly structure. I started breaking the poems up into stanzas and varying the lengths of the lines. This makes the poems more eye friendly and less intimidating to the reader.”

14: The Elders Project uses oral history interviews to create poetry based on the stories and lives of elders in the community. It was initiated in 2003. In 2013 it won the State History Award in Education from the Historical Society of Michigan.

15: Terry writes:  “In 1975 I married into family of [Antrim County] cherry farmers. They also grew peaches and apples. A year later I started working with McLachlan Orchards. It was a big farm, and I spent a lot of time alone trimming trees, picking up rocks and roots, or thinning peaches. It wasn’t all that inspiring unless you had a poem in your pocket that you were memorizing. Early on I memorized a lot of poetry that way. Before long I started working full time performing poetry. My father-in-law and his two brothers have all passed on now, and most of the land has been sold. But there are still two barns and three other building to keep up and grass to mow. I call this “the farm,” but I never really considered myself a farmer. All the boulders for Stone Circle came from my wife’s family farm. I also help my 90-year-old mother-in-law with her house and lawn. I don’t memorize as many poems as I used to, but I have to keep polishing them up, while working on “the farm” or working around my own house. If I don’t they will fade away.”

16: The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war onto trains. The transfer began on April 9, 1942.

17: The Stone Circle, a 2017 documentary written, directed and produced by Patrick Pfister.

18: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder [b. 1930] is known as the “poet laureate of Deep Ecology.” In his 2015 book The Stone Circle Poems, Terry writes: ” Influenced by … Gary Snyder’s vision of a poet in a more primitive sense, a sort of cultural adhesive that helps hold a community together with its stories, I started building my own poetry forum, which I called Stone Circle.” [p. 20]

19: Max Ellison, Bellaire, Michigan bard and the unofficial poet laureate of Northern Michigan, died in 1985. He was 71.

20: Glenn Ruggles taught for 35 years at Walled Lake Central High School. He was a renown oral historian who summered in Grand Traverse County.

21: Geoffrey Chaucer [c. 1340s-1400] was an English poet and author. Widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales.

22: The Decameron is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio [1313–1375]. The book contains 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death.

23: Rebecca Lessard is a Leelanau County raptor rehabilitator and expert. She is the founder of Wings of Wonder, a raptor education center.

Learn more about Terry Wooten here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

Nancy McRay, 65, is “a fiber artist … mostly a weaver” of tapestries who pushes the medium out of its historic, domestic context, and into the Capital “A” Art world. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan/Fiber Art; but getting there wasn’t a straight line in an academic system that lodged the fiber arts — weaving especially — in the home economics department. Nancy has worked as a studio artist and community arts organizer since 1994. This interview took place in March 2021. It was conducted by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and was edited for clarity. Nancy lives in Williamsburg.

Describe the medium in which you work.

The work I do is tapestry weaving or multi-harness weaving. [1] Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, which means you only see the weft. The warp is covered. The weft is discontinuous, which means that if the weft goes from one edge to the other edge throughout, it’s a striped rug. It’s not a tapestry.

What draws you to the medium in which you work?

I almost feel like I wasn’t given a say in the matter. I’m mysteriously drawn to it. In fact, there have been times I’ve said to myself, I don’t care about fabric; what am I doing?  And yet, every time I try to turn aside from weaving and try to pursue something else — like drawing or painting or sculpture — that’s fun, and I enjoy it; but it’s like, Now I have to get back to my work. I’m pulled back in. I don’t feel like myself unless I’ve woven that day.

It’s not just yarn. I enjoy knitting and crochet and even quilting and sewing; but that’s not my work. I used to own a yarn shop [2] so I would be seduced by soft yarns, textures, colors. My customers would be, as well. When I started a spinning group in my shop I … was bemused by their level of interest in the fiber. They were passionate about which sheep [wool the yarn was made from], the crimp, all of these technical terms. I understood; that’s how I feel about weaving. When I opened [Woven Art] I was intending to sell some yarn; but I was mostly intending to create a weaving center where I could have looms and teach people how to weave. Not everyone is as passionate about weaving as I am, so the direction of the shop became very supportive of knitters.

How did your formal training affect your development as a creative practitioner?

I’m going to tell the story of how all that formal training came about. My parents gave me a [floor] loom when I graduated from [Michigan State University, 1997] with a degree in advertising. My mother was a potter, and she wanted me to have something was just for me, and about me, knowing that I was going to get married and have kids and jobs. She wanted me to have this thing; I don’t know why she chose weaving, but she did … I started taking classes through community ed [East Lansing Arts Workshop.] A teacher, [weaver and gallerist, the late John DeRosa] encouraged me to go back to school and study art. I was 30 at the time. I had three small children, but I did that, and I studied for two years at [Michigan State University] to get just a foundation in art. Up to that point, I was doing some pictorial work and I think that’s why John sent me in that direction … After two years at MSU studying composition, color, painting and drawing and sculpting and all of it, I had this revelation that MSU didn’t have what I needed. In the midst of that realization, I had a conversation with a professor. I was very excited. I’d just been accepted into the East Lansing Art Festival, and I was thrilled. I was going to have a booth. I was a real artist. So, I was telling this professor about that, and he said, Aaaarrrgh, the East Lansing Art Festival. If you want to be in a real art show, the Snake Rodeo [3] up in Old Town [Lansing] is the real art show.

I was so angry at him for devaluing my moment. I lived about a mile-and-a-half from campus, and I remember clearly stomping all the way home. When I got there I called the art department at the University of Michigan, and was able to talk to Sherry Smith and she said, Bring some weavings down. She let me in as a special student. I studied with her for two years. I think that experience taught me that I craved exploring weaving as an art form. When I realized I wasn’t getting that, I went and found it. UM helped validate pursuing fiber as a fine art. After two years, I did make my way into the graduate program.

Media, such as fiber, is still perceived as a domestic material. At MSU, was the message that weaving/fiber weren’t Capital “A” Art disciplines?

There was absolutely no support for me as a fiber artist, although in order to get into the [MSU] program, I gathered up all my weavings to show the dean [of the art department]. She looked at my weavings and said, They’re very painterly. And I thought, I don’t know what she means by that ….. The dean of the college saw the value in pursuing fiber as an art, but she could see I needed a stronger art foundation. None of the professors there acknowledged that I was a weaver, or that I should look deeper into that. They wanted to teach me how to draw, how to work on the computer, how to work in color — but never in the context of fiber. If you wanted to weave, you had to go to home ec … A large part of my practice is helping people understand fiber as art.

Weaving is a partnership between the maker’s hand and the machine [loom]. What have you learned about handwork from weaving?

Every loom I work on presents a different relationship with my body and my hand. One of the great things about weaving is your hands are involved; but really, your whole body is involved. The rigid heddle loom …. presents different possibilities from a floor loom, and not just the fact you could put it under your seat on the airplane; but also, it involves your body more directly. I believe that has an impact on the finished product, although that impact is incredibly subtle — especially since [some] weavers’ goal is to replicate what a machine will do. On the tapestry loom, that loom holds the warp thread rigid while I place the weft thread in, so my impact on the weaving is based on the tension of how I pull the threads in, and how I pack them in. Again, I can replicate what a machine can do, or I can choose not to do that.

So, your loom becomes your partner. It’s another set of hands.

It’s a tool. People often refer to it as a machine. I tend to think of it as a tool I control. My role is the passing of the weft back and forth, and deciding which threads are up, and which threads are down; trying to do my part to keep the weaving even — how I put tension on the weft threads as they go back and forth; but also, there’s a third element. That element has to do with the subtle variations in the yarn. It has to do with the subtle variations of my application. No matter how hard I try to control it, there are variations every time I throw the shuttle [4] I’m handling it differently, and it shows up …

I’m interested in your comment that some weavers strive to replicate what a machine will do. What does that mean?

That is not my goal; but I have been the member of many guilds and taught at guild meetings, and I teach at [Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City] … and [based on students’ comments] I will know if what they’re trying to do is to make something perfect that could be passed off as a machine-made object. They fret about uneven spacing. They fret about uneven edges. And I will give them techniques to improve those, but I really hope that instead they will fall in love with the act of making, and what happens at the intersections, how it feels, how it functions. Did you sew your own clothes when you were younger? I did. I recall thinking it was a high compliment for someone to say, That looks store-bought! … I don’t see the point in doing [replicating machine perfection]. You can go buy machine-like perfection.

Before people achieve mastery of their materials and tools, things never look machine made. They’re wonky. I would liken it to an English teacher who begins teaching the rules of composition and grammar, which one can later break.

Yes. You’re right. It’s much like that. I do agree with that — to some extent. I had a spinning teacher at my shop who worked with beginning spinners. Their first yarns were lumpy, irregular, and she would take that yarn and hold it up to the person, and she would say, You’ll never be able to make yarn like this again. 

The classical Art world worked diligently to erase any trace of the maker’s hand. The fiber arts, however, are especially amenable to showing the maker’s hand.

Maybe, the fact that the fiber arts tend to show its hand makes it more personal and intimate than those other art forms, which can make [fiber art] more terrifying than those other art forms, which is why it’s more suppressed.

Everyone has had personal experience with a quilt or a rug. So people already know fiber — the material and the medium.

Right. And they don’t want to understand it in a different way. That requires something of them.

An entire retooling of their world view?

Right.

How did you think about handwork before you began weaving?

I thought that it was part of who I was. From an early age — 8, 10 years old — I always had a project. Embroidery was my first fiber art project. I think I was annoying my mother, so she took me to Michael’s and bought me an embroidery project … I also explored needlepoint, cross stitch, knitting and crocheting. I always, always had a project. And, I sewed some of my own clothes.

Did you regard that handwork as a hobby, as a diversion, as pleasure?

Yes. All those things. Not as art. I always followed someone else’s pattern, until I got into college [MSU], and then I took a couple of art classes in college, which, in my mind, were completely separate from the needlepoint project I was doing in my dorm room.

Why does working with our hands remain valuable and vital to modern life?

I think often about what is the benefit of what I do, and on dark days  [it seems] there’s no benefit to what I do. You should go march. You should go volunteer somewhere significant … [Working with one’s hands offers] an immediate and obvious benefit to the maker …. There is science that backs that up. It lowers your blood pressure. It calms you. It absorbs you. So, there’s a ton of benefits to the maker; but what about the benefit to people other than the maker? The recipients? The viewers? This is what I wrote this morning [in her journal]: In order to get that benefit, the viewer, user or recipient must first stop and consider the maker. So, the viewer has to try to find out why it was so important to the maker to put in that time, that effort, those resources, and all that thought, into the making of this object … The viewer has to stop and pause for a moment and consider … If they’re willing to do that, the benefit is similar to the benefit of listening to a poem or wonderful music. If you an open yourself to it, you’ll begin to comprehend it’s a language you can only understand fully with the non-verbal part of you. We’re communicating with viewers on this level that is so deep, there aren’t words. My fear is this benefit is lost. It’s very subtle. You have to work to get it. Our society, our world is not amendable to putting in that work to get that benefit. We haven’t been taught how, from grade school on, how to pause, look and consider.

Describe your studio/work space.

It’s in my house. One of my daughters became an architect, and she designed our house. She knew the studio was going to be the most important room for me, and she talked to me extensively about how we wanted it to be … It’s about 12 feet x 20 feet. It has windows on both ends; one of the windows overlooks our lake [Elk Lake]. The other window overlooks the swamp on the other side of the road. I’ve got lot of natural light. I’ve got a wall of shelves that holds yarn and books. I have a big, 4 foot x 6 foot table the builders built for me. It’s basically a large table on saw horses. And then, on top of that, is a separate plywood board that has been grided off [into 1-inch squares] … I love my table. I have many looms. Some of them are in drawers. Some of them are under tables. I’ve got three looms functioning at the moment … I have one floor loom. I would love to have more than one floor loom; but I don’t have that much floor. I have a table loom that’s functional right now. The tapestry loom needs to sit on a table top. They’re upright.

How does your studio/work space facilitate your work? Affect your work?

For the most part, everything I need is right here. Over the years of dabbling in lots of different things, I have lots of different materials that I use if I break away from the loom for a minute. I have to do that from time-to-time. I have to step away from weaving to draw or paint with pastels or play with wire. I say “play,” and I mean play. It’s engaging my brain in a different manner; but I need to do that to stay fresh, and to stay engaged.

Talk a little bit about the cartoons [5] you make for your tapestry.

Weaving with cartoons is something that has happened more recently. Flow: Blood Breath was the first time I used a cartoon. It’s an interesting switch for me. Developing the cartoons is painful. It’s that design process where you’re tweaking and working on it … I think I do most of my composing in my head, when I’m walking, when I’m sleeping, when I’m taking a shower. I’ll do quick sketches in between to try to capture a thought, but most of it is done in my head.

What themes and ideas are the focus of your work?

It tends to be nature based. It tends to be what I see. The area in which I work [Northern Michigan] has had a huge impact on the way I work …

Improvisation is also part of your process.

Right. In fact I think that’s one reason I’ve been resistant to cartoons. The openness to improvisation in my work is important to me. I tend to surprise myself, and it’s very entertaining. It keeps me going.

How do you think of “mistakes” in your work?

Sometimes a “mistake” is something you have to go back and repair, especially in a weaving. Many, many times, more often in painting and drawing, I see [mistakes] as a message from myself, from the deeper self I’m trying to get to. It’s a message: Look at this. See what that is. What is that about?

What prompts the beginning of a project or composition? A theme? Or, something that’s pulled out of thin air?

Both of those things can happen. As you get more into a working artist mode, then it could be you have a show you have to do something for, and it’s a themed show. So that prompts the work …

How much preplanning do you do in advance of beginning a new project or composition?

That varies a lot. I like to work both ways — where I spend a lot of time thinking and planning it, being very intentional. I’m noticing I’m going deeper and deeper into the design process, but I also really love just seeing what happens, which is more difficult with weaving …

You have to be alert and open to the opportunities when they present themselves. How do you keep your mind open? Is it training? A muscle?

It must be a muscle. It’s very rewarding if you can open up to accept that. Let me give you an example. I made two major pieces I did in that last year — one is the River panels, and one is Flow: Blood Breath. Now, I want to make [more work] in response to those two piece, so I’m carrying this [idea] around in my head. [Recently] I’m taking a walk on my street, the same street I walk daily, and these birch trees [along the street] practically throw themselves onto my path and say, Weave me, I want you to weave us … They’re nondescript birch trees … The next time I took a walk I took a camera, and I took a photo of these birch trees, and they’re now on my loom. I’ve walked by these birch trees a hundred times, and this time they said, Weave us. I swear …

Do you work on more than one project at a time?

Yes. The other day, I was writing in my journal and I was describing my studio, and I thought it’s as though I’m sharing the space with six artists. I have three looms set up. I have a collage station that is a rut-buster set up. I begged for a tiny press for my birthday … It’s an open-source, 3D-printed printer … You can print a one-inch square print on it. It’s fun. It’s fascinating, and it’s occupying a quarter of my table. I’ve got all these things spread out around my studio, and I’m also trying to intentionally draw something every day. I have two pieces intended for shows [upcoming], and I work on them at least an hour-and-a-half every day.

Do these activities cross-pollinate?

I’m sure that they do. It’s hard to notice, though. It’s a tiny percentage. It’s like cross training. I’m not a runner; but if you are a runner, you really should do some weight training also, to balance your body. That’s the reason I have all these other outlets. I see it as cross training. It helps balance my art brain. It keeps the creative blood circulating. It must have an impact. Sometimes it’s really direct, but that doesn’t happen very often.

Do you work in a series?

Sometimes. But it’s not always obvious. Like I said earlier, I’m weaving the [Birch] trees as a response to the Rivers series, but I don’t know if that really a series.

What’s your favorite tool?

I really love all my tools. I think, sentimentally, my cherry Norwood floor loom is my favorite tool. It was gifted to me by my husband one Christmas when my youngest was 1, and I remember wanting the loom. The purchase of this really big loom was symbolic of his acknowledgement of the importance to me … Once it was in my living room, in place, I sat down at the loom with my baby in my lap and I felt complete … It felt like a big part of my personal puzzle had clunked into place.

Do you use a sketchbook or journal? What tool do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I journal every morning. And the function of that is twofold. The first function is to clear my mind of debris: to respond to politics; if there’s a family issue, I put it there; just other stuff. And then what happens rather naturally is I start to get to deeper questions. Sometimes work comes from that.

For weavings, anything that has to be done on my floor loom, there’s extensive math and planning that goes with that. I do have a notebook full of those notes: How many yards do I need in warp and weft? What’s the dye formula for this yarn, and what’s the dye formula for that yarn. Technical note taking happens there.

In terms of how I record my thoughts for other pieces, it feels a lot more scattered than that. I cast about for clues everywhere until something falls in place … [After journaling about a weaving in process] I realized [the journal entry] was incredibly autobiographical. I’d [recently] experienced a series of blood clots in my lungs and legs. That was resolved; but it happened again, so I have this underlying concern about my blood flow and the health of my lungs. It’s everpresent. I’m not even aware I’m thinking about it; but on that night when I was journaling I thought, This is what [the weaving Flow: Blood Breath] is about … It’s about [Northern Michigan]; but it’s also about me overcoming the event. That’s where the red spiral [in the weaving] comes in. The rest of it is pretty straightforward: It’s veins, it’s lungs, it’s lakes, and then the red spiral is representative of my own spirit, which overcomes.

How do you come up with a title?

A title is a clue to what the artist is trying to present, that a person might not see just by looking at it. It’s another way into the piece. The best titles cause you to stop and question and look harder in order to find what [the maker] is saying. But sometimes a title is just a label.

I come up with a title in the same way I come up with my next subject. I think and ruminate, think and ruminate, and then it slips into place. It’s not a good answer for someone who’s trying to figure out how to come up with their own titles, except to write about it a lot, pay attention to your thoughts during the day — sometimes it will sneak up on you when you’re cooking. It goes back to trying to remain open to what you’re looking for.

When did you commit to working with serious intent?

It goes back to that teacher I had in the community-based art class who told me I needed to go to art school. The suggestion landed. Before he said that I hadn’t considered that, and then making the commitment to go to school [in the late 1970s] to pursue art.

What role does social media play in your practice?

In my mind I feel deeply that making art is a way of communication, a way of having a conversation with people I will never meet. Social media is an easy way for me to get an image out into the world and get a reaction. I don’t use it well for self-promotion. That’s not usually my intent. My intent is to get an image out into the world, and get a reaction to it … To get feedback from an informed, critical thinker [via social media posts] is something I crave and would like more of. I [also] love to scroll through and see what other people are doing.

What’s social media’s influence on the work you make?

I sure it has some, but I’m not aware of it. I’ve spent too many years battling what other people expectations of my work are versus what it is I want and need to make. I’ve been trying to intentionally hear and listen, but not regard it as direction.

What’s social media’s influence on how you let the world know about the work you make?

I would say there is some pressure on artists to share their work on social media … It’s an expected thing that you should put your work out on Instagram.

What’s the expectation about?

To know you’re visible, I guess. Being an artist is lonely. You work, generally, by in a space by yourself, with thoughts you’ve generated by yourself …. So, if a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear? If creating in your studio on your own, by yourself, you want to share it. You want someone else to see it.

What do you believe is the creative practitioner’s role in the world?

It’s related to the question of skepticism, and believing or not believing in science. Science and art are two sides of the same coin. It’s my belief that the role of science in our world is to explain the way things are, how they function …. Art explains to the world how it feels … It helps you to see the world in a way that’s more human. They both have a role in explaining the world; but art explains how it relates to your soul.

What parts of the world find their way into your work?

I think everything. I really do. And I’m not even aware of it until sometimes later. I’ll look at it and realize what was bothering me or what was in my mind. Obviously, the natural world that I live in influences my images, and I hope to communicate my reverence for my external world, through loving portraits.

You’re involved with a group of fiber artists who collaboratively work on activist projects.

GRETA — Generating Responsibility for the Earth Through Art — is a group of artists, many associated with North Central Michigan College in Petoskey. They generally make collective responses to environmental issues. The first project was the Tempestry knitting project. Each member knit a long panel documenting temperature changes over the course of several years. I did not take part in that. But it was cool! The next project was in response to the problem of invasive species in Michigan — each artist chose a troublemaker to make their image of. The only restrictions were that it be framed in a 12 by 12 inch frame, and that it be fiber based. We also did a series on climate change, in which we all chose some manifestation of what could be our reality in 20 years. I chose climate-driven migration. Currently we are working on a series to complement the invasive species “Rogues Gallery.” This one will feature endangered species. All present in Michigan.

Is this a way for you to comment about the world?

I’ve done some work that’s overtly political … In that case, it is a way to comment. Many years ago, during the Gulf War, I was compelled to make a weaving about the Gulf War. I needed to say what I needed to say in thread. It ended up being a large wall hanging that incorporated garbage bags — that were also made out of oil — an aerial view of the Persian Gulf desert region with … oil wells flaming. Hidden in the desert were missiles, airplanes, helicopters. It didn’t help anyone but me, but I needed to say what I was going to say.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

My parents retired to Old Mission Peninsula in the mid ‘70s. I visited them extensively, and I felt a really deep bond almost immediately, so that when I’m not in this region I feel out of place. I lived in East Lansing for many years, and always felt like I needed to move. Five years ago we finally moved here — built a house on a lake, and I feel so incredibly grateful that I’m finally being in the place I feel I’m supposed to be. Before I would never have entertained the idea of being a landscape artist. I didn’t think that’s who I was, but I’m loving it. It’s an homage to being home.

Is the work you create a reflection of this place?

Yes. Pretty directly. I have a tapestry of what I see out my window. I have a tapestry of a field I walk past. I made the River panels as a comment on the vast water system we enjoy here. And then I made the deeply personal Blood Breath piece that includes that the lakes embedded in my body. I hoping that my work moves more in that direction: that it’s a less literal reflection of what I see, and more about my relationship to this area.

Would you be doing different work if you did not live in Northern Michigan? 

Absolutely. I don’t know what it would be because I don’t live here … I’m sure it would reflect where I lived; of if I didn’t feel so deeply attached to where I live, perhaps it would be more overtly political.

Did you know any practicing studio artists when you were growing up?

No. I don’t believe I did. My mom was an avid potter, then later a painter; but she was adamant that she was not artist because artists were unreliable and weird, and maybe that’s why I didn’t allow myself to think of myself as an artist until I hit [age] 30. It’s really ironic. She was the one who dictated that I have a loom …

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

Most likely it was my mom — both her pushing away from and embracing the duel messages I got … The collective experience of grad school had the most lasting impact. I can’t point to one particular person. Again, it was a mixed bag of messages. I was mostly focused on doing work documenting the impact of DDT in the air from Mexico on the Great Lakes. I had a large committee of professors who looked at my work. The messages I got back from them were really diverse. At one point, I remember feeling like I was in a free fall. I felt no support, and I didn’t know where I was going. In retrospect, there was some value in that because I had to put myself back together before I hit ground, and determine who I was and figure out that even though my existence depended upon their opinion of me, it didn’t. I had to find my way through them — not because of them, but instead of them. That was empowering. It took almost all three years to get to that point …

Closer to the end of my grad school experience I [took a workshop] called “Writing For Artists” with Arlene Raven. She was, at the time, the art critic for the Village Voice. She wrote several books about art and feminism. She helped me clarify my thoughts through her process. I spent the week writing about my art, and lo and behold, I had my thesis at the end of the week. When it came time to present my work in the final defense, I had those words I’d written under her guidance. At the end of it … several professors came to me and said, I had no idea the depth of your work before listening to you now.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

I’m looking for a community to do that. I get a little of that with Shanna [6]. She’s terrific, but mostly I know my work needs something more when she doesn’t say anything. I miss the critique part of being in school, where you get insights. I’m not looking for people to tear the work down or to say critical things that aren’t helpful; but critical things that are intended to be helpful and kind are a great gift, and it’s hard to come by.

What is the role of exhibiting in your practice?

I see art making as a form of communication ….. where I’m making a statement that can’t be made with words; but it’s not complete until someone sees it and responds. That completes the work for me. Even though in most cases I will never know what they think, I’ll never be privy to their thoughts, I’ll know that it was completed because someone else looked and thought.

Do you teach?

Currently, I have an online class for NMC. I much prefer teaching in person. I would love to have fiber studio with all the stuff in it where I could teach more.

How does teaching cross-pollinate with your studio practice?

I think that it reinvigorates my love [of weaving] when I see someone else fall in love with the process, or see their joy or frustration in it. I relate to that deeply and take that back to the studio with me.

What challenges does teaching present to practicing your own work?

Just time. It takes time out of your studio day. It’s the excuse that I lean on … It doesn’t detract from my creative energy.

Footnotes

1.) Nancy writes: “Within a multi-harness loom are frames that contain heddles. Each warp thread must go through a heddle. The order in which you thread the heddles, and on which combination of harnesses, determines the possibility of patterns. The more harnesses, the more complex and greater variety of potential patterns.

2.) Woven Art in East Lansing, Michigan, which Nancy owned from 2005 – 2015.

3.) The Snake Rodeo was renegade art fair staged in Lansing by Michigan State University and Lansing Community College art instructors. It emerged yearly for an indeterminate number of years until the mid-1990s. In 2013, there was an attempt to revive the Snake Rodeo. Read more here.

4.) A shuttle is a fundamental weaving tool. Read more here.

5.) A cartoon is the tapestry’s design, which “took the form of a painting—made on cloth or paper, the same size as the planned tapestry. This cartoon was either temporarily attached to the loom, flush against the backs of the warp threads, and visible in the gaps between the warps; or it was hung on the wall behind the weavers, who followed it by looking at its reflection in a mirror behind the warps …The cartoon was not physically part of the completed tapestry, and could be reused multiple times in order to make duplicate tapestries.”

https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2014/making-a-tapestry

6.) Shanna Robinson is a retired professor of art living in Boyne City, Michigan, and a founding GRETA member.

Learn more about Nancy McRay here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

A conversation with painter Linda Alice Dewey and poet Anne-Marie Oomen about their collaborative project On The Precipice, a small exhibition of four paintings and four companion poems on display in the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Lobby Gallery [April 29 – August 11, 2022]. The GAAC’s exhibition, and this conversation, is an exploration of how artists collaborate, and the tradition of ekphrasis – the practice of creating a literary description of a work of art.