At the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church gallery talk this week, I loved a comment made by my weaver friend Gerry Retzlaff. She came to see my transparent tapestries, but wasn’t aware of the quartet of tapestries I wove in Norwegian billedvev style for the Valley Grove churches in southern Minnesota. “I didn’t even know you did this sort of weaving,” Gerry said, as she looked at them quizzically. “I don’t know; they looked sort of old.”
That was the perfect comment! It’s just the sort of effect I sought in making the tapestries to fit into the 1862 Valley Grove stone church.
When I talk about the Valley Grove tapestries, I always mention that up until this project, I always told myself that I don’t do commissions. In this case, creating work that will be seen by generations of people in this beautiful church was a golden opportunity, and the experience of working with an enthusiastic team was so rewarding. (Read more about the full project here.)
Here are two exquisite photos of the churches taken by Margit Johnson from the Valley Grove Preservation Committee, posted recently on her blog, Elevation 922. If you read Margit’s blog, you will want to move to Northfield, MN, and visit Minnesota’s North Shore.
You can see the tapestries at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church through (the fateful day of) November 5, 2024. Sacred Textiles: A Celebration of Faith, Art, and Heritage. They will next be displayed at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in the spring of 2025.