- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- October 2007
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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CAROLINA ARTISTS
A New Dimension
Alter 30 years of weaving tapestries. Salisbury s
Whitney lohnson IVekman uncovered another talent
in a unique medium
l’s not entirely unheard ot tor an artist
or a craftsperson to change direction
mid-career and move from one mode
of artistic expression to another. What's
perhaps most interesting about Salisbury
resident Whitney Johnson Pcckman is that
she not only changed direction; she added
a dimension.
I’ccknun, a name of Rochester. New
York, who’s been in Salisbury for three
years, pursued the fine — if back-st raining
— art of tapestry weaving for JO years.
While the medium calls for color and
pattern work and involves a certain amount
of texture, tapestries are essentially two-
dimensional when they’re finished.
Much of Pcckman 4 weaving time was
spent m the state of Washington. For the
past IS-plus years, her career has been
shared with her husband. Sved Ahmad, an
paiiilingon gourds.
artist whose work involves glass fused to
metals and wood.
Ten years ago. the couple began a yearly
tradition of packing up their artwork and
heading to an extended craft show in
Scottsdale, Arizona, where they would
stay for 10 weeks. The show not only-
allowed them to meet Michael and Connie
Baker, who would shape the couple’s
future in North Carolina, but it also
ultimately caused Pcckman to leave tapestry
weaving behind and move into a whole
new medium.
"I couldn’t take my weaving loom with
me to Scottsdale.” Pcckman says from her
light-washed studio in Salisbury. "It was
too heavy and took up too much space.
I quickly determined that, without the
weaving, I had nothing to do and nearly
went crazy.”
MO 1