Over the years I’ve documented my weaving life with headlines and magazine covers posed on the loom–through the pandemic, through January 6 and other dramatic times. And now. I posted this on the day that Renee Good was killed.
This weaving did not begin as a memorial piece. It is a test piece, to weave with a handspun yarn, and to create lines in solid-colored woven shapes in the transparency technique. I’ll post weaving notes later.
I saw the graceful blossom on an embossed silver brandy bowl, on display at MIA in a show of silver from Bergen, Norway.
Here’s the finished piece, photographed on our back deck on a day when the snow is quickly disappearing.
I’ve been working on my Frida Hansen book, and didn’t expect to have much time to weave. But just as I didn’t know this would become a tribute, A Rose for Renee, I didn’t know I would be listening to endless press conferences and discussion of this tragedy. As the petals emerged, as the border reached to the top, I was occupied but filled with increasing dread and fear for my city.
Today my neighbor Bonnie and I went to the site of the shooting, a calm scene with dozens of mourners, and hundreds of flower bouquets. A small sign at the edge looked as bleak as most people feel. Afterwards we picked a Mexican restaurant on Lake Street for lunch, as I’ve read and heard that the immigrant businesses on Lake Street and University Avenue in St. Paul need more patrons.
The most disconcerting word that turned up repeatedly in my conversations with friends in the past few days is helpless. I’ll protest, and donate money, and direct my purchases to support immigrant businesses. And I won’t lose hope for change. This essay broke a bit of my despairing mood, “A Bad Week,” by Anne Lamott. And this: Mayor Frey, Thanks.
Update: A Canadian blog reader encountered this note from Meta when she clicked on my link to an Instagram post featuring Mayor Frey. He is being interviewed by Erin Burnett, a CNN host, hardly an inflammatory thing! Perhaps it was the clip of the president railing against Somalis as garbage, and Minneapolis as a hellhole.
Burnett asks the mayor, “So the president calls you a fool, and the Somalis have destroyed your state. What’s your response?” Jacob Frey says, “That’s neither clever nor is it right. Donald Trump just seems to spew out of his mouth whatever comes to his mind in the moment. But here’s the thing. Come out to Minneapolis. What you won’t find is a hellhole. But a beautiful city. It is a city in a park. You won’t find a community that is tearing down Minneapolis in our Somali Americans. You will find a group of people who are proud to be here, who are proud to call this extraordinary place home. It’s obviously disturbing that the President of the United States would use terms like garbage to talk about an entire community that are Americans. Somali Americans are Americans. They make Minneapolis a better place and we’re proud to have these Americans in our city. I think the other thing we ought to look at is the fact that they’re just indiscriminately going after people, due process is violated, habeas corpus is violated, the entire constitution is in and of itself being thrown in a garbage. So you want to use the term garbage, that’s what Donald Trump is doing right now to the constitution.”
Again, thank you Mayor Frey.