Michael F. Rohde joined California Fibers in early 1998, looking for an organization with a focus on professionalism, and has never been disappointed. At the time, he was weaving nominally functional rugs, such as Shadow Grid (below), which were however most often placed on the wall rather than the floor.
Over the years, both the organization and its members have matured and grown professionally. Rohde’s work is now tapestry that originates in concepts first, with designs following the idea. His most recent body of work began with thoughts about textiles that might embody a language. This is Illuminative below.
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In this time of self isolation, Rohde found the time and energies to work on a series of tapestries that started with ideas testing the abstraction of imagery to minimal bits of visual information. This series has required much careful hand dyeing of the yarns to emulate some of his photos from Oaxaca. They are on the loom now and will take much of the rest of this year before they can be finished and readied for professional photography and exhibition. The best place to see those is on his Instagram (@michaelfrohde) or Facebook account.
Rohde recently had work in Fiber 2020 at the Silvermine Gallery in Connecticut. The online catalog is here. His piece Enough was exhibited through early July.
