Designer Spotlight Blog Post – Sheila O’Hara
Welcome back! It’s a NEW Year, and it’s time for a new Designer Spotlight! Sheila O'Hara is a name you can say in the world of weaving, and MANY will know exactly who you are talking about. For 6 decades she has set the bar for Textile Arts. Her pieces have been featured in magazines, and purchased by corporations, museums and private art collections. Whether she is weaving for art or functionality, you can guarantee it will be EXTRAORDINARY!
Without further ado, here is Sheila’s spotlight!
Tell Us About Yourself
It’s hard to believe that I have been weaving for 60 years! Time zipped along and what seemed like all of a sudden, I turned 71 on December 29, 2024! My long handweaving life can be summed up in three types of weavings: Big Wool Woven Artworks, Small Cotton Woven Artworks and Small Cotton Woven Functional Items. There is an overlap in time from one to the other. The long story begins here.
Growing up, my parents would take us to museums, symphony performances, jazz concerts, parks and campgrounds. My mother was a very talented artist in many mediums including sewing, watercolor, photography and drawing. She always had us working on art projects, especially in the summers. She taught us to sew some of our own clothes, to cook, to garden and to use tools. We were encouraged to take art classes in school. Art was part of our everyday life.
How did you get started in weaving?
When I was 10 years old my mom sent me off with two of my sisters to the Josephine D. Randal Junior Museum in San Francisco to take summer art classes. We would ride the streetcar to Market and Castro Streets and climb up the steep hill to the museum. For several summers, I took drawing, ceramics, herpetology, jewelry making and weaving. I liked all the mediums but there was something about the weaving that seemed to suit me well. The mathematical side of me enjoyed the yarn calculations. The artistic side of me enjoyed designing with all the colors. The tactile side of me enjoyed handling the yarns and fabrics.
Real Escape 1989 - 10' x 12'
Tidal Weave, 1999, 3 panels each 10' x 3'
Big Wool Woven Artworks
Since my graduation from the California College of Arts & Crafts (now CCA) in l976 with a BFA, I have pursued a career in textiles. At first, I developed a unique two-faced twill weave structure with a lush wool surface texture.
It was a very slow technique – changing the shed up to 20 times across one pick – but it enabled me to create imagery. Despite only 4 picks an inch, it could take up to an hour to weave an inch following my drawings on graph paper. The wool warp was sett at 32 ends per inch with 1,920 ends for a 60” width. I would usually make the warps long enough for three pieces.
These weavings were mostly large-scale with a few smaller scale ones in linen and cotton. One square foot of the large-scale wool weavings weighed about one half of a pound! The biggest weaving was 400 square feet woven in 6 panels each one 50” wide and 16 feet high using 200 pounds of yarn! I wove only 4 more heavy wool weavings between 2000 and 2011 as I had started weaving on the hand jacquard looms.
Tell us about Your Inspiration
This technique became a palette from which I depicted everyday life in a slightly altered state. My work tended to poke fun at popular trends and explored the complex nature of our perception of reality. Weaving helps me deal with my emotional reactions to life's pitfalls and triumphs. It is a way in which I can communicate my world view to others in imaginary and often humorous landscapes or weave colorful functional items.
What Looms Have You Used to Create?
Between 1976 and 1999, I wove 139 one-of-a-kind heavy wool weavings. I wove on a 16-shaft, 48 inch wide, 16-treadle German Countermarche loom and then an AVL 16-shaft, 60 inch wide, 98 treadle capacity Compu-Dobby® loom that enabled me to create these weavings from four differently colored warps woven in one layer. I loved having the Compu-Dobby® that enables me to get many more tie-up combinations.
Small Cotton Woven Artworks
My first introduction to hand jacquard weaving was at AVL Looms in Chico, CA, in 1998. Peter Straus of AVL Looms invited me to test out their new AVL/TIS hand jacquard loom. On jacquard looms the heddles are referred to as hooks because each one was initially controlled individually by one hook coordinating with punch cards on a mechanical Jacquard loom.
The loom in Chico had 576 hooks sett at 48 ends per inch and 12 inches wide). I made a quadruple warp with cotton, threaded the loom and wove a series of 25 Flockettes weavings in all four seasons with Peter’s software help. I used my multiple warp faced technique but with the computerized control of individual warp ends to create a design! Wow – that was fun and amazing!
Then I was able to see what could be done on Vibeke Vestby’s hand jacquard loom at Convergence in Washington, DC. Her loom was called the TC-1 from Digital Weaving Norway. It had 880 hooks at 60 ends per inch and 14.6 inches wide. More Wow! That was also fun and amazing! Vibeke had her loom set up with a black warp. Her assistant created a file for my Flockettes and proceeded to weave them by changing out the weft colors to go with the design of the Flockettes. Perfect! I saw the benefit of switching from quadruple warp weaving to triple weft weaving. Both companies then started selling hand jacquard looms.
From November 2000 to November 2006, I drove down to the San Francisco Bay Area and stayed at various friends’ homes. I would weave for two or three days. I used Nina Jacob’s TC-1 with 880 hooks and Cathy Bolding’s AVL/TIS with 1,728 hooks. I made 34 trips to Berkeley and rented 545 hours of loom time to complete 161 weavings in those 6 years. Nina and Cathy would have the looms warped and ready to go for the most part or I would help with that. Their warp densities varied so I would have to plan ahead for what I would weave and guess at what would sell. I would wind the myriad of bobbins that were needed for the various designs before I would drive down so I was ready to weave. I was amazed at the speed at which I could get such detail after 24 years of slow shed changing! If I was on a roll, I could weave up to 300 picks an hour following the weft color changes on my charts. The triple weft density was sett at 50-70 picks per inch with 1/3rd of that showing on the surface in each area of the design. I was very happy to see how quickly these pieces would weave up and then sell at craft shows and to friends because they were less expensive and smaller than my big, expensive, time-consuming wool weavings. The big wool weavings could take years to sell.
Mini Spring Flockettes, 2010, 10" x 15"
Global Healing, 2012, 57" x 20"
I relied on Nina’s and Cathy’s design expertise with the jacquard software to create the graphic and weave files I would use for my designs. First, Nina and I redesigned my classic "Flockette Seasons" with brighter colors and greater details. I also started weaving images from photographs that I had taken in my new inspiring countryside setting: "Blossom Creek," "California Dreamin'," "Autumn in St. Helena," "The Grape Escape," "Ceago del Lago," and "Konocti Twilight." I also wove imaginary scenes like "King Pup" and "Queen Cleopetra." These marvelous looms enabled me to explore more complex designs because the looms can control every warp thread individually.
In 2008 I happily became the owner of an AVL Jacq2G hand jacquard loom with 576 hooks. This was thanks to the extreme generosity of Mim Wynne in Arkansas who decided to go back to shaft weaving. She had been weaving rag rugs for 35 years on her 10-foot wide 4 shaft rug loom and realized jacquard weaving was not for her. She is now weaving amazing weavings with her custom dyed yarns. You can see pictures of Mim's weavings here: https://cachecreate.org/business-directories/mim-wynne/
After flying to Arkansas to take the loom apart and pack it for shipping with help from Mim and her husband Greg, I flew home and waited for it to arrive. My husband and I reassembled it with some neighborly help to lift the heavier pieces. I was very happy that it just cleared the ceiling in my studio and that I could work freely in my own studio. I had been able to access the jacquard loom softwares (ArahWeave and JacqPoint) so I could spend as long as I wanted to on creating the graphic designs and the triple weft weave structures and not be paying by the hour. “Lake Biwa," "Horseplay," "Global Healing," "GMO-OMG," “Birds of a Feather” and “Pyramid Magic” were some of the new jacquard weavings. I also created an Edward S. Curtis Native American Indian series. Since I was now making my own 40-yard black cotton warps and designing the weave files myself, I could control the look of the selvedges. I wove extra at the top and bottom of each weaving for hems that held metal rods for hanging. This was much easier than the complicated framing! At my own studio I was able to weave 208 weavings between 2008 and 2017.
I also wove 3 pieces on Tien Chiu’s TC-2 loom in 2019 and had 10 pieces woven for me in Montreal. It has been a great run with hand jacquard weaving all the way from 1998 to 2019. I completed 387 hand jacquard weavings in total. I have kept one of each different design, gave a few away and have sold out of everything else.
Where is Your Work Exhibited?
My tapestries have been exhibited nationally and internationally including the 13th International Biennial in Lausanne, Switzerland and a one-person exhibition at the Center for Tapestry Arts, NY, NY.
Publications include The New York Times, American Craft, Metropolis and Fiberarts Magazine. Corporations, museums and private individuals have my artwork in their collections including A,T & T, San Francisco; Lloyds Bank International, NY; the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, NY; the American Craft Museum, NY; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA.
My informative and entertaining lectures and workshops have been given in Canada, Germany, Australia, and all over the United States. I have been teaching weaving classes to children and adults in my home/studio since 2001 as well as part time at Mendocino Community College in Ukiah, CA, from 2002 to 2009. In 2006, I traveled to work with a Passementerie Company in Cairo on an AVL Jacq2G hand jacquard loom and then on an automated jacquard loom in Florence in 2007.
I look forward to many more years of teaching at my home studio and weaving away - following the thread that has brought me around the world to meet so many kind, generous, talented, entertaining and amazing weavers.
Although my dearly departed parents are no longer with us, I feel they are watching over me and my husband and know that we love our life in the countryside and its influence on our creativity. I give thanks to my parents, my mother-in-law (now 96!), my teachers (especially Trude Guermonprez and Kay Sekimachi at CCAC), my friends and my family who have all helped guide and encourage me on this artistic path. Special Thanks also go to my loving and talented husband, Bill Fredriksson, whom I have been with since June 24, 1971, who is always by my side.
Blossom Creek, 2002 22" x 25"
Pyramid Magic, 2016, 52" x 60"
Chattahoochee Poochie Kitchen Towel 2020, 26" x 19"
What are You Weaving Now?
Small Cotton Woven Functional Items
Since 2017, I have gone back to weaving functional items with mostly mercerized cotton on my trusty 1984 AVL 16-shaft, 60 inch wide Compu-Dobby® loom. These projects started in 2001 and many have been published in Handwoven Magazine. Starting in October 2021 my student since 2005 and friend Jan Eckert has been weaving in my studio on her newly purchased 2nd hand AVL 16-shaft, 40 inch Manual Dobby Folding loom. We have worked on projects together sharing looms and warps for ourselves and for Handwoven Magazine including our Santorini Blanket in the March/April 2023 issue. I was also featured as “Cover Girl” for the Handwoven Fall 2024 issue with my Vis-à-Vis Runner that was an adaptation of two tablecloths that Jan wove in class on my Compu-Dobby® loom in 2013 and 2014.
Favorite Tool?
My favorite tools are my Leclerc Boat shuttles.
Favorite Lunatic Fringe Yarns Product?
I have also been working with Lunatic Fringe Yarns since April 2024 where you will find two kits: one kit for my Tessellating Triangle Towels featured in Handwoven Magazine Spring 2024 and one kit for a new project just for Lunatic Fringe Yarns - Dawn to Dusk Twillight Placemats. I love the vibrancy of the Tubular Spectrum™ Mercerized Cotton Yarns. I especially enjoy having access to their “Greys” used along with White and Black.
Dawn to Dusk Placemats on the Loom
Last Question...Cake or Pie?
Ah – cake or pie. Not really a fan of cake or pie - I have to say any day: Uncle Gaylord’s Lotus Cream Ice Cream.
If you would like to see more Pictures of Sheila's work and Articles that she has written, check out her website: www.sheilaohara.com. Please note that the website has not updated since 2017 so all the Marketplace pieces are sold.
Thanks Sheila for sharing your fiber journey with us!
Amazing!
Sheila, how wonderful to read about your amazing journey. Thanks to Designer Spotlight for this,
I still want to know why you studied herpetology in summer art classes!
What a joy to read about and see Sheila’s spectacular weaving a through the years. Thank you to Lunatic Fringe for this great article.