Two women on an epic road trip in the 1950s. A Scottish midwife entering her 80s. One of contemporary art’s brightest stars.
Fabric serves as their connective tissue. Louisville brings them together this spring.
The Road Trippers
In 1951, mathematician Ada K. Dietz and textile artist Ruth E. Foster, with their Heinz terrier, “Pickles,” bought a trailer, closed their Long Beach, CA Hobby Looms Studio and headed out on a year-plus tour across the United States and Canada promoting their idea for using algebraic expressions to write weaving drafts.
Weaving drafts are directions for how to set up a loom and how to weave a desired pattern. Blueprints, in a sense, for constructing fabric. For anyone unaccustomed to the complexities of the weaving process, these “blueprints” are no less intimidating than those detailing how to build a skyscraper. Warps and wefts and heddles and tie-ups and draw-downs. Weaving, one quickly discovers, represents a language as well as a skill.
Dietz and Foster met in Detroit where Dietz taught math and Foster, a professional weaver, was studying to improve her craft. Foster inspired Dietz to pick up the practice, with Dietz eventually being challenged to write her own drafts as her skill increased.
“She fell back on mathematical equations because that’s what she knew,” Michelle Amos, Executive Director of the Little Loomhouse in Louisville told Forbes.com. “She experimented with this until she realized that every time she got an interesting pattern in the weaving.”
Dietz application of Algebra on weaving is the focus of an exhibition at the Lou Tate Gallery at the Little Loomhouse through May 14, “Ada K. Dietz, Algebraic Expressions in Handwoven Textiles: with contemporary interpretation provided by members of the Cross Country Weavers.” More on…