writing | Tien Chiu's Blog

May 25, 2017 by Tien Chiu

Brainstorming

I had a lovely time in Oregon, teaching my “Power Up Your Process” workshop and giving a talk on brainstorming. I thought I’d share some of the ideas in the talk with you, as I think they address some common misconceptions about brainstorming.

First, brainstorming is NOT about creating a work of art. My brainstormed designs all look like they were drawn by a six year old child. In fact, I’m pretty sure a six-year-old could produce better art, given time. But brainstorming is not about taking time to create a great portrait. Brainstorming is about getting as many ideas as quickly as possible – so whatever captures the idea fastest is the best method for brainstorming. In my case, it’s a fast and largely incoherent scrawl.

To demonstrate, here are a few of the brainstormed designs for my piece “Goodbye, Ma,” plus the finished piece.

I knew I wanted a phoenix rising out of something, so I started with some thumbnail sketches to show different poses for the bird. Each of these took only a few seconds, and I didn’t stop to think or adjust details. The sketches are crude, but they were perfect for the occasion, giving me a collection of ideas in just a few minutes.

Next I took some of my favorite poses and sketched them roughly in black and white. Each sketch took less than a minute.

Thumbnail sketches for my piece "Goodbye, Ma" — Thumbnail sketches for my piece “Goodbye, Ma”

Next I took some of my ideas and developed them a little more. Here are a few variants, each of which took about 5-10 minutes:

phoenix brainstorming - rising from flames — phoenix brainstorming – rising from flames

phoenix brainstorming - rising from black hole — phoenix brainstorming – rising from black hole

After I was done brainstorming, I started developing the piece. Here’s the first iteration – just the overall pose and a hint of shading:

After doing that version, I added some shading, and added some blue to “pop” the oranges.

second iteration - light and shadow — second iteration – light and shadow, complementary color

Around this point I realized that it would be great to have the phoenix flying out of a cremation urn, rather than just appearing out of nowhere. So I added a crude sketch to check positioning, and also changed the wing feathers around a bit, experimenting.

phoenix - flying up from urn — phoenix – flying up from urn

Having checked the positioning, I drew in the urn and re-revised the wings to look a bit more fiery:

phoenix with a better-drawn cremation urn

I felt that the piece needed something to indicate that the phoenix was flying upwards, so I added a moon. I also straightened out the feathers and made them more stylistically compatible with the tail:

And in the final iteration, I decided to remove the feet, and made the blue feathers more plentiful. Here is the final drawing for “Goodbye, Ma”:

And here is the finished piece:

Coming back to the start again, here is the first brainstormed sketch:

I used to despair because my brainstormed sketches looked so crude. But now I’ve realized that that’s exactly what they should be. The idea is to test many ideas, so you can select the best one to develop further. Childish scrawls are perfect.

May 17, 2017 by Tien Chiu

A narrow shave

The good news first: after almost six months of setback after setback, I finished threading my loom!!

I know it doesn’t look like much, but at a density of 120 ends per inch, that’s 1,760 threads – quite an effort!

Just as I was about to pop the cork on the champagne bottle, I noticed that I had run out of threads at the very end. There were four empty heddles. What could have caused four empty heddles?

…and then I realized that I had missed four heddles early on, and as a result, virtually all the threads were threaded in the wrong order. Normally you would thread all the heddles in position #1 on the front four modules in sequence front to back, then thread all the heddles in position #1 on the back four modules, again front to back. I had managed to shift the sequence, so instead of being threaded 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 front to back, they were threaded 5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4 front to back. This is the sort of mistake that leads to guzzling a fifth of whiskey and then passing out on the studio floor. And then giving up, pulling everything out, and starting six months’ work over again.

Fortunately, before I went out to get the aforementioned bottle of whiskey, I decided to email the Jacquard Study Group in hopes of finding a solution. I was quickly reassured that I could fix the problem in software, either by “casting out” heddles on the TC-2 or by changing the order of the heddles in the software. Hooray! Disaster (narrowly) averted. But it was a close shave.

Around the time I breathed my sigh of relief, the doorbell rang. It was the mailman, delivering the mail. There were two copies of Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot in the mail. Curious why I would be getting two copies, I paged through the magazine. And there was a wonderful review of my book Master Your Craft!

So exciting.

I’m off in a few days to teach my “Power Up Your Process” workshop for the Eugene Weavers’ Guild. I’m also presenting my “Get Wild: Secrets of Brainstorming” program for them. I’m looking forward to meeting my students and teaching the class!

January 24, 2017 by Tien Chiu

First book review!

I’m pleased to announce that I have my first book review for Master Your Craft!

I got home late last night to find the latest copy of American Craft on my doorstep. American Craft is the member publication of the American Craft Council, and is the pre-eminent magazine for high-end craft. I opened it up, started paging through it, and lo! A book review!

Here’s it is:

Review of Master Your Craft in the magazine American Craft

I’m thrilled to have my first book review published, especially in such an eminent magazine – super exciting!

And of course, when I read the review, the first thing I did was run to Amazon and check out my sales rank. And it was ranked #115 in the Crafts –> Reference category! That is the highest it has ranked since release – in fact, the next highest ranking was only in the 200’s. Very encouraging!

Master Your Craft Amazon sales ranking for January 23, 2017

So yesterday was a wonderfully exciting day. Especially since another marvelous thing also happened – but I’ll tell you about that in my next blog post.

November 11, 2016 by Tien Chiu

SOFA Chicago – Part I

Sorry for the long lapse! I have been traveling like crazy – last week I was in Chicago, this week I’m in Southern California. I’m going to try catching up now…

Last week I went to SOFA Chicago – and what a time I had! I flew in on Thursday afternoon, and spent a very pleasant, low-key Friday with my in-laws before going to the show on Saturday. SOFA Chicago showcases top-flight craftwork – it is put on by galleries, who bring selected works from their featured artists. While there weren’t many textiles, it was an amazing show otherwise – I’ll showcase some of the art in my next blog post.

Chicago is just entering fall, and while it wasn’t yet the blaze of autumn leaves that I’d been hoping for, I did get to see some beautiful fall leaves:

fall leaves in Chicago — autumn tree in Chicago

If you’re wondering why I’m so fascinated by fall, it’s because I haven’t seen a real autumn for almost 30 years. Neither Los Angeles nor the San Francisco Bay Area have what I would call “fall” – yes, a few trees change colors, but most do not. So you get one or two trees changing colors on every street, but you never get a blaze of glory as all the trees change at once. I don’t miss the cold weather, and I definitely don’t miss slush and ice in winter – but I do miss fall. So it was nice getting to see even a little bit of it, for once.

Saturday I went to SOFA. It’s an incredible show – the creme de la creme of craft artists. I’m planning to cover some of the craftwork in a separate post, so I’ll leave that to later – but despite a dearth of textile artists, I found a ton of creative inspiration there. I also got inspiration of a different sort when I went to the Schiffer Publishing booth. My book Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making, and Selling Artisan Work was displayed prominently on a beautiful table. As I walked up to the display, I overheard two people (who were looking through the book) talking excitedly about how wonderful Master Your Craft was and how much they needed what was in it. They were delighted to meet me and get their books signed. Moments like that are golden for writers – they make the four years that went into the book totally worthwhile!

Here’s a pic of myself at the Master Your Craft display, with Pete Schiffer, the president of Schiffer Publishing:

Master Your Craft display at Schiffer Publishing

Later that day I gave my lecture, which was very well-received. The audience wasn’t huge (about 30 people), but they were engaged and attentive, and several people came up after the talk to say how great they thought it was. Sandra, my editor, was in the audience and said it was great to watch people’s eyes light up as they got “Aha!” moments throughout the presentation. And afterwards, ten or twelve people followed me to the Schiffer booth to buy books and get them signed.

Here’s a pic of me at the podium, wearing my jacket Autumn Splendor:

And here I am signing books afterwards:

The day finished on a lovely note. My mother-in-law had gifted a friend with a copy of Master Your Craft, and got a wonderfully enthusiastic thank-you note in return. Here it is:

I’m totally blushing. And delighted, of course! Helping others was my primary goal for the book, and it’s marvelous to hear that I’m succeeding.

I flew home on Sunday morning, still aglow and more certain than ever that spending four years writing the book had been the right thing to do.

October 26, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Many celebrations: cloth, craft, chocolates, and Chicago!

Wow! It’s been an action-packed week – things have been happening so fast I haven’t had a chance to catch up! But here are a few of last week’s highlights:

First, I celebrated a decade of weaving on October 20. Yep, last Thursday marked the 10-year anniversary of my learning to weave! On that fateful day, I brought home an 8-shaft Baby Wolf, and the rest is history.

Here’s my first weaving project:

And here’s my most recent one:

Quite a difference!

Second, I went to the American Craft Council conference, “Present Tense,” and had a wonderful time! It kicked off with a tasting of craft whiskeys:

And I gave a talk. Here’s Chris Amundsen, the executive director of the American Craft Council (who wrote the Foreword for my book Master Your Craft), about to introduce me for my “Creative Blocks” talk:

Tien and Chris Amundsen at "Present Tense" talk — Tien and Chris Amundsen at “Present Tense” talk

I’m pleased to say that the talk went well! The audience was engaged, and we had some great conversation about common creative blocks and how to address them. Much to my interest, one of the most common creative blocks was time and time management. When I got home, I wrote a Creating Craft blog post about finding time for studio work – which seems to have struck a chord: it’s already had more Facebook shares than anything else I’ve written in 14 years of blogging! I’m so glad people are finding it useful – if you are grappling with not enough studio time, check it out! I hope you will find it useful as well.

I also discovered that both the American Craft Council’s magazine American Craft and the Surface Design Association’s publication Surface Design Journal are planning to run reviews of Master Your Craft. And Schiffer Publishing is getting ready to send flyers to 1,000+ craft schools to sell Master Your Craft. So lots of good news there!

Pivoting to chocolate, Chocolates for Charity is now done, and brought in over $4,550 for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Thank you to all who donated! It’s a great cause; the money will fund some great textile programs and exhibits in the coming months.

And here’s a photo of this year’s chocolate haul, 112 pounds of Valrhona chocolate:

Finally, I’m pleased to say that I’ve been invited to give a lecture at SOFA Chicago! This is a large and renowned craft show – one of the top shows for gallery-represented artists/artisans. This is where collectors come to buy high-end craft. Most of the lecturers are very well-known artists sponsored by equally well-known galleries, so this is quite an honor. My talk will be on Saturday, November 5, from 4:30-5:30 in Room B, followed by a book signing from 5:30-6:30pm in the Schiffer Publishing booth. More details at http://www.sofaexpo.com/2016/lecture-series . (For those who would like to attend – SOFA Chicago will be held at Festival Hall, Navy Pier, 600 East Grand Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 .)

So it’s been an action-packed couple of weeks…stay tuned!