Bhakti Ziek: A Tenuous Thread | Exhibition Guide

Curatorial Statement
Jordan Eddy

A Tenuous Thread captures the dynamic between Bhakti Ziek’s voracious artistic intellect and humanity’s most intricate and painstaking sculptural discipline. The exhibition also charts the technological leaps that brought Ziek into proliﬁc harmony with her practice.

Read the full statement.
Artist Statement
Bhakti Ziek
I didn’t intend to be a weaver; it began as a tenuous thread, but it became my lifeline. It didn’t lead to a concise understanding of the world or even of the nature of weaving itself, but unfolded into ever-evolving questions about the mechanism of the process, what it has been, can be, and what could I make of it.
Read the full statement.
Installation Views

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Wheel of Life: The Passing on of Knowledge
About the artwork

In 552 AD, the Byzantine emperor sent two Christian monks to China to steal the secrets of silk production. With silkworm larvae hidden in the hollows of their walking sticks, the monks slipped past the guards to the Silk Road and returned to Byzantium with their wiggly cargo intact, marking the end of China’s silk supremacy. In 1989, Ziek wove this textile-themed spy thriller into Wheel of Life: The Passing on of Knowledge, her thesis project at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Ziek’s early-career magnum opus explores many of the themes that would inspire her throughout her half-century weaving career: the cross-cultural interchange of textile technologies and motifs, knowledge-sharing in craft community, and the intellect-driven selection of materials and techniques that become storytelling conduits. Ancestral inheritance was also on Ziek’s mind as she wove this piece: the third panel references her father, who was a gifted cellist.
Panels

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Panel 1 (outer)
Chronological Works
1984: Fiesta
Handwoven brocaded plain weave
Ziek moved to San Miguel De Allende, Mexico in 1971 to study weaving techniques. She furthered her practice in Guatemala from 72 to 76. In Guatemala, she learned the weft brocade structure that you see in Fiesta (as well as in Chakras and D.C. Space, all made within a year of each other). In addition to the warp and weft yarns that make up every weaving, this type of brocade features a supplementary weft yarn that produces raised patterns on the fabric. “I love it that they have this sense of dimension. It’s relief—it’s real,” says Ziek. “All textiles are three-dimensional, but people don’t really think about that.”
1985: Chakras
Painted warp; handwoven brocaded satin weave
Ziek and her husband, the painter Mark Goodwin, spent 16 months on the road from 1982 to 83. They were in India for half of that time, an experience that inspired Ziek to depict chakras, the energy points in Hinduism. “I was reading about chakras, but then I asked myself, ‘Do I really feel them?’” Ziek says. “Weaving is a focusing for me, so I thought, ‘I’ll understand it through weaving.’”

Ziek first executed warp paintings in 1979 at the University of Kansas. “I was so ignorant that
I thought I had invented it (and ironically, my teachers thought so too),” she writes. “But of course the more I learned the more I saw it has been done in many cultures in many ways. In the beginning I would thread my loom with a long warp, then pull the warp I wanted to paint out front onto a table, and paint it with fiber-reactive dyes.”

She continues, “By leaving the warp wet for 24-48 hours (now people call this ‘cold batching’) the reaction between dye and thread would happen so the color is permanent. Then I would use many buckets of water and wash the warp (if not washed, the dust from the dye is unhealthy) and let it dry. Because the threads were already aligned through heddles and reed, they kept the shapes I would paint.”
1996: Storyteller
Weft-backed jacquard
A rare self-portrait in Ziek’s oeuvre, this woven “collage” chronicles her time as a graduate student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the late 1980s. The imagery includes a depiction of Ziek at her backstrap loom, handwritten class notes, and historical textile patterns. The figures running up the left edge of the composition are inspired by Cranbrook’s iconic Orpheus fountain, which reminded Ziek of a similar fountain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in her hometown of New York City.
1997: Florence Cross-Sections
Jacquard weaving
“There’s a map of Florence hidden in this piece,” says Ziek. Early in her teaching career, she took a group of six students on a summer trip to Florence to weave on historical, non-computerized jacquard looms at Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio. They also had the opportunity to work with Rubelli, one of the world’s finest silk mills, to design and produce weavings on a computerized jacquard loom. Florence Cross-Sections was the result of Ziek’s work with Rubelli. She explains, “The curving lines in this piece are diagrams of the weave structures that I used in this weaving, and then the fretwork is just based on my observations walking around Florence.”
2003: Natural Dyes - #2
Warp ikat with natural dyes; handwoven lampas pickup weave
Warp ikat is a dyeing technique akin to tie-dye, where bundles of yarn are strategically wrapped and dipped to create a pattern. Natural Dyes - #2 is dyed with cochineal, coffee, indigo, madder and Osage orange. “Diamonds appear in textiles from every society,” says Ziek. “But I found a personal reason to do it.”

Towards the end of her life, Ziek’s mother spoke of the diamond as a symbol of their intersecting lives: as her daughter’s life opened up, her life was coming to a close. “It’s fairly interesting now that I’m 77,” Ziek says. “I am at a point where it’s closing in. That’s why this retrospective is so important for me. I’m astonished at how much work I have to show.”
2010: Continuum
Handwoven lampas jacquard
On the left side of this work, Ziek chronicles weave structure tests. “It’s like choosing a palette as a painter,” she explains. At center, she depicts tree branches, “but I also see them as synapses in the brain,” she adds. At right, Ziek diagrams a 26-point weave structure over a field of leaves and flowers, using the structures that she tested in the first passage of the piece.
2010: Code
Dyed with tea; handwoven lampas jacquard
Ziek says, “I was coding my website, so I used the code in a weaving.” By dying her fibers with tea and overlaying tree motifs, Ziek compares the branching language of computer coding to organic structures and ecological systems.
2016: Taqueté & Samitum Series
Pictured: Taqueté Rabbit, Handwoven taqueté jacquard
Taqueté and samitum are compound weave structures first used by Coptic weavers (2nd-7th centuries C.E.) and Tang Dynasty Chinese weavers (7th-10th centuries C.E.). The techniques, which allow weavers to incorporate intricate, multicolored imagery into the weft of textiles, subsequently spread to Islamic Spain (8th-15th centuries C.E.), Italy, India, the Ottoman Empire, and beyond. They prefigure lampas, a compound structure that reveals imagery in both the warp and weft of a textile. Ziek uses the lampas structure in the suspended installation Wheel of Life. She is currently executing a lampas weaving on a floor loom at the far end of this exhibition.

Ziek says, “You have to be a weaver to fully understand this work, but I think a lot of people are drawn to diagrams and coding and systems, so there’s a lot of visual intrigue to them even if you don’t know what they’re saying. I made all of this work on my jacquard loom* where I can do imagery more quickly. I could literally handpick this imagery, but I don’t have that much time left. So I have to think about the appropriate equipment for the imagery I want to do.”

* Ziek has a hand-operated electronic jacquard loom called a TC1, allowing her to digitally program the lifting of individual warp threads and then throw the loom’s shuttle by hand.
2018: Rift: 3
Handwoven weft-backed jacquard weaving

Ziek scanned her handwritten studio notes, including some crossed-out mistakes, and programmed her jacquard loom to translate her swooping penstrokes into the gridded and layered language of weaving. “In weaving you’re working on vertical and horizontal planes, so all of the curves in my numbers are created by tiny horizontal dashes,” says Ziek.
2019: Ondulé
Handwoven ondulé weave with twill blocks and plain weave
The mesmerizing visual effect of an ondulé weave structure is produced just as you might imagine: by using a fan-like reed that is manipulated to curve the threads in the warp of the textile. Ziek writes, “In Ondulé, I wove a cloth very loosely—so the weft threads might be one every one or two inches—just to hold the order of my warps. Then I removed this loose weaving from the loom, stretched it on a table, and painted it with dyes.

I painted Ondulé with natural dyes, leaving it damp to set the color for several days. Then I rinsed the threads, put them back on the loom, and unwove the loose weft as I rolled the warps back. Finally,
I wove the weaving with its true weft.”
2020: Messing with History
Handwoven jacquard
“I’m sort of writing on history here. This is a historical image—anyone who knows the history of textiles will know this image,” says Ziek. “The Chinese used it, the Italians used it, the Safavids (of 16th to 18th century Iran) used it. Everyone is copying each other in textiles. I’m doing the same thing, but adding a description of how it’s made over the top of it.”
2020: Information
Handwoven jacquard weaving using taqueté, samit, lampas, double weave and weft-backed structures
“It’s what keeps me interested, what gets me to the loom, to know that lifting one thread versus another makes such a difference,” Ziek says. “I used to write down all of these teaching notes about how to make things, but then I got so tired of losing the pieces of paper. So I started to just put the information in the work.”
2023: Starry Night
Handwoven skip-plain weave jacquard
In the physical exhibition, Starry Night is suspended in our south windows so that viewers can see the back. Ziek explains, “Starry Night is a study of something called skip-plain weave, where colors are paired between the front and the back. And sometimes the colors flip. It’s a dance.”
2023: Camouflage
Handwoven damask jacquard

Ziek’s most recent works—Camouflage and Eclipse—are studies in gilded decadence. “You know, I’m not flashy but I really love gold in textiles,” she says. “I was experimenting, testing all of my different gold yarns. They’re really about my love of pattern.”
All Artworks
(Reverse chronology)
Sampler Series

This collection of samplers spans Ziek’s weaving career from the 1970s to the present—an experimental mini-retrospective within the larger show. She used many of them as teaching tools or studies for her own work. In New York City from 1983 to 87, she made samples that were sold to mills and designers as prototypes or inspiration for their lines. Prices range from $25 to $500, please enquire for imagery and pricing.

Near the sampler series, Ziek's 8-shaft floor loom* is on view, along with studio ephemera and publications by or about the artist. That includes Ziek's books Weaving on a Backstrap Loom, written with her mother Nona, and The Woven Pixel: Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop,** written with Alice Schlein.

*The loom is a pre-1984 8-shaft floor loom made by Macomber Looms in York, Maine.

**This publication is available for free online, and still used by studio arts programs globally.
Enquire.
Studio Views
Enter Bhakti Ziek's Studio

A Tenuous Thread features a recreation of Ziek's studio, which the artist will activate every Thursday and Saturday throughout the exhibition. The images below are of Ziek's studio in Santa Fe, NM.
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Former Students
Feat. Jovencio de la Paz, Ann Morton, Anastatia Spicer, Susie Taylor & Tali Weinberg

Ziek has honored humanity’s weaving lineage with her storied career as an educator, passing on weaving knowledge to generations of students with an emphasis on empathy, respect and curiosity. Scores of these pupils remain woven into the fabric of Ziek’s life and have gone on to become distinguished artists and educators themselves, some of whom are featured alongside Ziek in this retrospective. This display opens a figurative and material dialogue between a teacher and her former students that evokes the knowledge-sharing that is essential to textile craft and innovation.

Key teaching posts in Ziek’s three-decade career include Visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, Assistant Professor of Textile Design at University of Kansas, and Associate Professor in Woven Design (tenured) at Philadelphia University. Ziek has also taught numerous summer intensives at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About the Artist
Biography

Bhakti Ziek is an advocate for weaving in all its forms, as exemplified by her teaching work at an industrial textile program (Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science, tenured) while exhibiting her weavings as an art form. She is an expert in the technology of weaving and the two books she has co-authored (Weaving on a Backstrap Loom and The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop) are bookends on her career and the long history of weaving.

Ziek taught summer courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught full-time at the University of Kansas and Arizona State University. She has also been proud to mentor students at non-traditional facilities, such as Penland School of Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Ziek has a M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Arts, a B.F.A. from the University of Kansas, and a B.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook, NY. She resides in Santa Fe, NM where she furthers her artistic practice and privately teaches.
Learn more.
Press
Pasatiempo

"What's interesting about weaving is that we know so much about cloth," Bhakti Ziek tells Pasatiempo. "From the minute we're born, we're swaddled in it. We're buried in it. (But) who thinks about it being made of these individual threads?"

Read more about Ziek's retrospective in Pasatiempo's March 24 cover story by Spencer Fordin.
Read the story.
Blog
Rebecca Mezoff
Colorado-based weaver Rebecca Mezoff toured A Tenuous Thread with Ziek and Director Jordan Eddy. This is an excerpt from her blog dispatch about the experience:

"You see, weaving is magic. Cloth is part of every person on the planet’s life. Cloth is often made by weaving and the number of structures possible, the ways that the warp and weft interact to create that cloth, are not endless, but there is a vast number of them. Bhakti is someone who understands the ways cloth can be made in a way that seems to be an innate part of her being."

Read the blog.
Blog
Selvedge Magazine
Selvedge, a legendary magazine for textile enthusiasts, featured Jordan Eddy's curatorial statement for A Tenuous Thread on their blog. This is an excerpt:

“Weaving is always slow compared to most methods of making,” Bhakti Ziek recently wrote to me. For example, when she hand-weaves a brocade structure, Ziek can complete about one quarter-inch passage per hour at most. Look around this retrospective, representing over 50 years of Ziek’s ﬁber practice, and consider the patient math of her monumental endeavor.

Read more.
Events
Credits
Curatorial by Jordan Eddy, with contributions from Tiana Japp. Installation by Brad Hart and Christina Ziegler Campbell. Photography by Marylene Mey and Byron Flesher. Words by Jordan Eddy, with contributions from Bhakti Ziek, Spencer Linford, Spencer Fordin and Rebecca Mezoff.

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Bhakti Ziek: A Tenuous Thread | Exhibition Guide

Curatorial Statement

Artist Statement

Installation Views

Wheel of Life: The Passing on of Knowledge

About the artwork

Panels

Chronological Works

1984: Fiesta

1985: Chakras

1996: Storyteller

1997: Florence Cross-Sections

2003: Natural Dyes - #2

2010: Continuum

2010: Code

2016: Taqueté & Samitum Series

2018: Rift: 3

2019: Ondulé

2020: Messing with History

2020: Information

2023: Starry Night

2023: Camouflage

All Artworks

Sampler Series

Studio Views

Enter Bhakti Ziek's Studio

Former Students

Feat. Jovencio de la Paz, Ann Morton, Anastatia Spicer, Susie Taylor & Tali Weinberg

About the Artist

Biography

Press

Blog

Blog

Events

Opening Reception: Bhakti Ziek

Live Demonstrations: Bhakti Ziek

Zoom Talk: Bhakti Ziek

Closing Reception: Bhakti Ziek, Jenny Day, Cristina González & Valerie Rangel

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