Leila Walter (Atelier)

Years ago, I came across the thesis that creativity requires containers. The theory goes that the infinite possibility of the blank canvas often leads to intimidation, where adversely the confines of rules or a predetermined structure can create an environment in which creativity can flourish. This thought visits me often while I’m at my loom, my tensioning device, my framework. By the time I pick up the shuttle to weave, so much planning and preparation has occurred that there never really is a beginning or an end, just a flowing from one process to the next until now, and then I find myself in that magical place, floating, or more like swimming, through a vast open space, slightly detached from the every day, the sounds around me, suspended in an intricate matrix. It feels like dancing through the expanse of a desert, a mirage on the horizon. I find it amusing how such expanse, such freedom can be experienced within such a confined grid, but that’s the way it is for me. And so my weaving always speaks of a vista, a window connecting to the outer world, reflecting the inner. Within this matrix there is always the horizon and always that which defies it, a moment of inspiration, a figure upright, in contradiction of gravity’s eternal pull. A friend expressed being overwhelmed by the vastness of reality and her inability to contain it, to which I responded, why try?