• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

Knot & Stem Brings Hand-Crafted Tapestries To Richmond

Jonah Schuhart | July 3, 2020

Topics: andre delarosa, art, community, delarosas creations, design, embroidery, glass blowing, home design, home design richmond va, interior design richmond va, knot and stem, local artists, richmond va custom tapestries, richmond va tapestries, RVA, sam weiss, samantha weiss, vcu, VCUarts, watercolor, weaving

Among the dreary days of coronavirus, a new handmade weaving business is bringing some color back to Richmond with Knot & Stem. 

The dreary reality of living during the COVID-19 quarantine is an abundance of spare time. It’s easy to lose days or weeks doing nothing when there’s nothing to do. However, the artistically talented have seen new opportunities in the throes of isolation, as their spare time translates into tangible works of art.

This is the case for Richmond’s Samantha Weiss, a local artist and VCUArts grad who recently launched Knot & Stem. Creating hand-crafted woven tapestries, Weiss offers custom designs and themed work through her online business. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

“I just wanted to make people happy with more art in the house,” said Weiss. “Maybe make some extra money.” Like many others during COVID-19, Weiss lost her full-time design job to the pandemic’s economic disaster, but she used the situation to bring some color back into her world — and into homes across Richmond. 

Knot & Stem tapestries cost anywhere from $25 to $50, and come in a variety of color schemes and designs. Of course, Weiss also takes custom orders where she works more closely with customers for a particular design. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

Weiss’s woven tapestry pieces are created improvisationally, based on a color scheme. Her style is influenced by her career history as an interior designer, which gives her a keen eye when it comes to perfectly crafted colors and other design elements. 

“It definitely gives me an advantage in terms of aesthetics and home decor,” said Weiss. “But it’s a little bit more whimsical, since I was in the corporate design world. I was mostly doing offices. It’s more fun to think about home design.” 

Apart from her interior design experience, Weiss is mostly a self-taught artist. Along with weaving, she’s talented in several other art forms: watercolor, embroidery, and especially glass-blowing, in which she majored at VCU. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

Her interest in weaving sparked in 2017, when coming across other artists inspired her to try her own hand at the skill. The isolation of COVID-19 gave her a window to fully commit to the new projects. 

“[Weaving takes] a long time, so it’s always hard with a job,” said Weiss. “Since the end of March, I’ve been weaving all day every day. I’m finally getting better.”

Weiss began creating weaved tapestries for Knot & Stem in a small space in her home. She’s not the only talented one in the family — her brother, Andre Weiss DeLaRosa, owns and operates his own wood shop called DeLaRosa’s Creations. In late June, he custom-built a fully operational weaving loom for Weiss. Now Knot & Stem can take custom commissions for weaved tapestries up to four feet long. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

As she moves forward with her business, Weiss is also diving back into the design world. She has full plans to keep growing Knot & Stem alongside her work. 

“I definitely want to keep the Knot & Stem business alive, by weaving at night and working by day,” said Weiss. “It’s brought me a lot of peace. I hope I can continue doing it as much as possible.” 

To find more work by Knot & Stem or order a custom piece of your own, visit the business on Instagram. Keep it colorful, RVA!

Top Photo via Knot & Stem

Figure Form’s Shana Blakley Uses Art To Recover From Tragedy

Sydney Lake | April 1, 2019

Topics: breast milk, digital print, Figure Form, Milk Balm, organic salve, Shana Blakley, watercolor

Shana Blakley hasn’t considered herself an artist — until now.

Despite years of practice with a variety of different mediums, Blakley didn’t fully commit herself to the title before the creation of her business, Figure Form. About a year and a half ago, she and her husband underwent deep devastation that resulted in the line of art that exists today, when they lost their first son to stillbirth.

“Everything was turned upside down for us, inside and outside,” Blakley said.

This completely unexpected and unexplained tragedy impacted the art that Blakley began to make. After years spent working in larger spaces with acrylic paint, large-scale canvases, wire, and macrame, Blakley found herself turning to a medium that was accessible in their smaller space in Richmond. Watercolor became the way that Blakley could grieve through her work.

“Once that happened, it sent us into this really intense spiral of every emotion,” her husband Matt Blakley said. “It was rooted in a confusion as well as shock.”

From there, Figure Form was born out of grief and resurgence of getting back into art. On lunch breaks from her remote job, Blakley was able to work with just a few materials, including water, a palette, and a piece of paper.

Blakley poured her emotions into her work, churning out multiple pieces a day, Matt said.

“I believe in my heart that it’s absolutely beautiful, and that it’s meaningful and it feels professional,” Matt said. “But the best part about her is that she didn’t go to art school.”

Through watercolor, Shana studied the human figure — particularly the female body at first — as a way to occupy her mind.

“Looking back now, my fixation on the female body was influenced by my own obsession with my own body, and how it betrayed me, really, in the birth and the death of my son,” Shana said. “I was just creating those images.”

Despite the betrayal of her body, Shana got pregnant again while continuing to work on Figure Form. Pregnancy was extremely terrifying for them both, feeling as if it were unfair to grieve the death of their first son during the second pregnancy, Matt said.

Shana turned to a new medium to create her work by using line drawings to create digital prints.

“She had gotten what she needed to get out of watercolor and was searching for a new medium,” Matt said. “It’s been really great, because she can work on it in bed, in the car, at the dining room table, while breastfeeding our son. It’s extremely portable and matches her lifestyle right now.”

Matt noticed that these early prints not only illustrated an honest, natural form, but one that reflected Shana’s reality of the second pregnancy. Due to to the intense caution taken, Shana’s life existed mostly in the domestic sphere, much like her early Figure Form prints show.

“This was interesting because at the time, when she was six to nine months pregnant, Shana was, for lack of a better word, a recluse. We didn’t really go outside,” Matt said. “We felt like every move we made would potentially devastate the second pregnancy, so it was interesting to see her digital illustrations of a woman in the domestic sphere, not outside.”

Not only does Shana’s art show a study of the human form, but it also emphasizes her deep passion for representation in art, with shading and variety of ethnicities evident in her prints.

With a customer base of people of all ages, Shana works to create prints that can relate to anyone who may find her online or at a market.

“I try to have a variety, different colors, shapes, figures. I want people to be able to see themselves in my art. I hope to make art that people can connect with, art that people might want to keep around in their space,” Shana said. “I think all people should be able to feel seen in art.”

Matt has watched this charge of Shana’s come to life.

“That’s something she’s been really interested in and feels ethically and politically charged to do through her work,” he said. “She’s already creating the female form, which has been over objectified since the dawn of time. She didn’t just want to make fair-skinned white-girl forms. She wanted any woman in the world to see themselves.”

The creation of Figure Form has also allowed Shana to complete commission work for those seeking particular projects for her to tackle. She creates informational images for doulas, and has recently created building prints for other businesses.

Figure Form isn’t restricted to visual art. Shana also created Milk Balm, a three-step kit for nursing mothers to turn their breast milk into a multi-use salve, to treat dry baby skin and other motherhood woes. With research and trial and error, Shana successfully created an all-natural, organic salve that she sells at markets as well.

“I feel like there are a lot of avenues that we want to go into — I think it just takes time,” Shana said of brand expansion. “I just need to keep creating.”

As a maker in Richmond, Shana has been embraced by fellow female-owned small businesses.

“I’ve met so many wonderful people at these markets,” Shana said. “Richmond is such a cool place with so many creative, interesting people doing their thing.”

As Shana’s support system, Matt has been glad to see that other female business owners had been encouraging Shana both on and offline.

“She couldn’t do this in a vacuum,” he said. “I think she’s been really touched by all the other female-owned small businesses in Richmond and beyond that have reached out and encouraged her in small, and also large, ways.”

Through a terrifying and confusing life experience, the Blakleys found a way to channel their grief and create a business that celebrates the human form despite color or size. Shana’s prints can be purchased at a variety of upcoming markets in the area, or online at shopfigureform.com.


sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]