HARD RAIN
Wool warp and hand-dyed wool weft
25 by 40 inches, $850
After I wove “The Fire at the Heart of Winter,” a customer at a show paging through my portfolio provided the next step in my design process: pointing to a detail photo of the rug, she asked to see that rug. Later, looking at the detail, I realized it was in itself an intriguing design. I spent some time sketching revisions and alternatives, but I might as well have saved myself the trouble, for the initial detail shot always remained the right design—and after all, I had chosen it myself, in the cropping of the photo.
The new rug’s name came late in the process. While I sat at my loom weaving on a rainy winter evening, I heard Dylan’s song. “Hard Rain” exactly fit the season, my mood, and the character of the colors and the design of the rug.