The following piece appeared in Issue 1 of Roving Magazine on March 1, 2018.
There is magic in fiber art. It’s a magic that surrounds our practical pursuits to cloth, adorn, and furnish. I come across that muted force in my practice as I fill the space between warp strings. You may find it in the gentle interlock of your stitches or the sewing of a hem on a pair of pants. It’s that moment of shimmering awareness when your handiwork gives way to connection—with oneself and the world. I return to my weaving each day, because that connection I create in my practice is how I heal.
Before taking up weaving, I was a run-of-the-mill man that was disconnected from my feelings and avoided discomfort. Like many men, I was trained in the art of disconnection. Raised by a single mom in a rust belt city in the United States, I was asked to be the man of the house when my parents divorced. In those years, I learned to navigate anxiety, fear, and pain by avoiding my experience of those emotions. Instead of feeling, I would think myself in circles and bind myself up in thought. Feeling was a failure; a failure I was ashamed and fearful of.
In my late twenties, my mom was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. The waves of fear and anxiety crashed down on my shores of my body and mind daily. My mom was the most important person in my life, and she was in danger. I tried all my old tools: disconnecting and avoiding the difficulty. However, the illness never subsided. There was nothing I could do to protect my mom. She continued on with my sister and I by her side in January of 2014. For the year while she was sick and the two years after her passing, I receded into myself. I found it difficult to leave the house or do my job at times. I was so fearful of uncertainty, especially changes I could not control. I coped by plowing through all the difficulty and avoiding the pain.
During my honeymoon in Santa Fe in 2016, I learned a way to overcome my disconnection. My wife and I went to the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center in Espanola, New Mexico for a walk-in-and-weave class. We spent the day weaving rag rugs on a walking loom. Anxiety was present, but there were moments where I lost myself in opening and closing the shed, throwing the shuttle, and setting the edge. It was my first taste of connecting with myself through fiber art. I was able to be present with the pain and experience the freedom of being one with my weaving.
Weaving soon became a path to connect with my pain and heal. A few months after taking the rag rug class, I took a tapestry weaving class with Sarah Neubert (@s.neubert) . Sarah taught me that weaving was a healing, meditative act that could bring us back to ourselves. Those ideas really resonated with my experience in Espanola. I, too, had found a connection with myself in the repetitive over-under work of weaving. With a tapestry loom in hand and new skills to use, I started a weaving practice after that class. Through my practice, I found that weaving unlocked the door to my feelings—a door I had kept locked for a long time. Weaving was an art form that gave me the ability to find that connection with myself and express the emotions related to my parent’s divorce and my mom’s death that I had avoided for some time. After many years of disconnection, I had found a path back to myself.
Those ideas really resonated with my experience in Espanola. I, too, had found a connection with myself in the repetitive over-under work of weaving. With a tapestry loom in hand and new skills to use, I started a weaving practice after that class. Through my practice, I found that weaving unlocked the door to my feelings—a door I had kept locked for a long time. Weaving was an art form that gave me the ability to find that connection with myself and express the emotions related to my parent’s divorce and my mom’s death that I had avoided for some time. After many years of disconnection, I had found a path back to myself.
At the loom, I also started to re-connect with my mom. As I took the initial steps to learn weaving, my mom was always present with me. In Espanola, shuttle in hand, I reflected on her desire to learn Navajo weaving. Weaving that rag rug brought me such joy, because I knew that weaving was a way to honor her memory. As I started my weaving practice at home, my mom remained with me. I reviewed the patterns in her knitting and crochet work and started to integrate them into my tapestries. With each woven row, we were speaking the same woven language and walking the same path. I was completing her unfinished business and healing from the trauma of her loss.
As I continued to heal at the loom, I started to find friendship and community in the fiber community. Writing, poetry, and storytelling have always been powerful vehicles of self-expression for me. I set them aside during my caretaking and grieving period. However, in august of last year, I felt a desire to share my experiences again. I created an Instagram account and started sharing pictures, poems, and stories that emerged out of my practice. Very quickly, I found out I was not alone. I was part of an enormous online community dedicated to weaving. My mom and I were no longer walking this path alone. We were part of a long procession of weavers worldwide.
In October, I met many members of the Instagram weaving community at the Weaving Kind Makerie Modern Weavers retreat in Boulder, CO (@theweavingkind, @themakerie. About 50 weavers and teachers from around the world gathered together to learn, to weave, and to be in community. There was magic in the air the entire weekend. We took workshops, ate together, listened to one another, walked, and dreamed. A community united by a social media platform was made concrete. Aside from the skills learned and stories shared, the biggest gift of that retreat was the feeling that I belonged. As someone who struggled with anxiety and trauma, it’s been hard to feel comfortable in places. At that retreat, I felt so deeply connected to my fellow weavers and the common path that we walked. I felt home.
During the retreat, I resolved to find and connect with my local fiber community. In Natalie Novak’s (@combedthunder) Southwest Weaving Class, she discussed the importance of the Damascus Fiber Arts School, which was close to her home in Portland, OR, to her weaving path. Sitting there listening to Natalie, it dawned on me that I have access to that same sort of community in Denver. Not long before the retreat, a former President of the Rocky Mountain Weaver’s Guild invited me to join the guild for a meeting when she saw me weaving at one of my wife’s clothing pop-ups. Natalie’s experience provided me the motivation to take that invitation to the guild. I decided I would join.
It was a cold December day when I attended my first Rocky Mountain Weaver’s guild (@rockymountainweaversguild) meeting. I was pretty nervous, as I did not know any members of the guild. I have always feared entering spaces where I am the new person. Typically, I am the most anxious in those situations. As I walked into the basement of that church building in South Denver, my nerves were gradually calmed by the overwhelming kindness that I experienced. One-by-one members introduced themselves. I met guild members that participated in the Mountains & Plains fibershed (@fibershedmountainplains) in my region, and they told me of their work to develop a hemp and wool yarn using only materials and tools from our fibershed. Guild members informed me about the natural dye garden and took me on a tour of the guild library and resource room. Once the meeting began, I sat there dumbfounded. How could I be so lucky to be part of such a rich fiber community that is willing to welcome me with such kindness? The abundance of my community left me feeling hopeful and full. I had all I ever needed for an incredible fiber adventure right here in this room!
Reflecting on my weaving path, I feel so grateful to have found this peaceful practice. Gradually, at the loom, I have given myself permission to feel. From that simple act, I have experienced a dramatic opening to the world and discovered that I am deeply connected to myself; my mom; and local and international fiber communities. I found a home in my own body and in the world where I would have least expected it. That is the true magic of my practice, because I never expected to be able to heal. I stand on the precipice of my future fiber path with the feeling that has replaced the dread and fear I felt for so long: excitement.
Bio: James Davis is a weaver and handspinner living in Denver, CO. He approaches fiber art as a meditative, healing practice that he has uses to understand his darkness and light. He is currently working on spinning 80 ounces of Navajo Churro fiber on a Navajo Spindle and weaving a series of tapestries that capture his experience of anxiety, fear, and grief. You can follow along on his weaving path via Instagram @engagedweaving.