Developing the Tapestry for Needlepoint Tapestry

Video Transcript

"My name is Francie DeMun. I am speaking on behalf of Expert Village. I am a tapestry artist. I am going to start talking about the Southwest Dragon because this piece has so much variety in it. Some of the others have more of a specific feel. On this one I did a combination. First of all the dragon who sort of has this forest, you can see a movement in how he is positioned but also using the metallics and the colors. But then sort of hidden around, there is different symbolism and I do a lot of symbolism. I have always like ancient mythology and American Indian Folklore so the dragon by the Chinese is the symbol of happiness, prosperity and good fortune. He is very magical. Now at the time and again this might have been intuitive, I lived in New York City. I had no idea that I would be moving to the Southwest but I created these things in the back which made the landscape of the Southwest. It is kind of a primitive thing. I put in the owl just again spontaneously, the owl and American Indian is well of course in Western, our beliefs it is wisdom, but ion the American Indian it is the overseer of everything. So he is kind of like a god like character. Kind of looking over at the whole situation and the situation is that there is this lovely dragon who is not a fearful creature but the rabbit in the American Indian Folklore represents fears. So I got the rabbit running away, the fears are being chased so I got that and I got a dragonfly that is the symbol of illusion. Actually you can see or do whatever you want with your own, the things that mean a lot to you in the world. "