Weaver Marion Bacon: A Pragmatic Visionary

Interviewer: Antonia Lamb

Arts & Entertainment Magazine (1984)

Mendocino, California

Marion Bacon was born during World War One on the East Coast. She grew up in New York City, attended Cooper Union as an art and design student, married, had four children, moved to California and Texas, divorced, returned to the East Coast and finally then to California. Ten years ago she moved to Mendocino. She is an exceptional weaver who began on a fairly mundane level and who now creates powerfully-designed hangings in double-weave, triple-weave and tapestry. She shared with us some of her history and images from her work. – Antonia Lamb

When did you first become involved with weaving?

It started when I was a kid. I made little looms out of shoeboxes, and then made little rugs which I had no use for. The whole idea fascinated me – making something out of a single piece of string. I made little shoebox rooms to put the rugs in, made furniture… Weaving was always in my mind as I grew up but I never got to do it.

I didn’t drop the idea of weaving. I just never thought of doing it on a large scale.

“I like the idea of interpenetrating faces, dividing them in two…”

“This one came about because I was upset about nuclear war. I was thinking about seas boiling, and the fish dying, but that the mermaids would learn to fly. I couldn’t stand the idea of mermaids boiling. I got an idea for an image of mermaids flying, and down below a black earth, with a red nuclear dragon on it eating the last tree with the mermaids flying triumphantly above. I started it with a warp-hung loom hung from the top of the doorway, and it just never worked. I kept changing it. Then I realized I had enough meanings there without mermaids.”

This hanging is one of two on the same subject. It came from one of those “hypnogogic” experiences…I lived up Little Lake Road in a place with a wonderful high ceiling that had boards with knots in it, and I was lying there looking and thought, “Gee, it would be nice to make a hanging with a lot of circles and squares in it – but not just abstract.” Shortly thereafter I was going to sleep and suddenly I heard a voice saying, “The window closes but the door opens.” And I thought, “That’s a good one.” I was thinking in terms of dying, how the window on things closes when you die, but the door opens to another experience.

I studied art and design at Cooper Union in New York. After I started, there was a girl who studied weaving, and they supplied her with a little tabletop loom, and I thought, “Oh, gee, I wish I’d known, I would have chosen that.” Later when I was a mother, I’d go to a department store, say, and see a toy loom, and think maybe one of the kids would like that. Really I would have liked it! That was what I was thinking. I finally did get a loom one Christmas for my daughter Martha. She was about thirteen or fourteen. A little frame loom. After she struggled with it for a while she said, “You didn’t buy this for me. You bought it for you.”

So I took it back, and I started weaving. That was around 1961. We were living in Brooklyn Heights. The first thing I did was a little tapestry of a cat playing a fiddle for my violin-playing brother. That was so much fun I decided I’d really like a real loom, but I didn’t have any idea how to go about it or what was good.

I married again and moved to Vermont. I had a small inheritance and decided now I could afford to buy a loom. I heard they had a good weaving course in Burlington. I took a bus trip up there and visited the weaving teacher – I had written her – and looked at the looms, and asked her questions, and got a good idea of what I wanted. I read a weaving magazine and looked through the ads and began sending away for catalogs. I got a 27 inch LeClerc loom finally. It came in pieces and we – my ten-year old son and I – had to put it together. The instructions were very weird, but it was a beautiful loom. I think I made a good choice accidentally.

When we moved to Southern California after my second husband died, I got another loom through an ad in a local green sheet. It was an incredible bargain – a huge 56-inch loom that you could practically live in. I made a number of blankets on it…I was making mostly clothes, necklaces, things like that. I hadn’t made many hangings, but the idea…took me.

When I moved to Mendocino – actually north of Fort Bragg – I met and joined the Handweavers Guild and met Elaine Lackey. She encouraged me to be more ambitious, and I made a little tapestry that I sold almost immediately. She was a wonderful friend.

She recently moved East, didn’t she?

Yes, Elaine and Lolli Jacobsen collaborated on the weaving program at the Mendocino Art Center. Elaine is a real doer and she inspired me. She taught me about doubleweave, and that started me in a whole new direction. I began to make more hangings. I eventually sold my two looms and got two others.

What’s double weave?

Double weave involves using two warps – two surfaces – and interplaying them. You have a light surface and a dark surface, and you bring the light surface to the dark and vice versa. That way you get a pattern. The way I do it is to use a stick to pick up the pattern. I don’t set it up on the loom like you do with some double weave, where it’s just the same thing over and over again.

I always wanted to introduce more colors into my doubleweavings than you could get with just two surfaces. I read an article about triple weave and made “The Window Closes But the Door Opens” according to that technique. It’s not double-faced. The back is – smudgy. They had a lot of color in them but I was dissatisfied because the sides weren’t interchangeable. I don’t know why I was bothered – you keep one side against a wall usually, unless you hang it freely in a large space.

So I tried to figure out how you could do it with three different surfaces, and move them around at will. Those first ones I did took the two sides you weren’t using and put them in the back. But I wanted to use everything. And I finally figured it out. I’m sure somebody else has – just like two people invented the typewriter around the same time in different places – but I haven’t heard of it. I made one hanging that way. It was very, very picky. You had to keep your mind on it, so I could only do it for short periods of time. If I got a little bit tired everything would go haywire. It was fascinating, but I haven’t done it since. That was “Conversation With An Alien.”

I think it looks like “Mickey Mouse meets Godzilla.” Maybe it depends on what side you look at… (laughter)

I did it small on purpose because I knew it would be tricky, and I didn’t play around too much with the colors. I wanted to make a dragon, and I had enough warp to make a long, skinny thing. I didn’t want the dragon all by himself, so I had to make a long, skinny person.

They were standing so close they either had to be fighting or talking. I wanted it to be nice, so they’re talking. He’s a real dragon, so the other person is an alien to him. So they’re both having a conversation with an alien.

I had a dream when I was about eight. A nightmare about blocks, forms moving through each other. It was very painful to me to see it happen. It was almost like it was happening to me. They were like some modern sculpture

…through each other without being crushed. It was like something impossible happening to myself. I heard about how everything was made of atoms, and even the tightest, most massive forms have spaces between the atoms. I thought, well, maybe such a thing is possible.

Something about the interpenetration of solids makes me think of your work with double and triple weave. But that’s not painful to you.

Not at all. Maybe it’s a way to work that nightmare out.

I don’t just do double weave…I’m starting a tapestry, and I have some clothes in mind. I may make things specifically to sell, but I doubt it…there’s so much I want to do just for myself.

Do you plan everything in advance?

I don’t like to figure it all out ahead of time. I like to give myself jumping off places. I draw a lot. When I feel I can stop drawing, I start weaving…

“Faces and bodies, flying things, dragons and animals are repeating themes for me. In weaving you can’t get too attached to detail. So your work has to be more symbolic. Most of the philosophic ideas that hang around over my head get picked out because they’d make good designs. If I’m saying something it’s secondary…whatever anybody wants to see in it is fine, and what I’m seeing in it is fine too.”

– Marion Bacon