This is about two rugs. Both were inspired by colors in the northwest sky, and both have a very similar look, but they developed in very different ways.
The first rug is very much like one of the previous rugs. In fact, it’s the same colors, same yarns, except for some minor tweaks. I just wanted to try it again. I started by using yarn colors that alone are not that exciting, trying to put them together in some sort of meaningful way. After laying out all the yarn I wanted to use, they kind of reminded me of the colors in the night sky after the sun sets, as dusk progresses to dawn. Not so much a snapshot in time, but more of a time lapse image, if that makes sense. Kind of in the same way that Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase represents more than one moment in time that you see all at once.
The rug is the second one like it, so I guess there is something I like about it, even if it isn’t really the colors one actually sees in the sky.
The design for the second rug came about very differently. I was coming home on the ferry last fall around sunset and we watched the sun going down from the deck. I took this photo:
Yeah great, beautiful sunset. But then I tuned around to the east and saw this:
Like a lot of people, I normally watch the sunset facing west, not the “back sunset”, or whatever you call it. The western view is the usually the crowd pleaser, but this time the back sunset was really what intrigued me. The subtlety of the colors really struck me – the gradual fade from blue to pink and the more sudden jump to blue-grey.
When I got back to the studio later, I saw a lot of those back sunset colors in the yarn on the shelves and thought I could make a rug with this new color palette.
The colors might be a little more vivid than the original, but for the most part, but it kind of worked.
Up Next: some new takes on some old designs.
Burning Daylight Studios 