Loomhouse weaving ?set to music

This is what weaving sounds like.

Nestled among the trees in the Kenwood Hill neighborhood near Iroquois Park sits the late 19th-century structures of The Little Loomhouse. A fiber arts organization and foundation of the Kentucky master weaver Lou Tate (1906-79), it continues her legacy by offering weaving and spinning classes, summer camps and educational workshops. The Little Loomhouse is also starting a new lecture series, with composer Chris Kincaid as its first speaker.

You might think a musician is an odd choice as the inaugural lecturer for a textile organization.

That’s not the case with Kincaid.

He has composed music from weaving patterns, part of the vast collection of the Lou Tate Foundation that also includes hand-woven coverlets and historic documents.

Kincaid, who has a master’s degree in music composition from UofL, immediately saw the music in the art.

“My wife, Leslie Clements, is on the board of directors at The Little Loomhouse,” he said. “One afternoon she was working on a presentation … when I walked past and noticed that what she was working on looked like music notation. I stopped in my tracks and asked her about it. She explained that they were weaving drafts used to set up a loom for the purpose of creating a specific pattern.”

After learning more about weaving, “I began to make several connections to musical process and form,” said Kincaid. He found out that Tate believed that the weaving drafts “resembled a musical staff.”

The resulting composition is “Overshot,” consisting of six movements for string quartet and electronics. It’s named after the overshot weaving technique used to create the coverlets popular in Kentucky.

The movements are inspired by different aspects of weaving and are named after coverlet patterns. They are the “literal translations of draft patterns (Whig Rose), ideas elicited in the names of popular drafts (Chariot Wheel), the nature of weaving’s oral pedagogy (Cat Tracks and Snail Trails), aural approximations of the visual contour in finished patterns (Pine Tree), and the meditative and rhythmic action in the physical act of weaving (Snowball),” Kincaid said.

“In the past when someone wanted to learn how to weave, they found someone who was skilled and had the equipment to work in the medium for some time,” he said. “Today, that process often takes place by watching weaving tutorials on YouTube. In the movement [“Cat Tracks and Snail Trails”], I transcribed the instructors’ voices from four popular YouTube instructional weaving videos and set them to the four voices of a string quartet. At first the sound is overwhelming to a point of chaotic. As the piece progresses … the texture slowly shifts focus to one instrument and through that process the violin’s transcription starts to make sense with its declamation and cadence.”

The composition was first presented last year as part of an exhibition at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. “Overshot (for strings and electronics): The Kentucky Coverlet Connection Exhibit” was a collaboration with The Little Loomhouse. The show featured Kincaid’s music alongside Appalachian coverlets, weaving draft patterns and artifacts about Tate’s legacy, including her years at Berea College

Tate’s creativity was well-known in and outside of Kentucky because of the recognition of two first ladies. She worked for President Herbert Hoover’s Dark Hollow School in Virginia during the Great Depression. Soon she met his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, and her encouragement led Tate to co-invent the Little Loom, a small, tabletop hand-weaving loom. Later, Eleanor Roosevelt came to Louisville to visit The Little Loomhouse and ordered textiles for the White House.

“Overshot” is now featured in “Warped: An exhibition on sound & weaving,” through August at The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design in Asheville, North Carolina. Kincaid and Clements will speak there July 28.

As part of their new series, Kincaid will discuss “Overshot” at The Little Loomhouse on Saturday, Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. Future lectures include Stefanie Buzan and Rosemary McCandles discussing their book, “A View from the Top, the Neighborhoods of Iroquois Park and Kenwood Hill,” on Saturday, Sept. 3 at 2 p.m.; a reception celebrating the Fenley family, who donated land to expand Iroquois Park, and the Fenley Cemetery highway marker on Friday, Oct. 28 at 6 p.m.; and author and LEO Weekly contributor Michael Jones, on the history of African-American musicians and jug bands in Louisville, on Saturday, Jan. 14 at 2 p.m.

The lecture series has a suggested donation of $5 for members and $10 for non-members, with proceeds benefiting The Little Loomhouse’s Restoration/Preservation Fund.

To hear excerpts of “Overshot,”go to leoweekly.com

This article appears in July 13, 2016.