Before Jan Langdon weaves her wall rugs on a floor loom, she sketches designs in black and white to establish what form or geometric pattern she wants to manifest in colorful wools, cottons, linens and silks. “Patterns of energy is part of what I’m going for,” said Ms. Langdon, who has lived in Point Reyes Station since 1975.
The designs themselves convey that verve, but technique is also key. In one piece—featuring a central bright red square and four vertical lines—long knots of yarn fade from yellow to blue, creating a kind of pointillist effect. The piece feels as if it’s quivering or radiating from a mysterious source.
Ms. Langdon has been at the loom since she was a teenager in the 1950s, inspired by “Silas Marner,” George Eliot’s novel about a reclusive weaver. She was drawn to the challenge and the structural element of weaving; it’s more like architecture than knitting or crocheting, she said. After she migrated to the Bay Area in the ‘60s she was able to take advantage of the burgeoning movement of handmade products.
But she has focused more on teaching the craft—in San Francisco in the ‘80s and for the past decade or so in Richmond—than on showing her work, though her pieces have been displayed at shows and galleries across the Bay Area and she was once president of Tapestry Weavers West, a West Coast-based association.
Her weavings, mostly recent pieces, but also some dating as far back as the ‘80s, are on display at Toby’s Feed Barn through January.
The exhibition also features a more sculptural element: kelp creations by Lina Jane Prairie, an Inverness Park resident and a retired schoolteacher. Ms. Prairie, who has a kelp harvesting license through the state, uses two kinds of seaweed in her work: bull kelp (“the kelp with the head”) and walking kelp, a tougher, woody seaweed. She took an interest in kelp about seven years ago, after roaming Kehoe and Great Beaches. She’s an avian enthusiast, too, but when birds are sparse her attention wanders, and she soon realized she knew little about the long strands of dark greenery that wash up on the shore.
“So I started collecting seaweed to learn how to identify them and learn their Latin names. I just kind of got interested in the biology of seaweeds. I had so many pieces sitting around, I thought, ‘I just have to start doing something with them.’ So of course, then I couldn’t stop,” she said.
Ms. Prairie started by making baskets, but she now creates abstract sculptural pieces. (One can’t help but see a concrete form in the curves of seaweed—a lamp, a horse, a woman with a hand coyly resting on her hip.) Through trial and error, she has learned to manipulate the natural material, how moist or dry it should be and even in what weather conditions she needs to work. (Three days of sun is best; otherwise, the kelp she collects will “act as if it were back on its beach and continue the process of decay.”)
Her works have been exhibited at a number of places, including Sir and Star and Hog Island Oyster Company’s restaurant in the Ferry Building. But during the biannual Point Reyes Open Studios, she loves when visitors get up close to touch and sniff the oceanic plant.
“There’s a wonderful smoky kelpiness that you can still smell, even after it’s been scrubbed and cleaned,” she said.
A retrospective of weavings by Jan Langdon and kelp sculptures by Lina Jane Prairie show at Toby’s Gallery in Point Reyes Station through Jan. 29, in an installation designed by Jennifer Thompson. An opening reception will be held this Sunday, Jan. 11, from 2 to 4 p.m.