Those of us at the Kenneth G. Mills Foundation were saddened to learn of the recent passing of its friend, the great American textile artist Theodore (Ted) Hallman, Jr., at his home in Pennsylvania. Ted had been a leader in the fibre arts field since the 1950s, and through decades of innovative work he helped raise the profile of the American Craft Movement. Ted taught a weaving course for four years at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art while still an undergraduate student. That eventually led to teaching stints at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.
Ted Hallman met Dr. Kenneth G. Mills during the latter’s visit to Berkeley, California, in 1975. Later, in Canada, the two collaborated on a series of weavings. These eighteen woven hangings, titled Sunrise Titles and Twills, were shown at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in September 1978; they then toured throughout Canada, the United States, and Japan. In the exhibition catalogue Ted commented:
“I showed Kenneth G. Mills, my spiritual Teacher, a series of woven hangings inspired by my study with him at his Summer Festival of Light, Sound, and Peace. Mr. Mills most graciously and spontaneously offered over 100 titles, as well as design modifications, for the twelve sunrise hangings I had already woven. Then with great exuberance he delineated how the series could be expanded with six additional pieces, for which he also gave titles and design motifs. I have followed his inspired direction, and urge you to consider these ‘Titles and Twills’ as a series of ‘verbistries’ of sight and sound united in an embellishment of praise!”
Ted Hallman describes his technique in the documentary Sunrise Twills with Titles produced by David Nash for the Kenneth G. Mills Foundation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sYSYfSURo
Several of the weavings were featured on the album covers of recordings by the Star-Scape Singers. This series of eighteen woven hangings is now part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of Sweden in Stockholm.
A second collaboration, Tonal Weavings and Their Word, featured Ted’s weavings both on and off the loom and was exhibited at the London Regional Art Gallery in Ontario, Canada in 1982. “Each work represented transcendent ideas and was meant to bring about a revolt in vision for the viewer. Contrary to the traditional use of symbols in art, the viewer was asked to respond with attunement to the frequency of each image, rather than to attempt to interpret it symbolically” (Kenneth G. Mills, The Candy Maker’s Son: Memoirs).
Ted Hallman’s passing is also mourned by the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City. MAD included Ted’s work Meditation Environment in a 1970 exhibition titled Contemplation Environments. The museum recently stated: “The exhibition presented a variety of artist-conceived experimental structures designed to quiet the mind. Pushing the boundaries of his material, Hallman used the sound-absorbing qualities of yarn to design a womb-like space for meditation.”
