“Sunrise Twills with Titles” – in Sweden!

The extraordinary Sunrise Twills with Titles – woven hangings by American master weaver Theodore Hallman Jr., and titles by Kenneth G. Mills – is on display at the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, as part of the exhibition Beauty and the Unexpected: Modern and Contemporary American Crafts. Accompanying it is the short film produced by David Nash in which Ted talks about his inspiration for the series and how he created the twills. The film is available on the Foundation’s website (Media / Creative Endeavors), as well as on YouTube.

Inspired by the music of the Star-Scape Singers, Ted Hallman collaborated with Maestro Kenneth G. Mills to create an extraordinary series of tapestries that suggest the subtle color nuances of sunrises. Ted skillfully embraced his passion for music through exploration in woven form, capturing the very timbre of music through the use of color hue, tone, value, and brilliance, a metaphorical relationship that provides a very visceral experience for the viewer. Kenneth Mills spontaneously gave poetic titles for each weaving, such as “The Crimson Flame in the Rhythm of Blue,” “The Parched Earth,” and “The Point of the Willow Is to Bend and Blend.”

Marcia Young, writing in Fiberartnow.net in fall 2014, said: “Hallman’s watershed work in his Sunrise Twills with Titles collection beguiled viewers across 22 North American venues in the early 1980s. This collection was born out of a continued epiphany after listening to the choral ensemble Star-Scape Singers many times. Hallman remarks, ‘The blazing harmonies of these open voices were the essence of this primal experience; the sound inspired me deeply with ideas to be realized in my art…. For me it was sunrise: conscious creative awaking.’ The conductor, Kenneth G. Mills, was also a metaphysical teacher. The philosophical sensibility he brought to his music deepened Hallman’s spiritual approach to his work. ‘All of the techniques I honed in this work: warp painting, resist dyeing, and picking up archetypal twill images from 16-harness simple and complex twill structures became a spiritual vocabulary for me.’”

Sunrise Twills with Titles will be shown at the National Museum through 2025 and will then become part of its permanent collection.

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