Barbara Schutzgruber – Storyteller & Weaver

For me cloth is the visual representation that we are all interconnected.
Woven together each thread is important keeping the cloth whole. 

The death of George Floyd at the hands of police on May 25, 2020 brought an outcry from communities across the United States and around the world calling for the end of systemic racism. As a result of conversations, discussions and listening to people’s stories throughout the summer, one image kept coming into my mind – skin. If I look only at bone and muscle there is very little difference between people. It is our skin, a colored layer of tissue that wraps our bodies, that has too often been used to separate and treat people differently.

But what if we could see ourselves part of a wide range of skin color? 

I decided to weave a color gamp shawl based on skin tone. A color gamp is a cloth that contains a set of color stripes in the warp that are crossed by the same set of color stripes in the weft. It lets you visualize how different colors will combine and blend. I chose colors from pale pink to dark brown.

Once I got the warp wound on I realized I had placed my darkest warp yarns furthest from the window making it more difficult to see any errors as I went along = oops! Rotating the loom 180° was not an option. Using a lot of painter’s tape and chaining I was able to keep the warp yarns in order as I flipped it over.

The structure is a plain/tabby weave with a 2/2 twill box in the center of each square. The weft colors followed the warp order moving from light to dark then dark to light – repeat.

As a shawl the blended color squares encircle the body with the wonderfully wide range of skin tones.

Skin: We’re All Part of the Same Cloth
will be part of the Michigan League of Handweavers Virtual Exhibit
to be posted on their website starting October 1, 2020.