Volunteer sunflower underneath one of the bird feeders in the backyard.
Hi Friends,
Last week I was surfing the Internet, and I came across the artwork of Tali Weinberg. Weinberg has several bodies of work, and the one that caught my eye was her “Alternate Readings” woven pieces from 2024.
Here’s now Weinberg describes her process in creating this work:
I shred, spin, and weave discarded New York Times Magazines to metabolize the climate, health, and social crises featured in their pages. Before shredding, I save text fragments from the articles, combining them into short poems to accompany each page-sized weaving.
The work is beautiful, and I wondered — how do you spin magazine paper? I’ve woven with strips of paper before, but I’ve never spun it.
I’ve seen videos about spinning Japanese papers, a process called Shifu, but that’s a very different animal. Those papers are soft, pliable and more fiber-like. Magazine paper is brittle and stiff.
So of course I had to try it. I took strips of magazine paper and gave it a twist, both wet and dry. The results were less than stellar. I lost a lot of color and detail in the paper, and it looks dull and uninteresting.
Then I thought — maybe momigami, scrunching up the strips of paper to soften them for weaving.
Also dull and uninteresting.
The spinning process remains a mystery, but I thought I’d try weaving with magazine paper cut into thin strips. I don’t have a shredder, so I cut the strips as thin as I could.
Here’s my first attempt.
The aqua warp and weft yarns are too thick and they’re dominating the piece. I decided to try it again with thinner yarns. Weinberg used embroidery thread, which is very thin.
I also thought about switching to a 5-dent reed, to space the warp out more, but decided to stay with the 7.5-dent reed for the time being.
Here’s my second attempt.
I think the thinner yarns are better, but I’m not too keen on the black, gray, pink and white colors. The magazine colors are the same in both pieces, and they work better with the aqua yarns.
My pieces are so perfect, and Weinberg’s pieces are so wonderfully imperfect and messy. I think it’s because she’s using shredded paper, which is a lot thinner and more pliable than my cut strips.
Oh well. Live and learn. I’m not sure where this work is going, but it was interesting to try it out. I’m sure I’ll use it in something one of these days.
How do you spin magazine paper? Any ideas? I’m still trying to figure it out, and I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. You can share them with us in the comments section below.
With love and appreciation,
Cassandra