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Neighborhood news
Treasured fruits of the loom
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published January 26, 2007
Cloth tomatoes and walking canes, eyeglass frames and poetry will make up part of Ruskin's historical yet personal tapestry woven this week during a return visit by a North Carolina group and its 200-year-old floor loom. The Sandy Creek Weavers arrived Monday at the Ruskin Senior Center to start giving residents a whirl on their massive loom. During the week, seniors and students from Ruskin Elementary School brought in poems, cloth strawberries, yellowed articles and other personal items to be woven into tapestries. Called "Weaving Words: Past and Present," the project is sponsored by the Hillsborough County Arts Council, and its tapestries will hang in the South Shore Regional Library and the Ruskin Senior Center. Four years ago, fiber artists Victoria Hyatt and her mother, Emily Hyatt, first brought the loom to the Tampa area to weave tapestries at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tinker Elementary School at MacDill Air Force Base, and the Hillsborough County government center. For a long time, Victoria Hyatt could not tell a story without breaking down: A 16-year-old cancer patient at Moffitt asked that the key to his beloved Mustang be woven into the tapestry there. A lot of people bring personal mementos, like a baseball bat, or things they find, like 500-year-old pottery shards, she said. Hyatt's mother started weaving as a hobby after seeing her first loom when she was 18. She began the tapestry business about 10 years ago after retiring as an educator. Victoria joined her about seven years ago. The family that gave her mother the loom had it for 160 years, she said, but they didn't know where it came from before their family got it. For Lynn Norton, education director of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, the project was a hands-on chance to reflect both the history of Ruskin and the changes it faces today. "It's a way of leaving your legacy and a way of bringing a community together," she said. Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com.
[Last modified January 25, 2007, 07:50:03]
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