March 13, 2025 • 45 mins
About Mia Weiner
Responding to the historical textile, Mia Weiner creates intimate declarations that explore identity, gender, and the psychology of human relationships. She hand-weaves each tapestry in her Los Angeles studio.
Mia received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020) and her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. She was awarded the V&A Parasol Prize by the Victoria & Albert Museum and Parasol Foundation in 2024. Her work has been exhibited internationally including in New York, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Rome. Weiner is a Yaddo Fellow and her work is in the permanent collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Side Blue.
This is your host, Tebow, helping you navigate the wild
and mysterious path that is the creative life.
Join me as I ask our guests about the tools they use to help
them survive in the creative wilderness.
So hello and welcome Side Wars to the latest episode of the
(00:24):
Side Move. This is Tebow.
I am here in Santa Fe, which if you're following along on my art
date sub stack, you will know why and what.
So feel free to go there and read the back story.
But I'm really excited today because I'm here with Mia
Weiner, who is an LA based artist.
And hello Mia. Hi, it's so nice to be here.
(00:46):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to read a little
bit about Mia, just for everybody's edification.
So her bio is responding to the historical textile.
Mia Weiner creates intimate declarations that explore
identity, gender and the psychology of human
relationships. She hand weaves each tapestry in
(01:07):
her Los Angeles studio, which you can see behind her there.
I love that. We're going to get a little
studio tour. And Mia received her MFA from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her BFA from
Maryland Institute College of Art.
She was awarded the VNA Parasol Prize at the VNA Museum in
(01:28):
London. That's really cool.
OK, we need to talk about that. Her work has been exhibited
internationally, including in New York, London, Los Angeles,
Miami, Chicago, and Rome. Weiner is a Yatto Fellow and her
work is in the permanent museum or permanent collection of the
Koontz Museum, Dunhog, Netherlands.
(01:48):
Have you been there to see your work?
I haven't. It was acquired very recently,
so oh. Cool.
And did they like invite you to see it or anything?
Did they do any kind of like event around it or?
There will be not yet. Oh.
Cool. And then museums take a minute
to what's the word I'm looking for when they acquire work to
(02:10):
get it into the catalog basically.
OK, that's cool. Yeah, my, I've had one piece,
like acquired by a museum and they're not open yet, but
they're supposedly opening in the fall.
And I was messaging on social media because I saw them.
I saw they had created a new account and I was like, oh,
(02:32):
well, that's so exciting that you're opening.
I'd love to get an invite because I am one of the artists
in your collection. And they were like, sorry, who
is this? They were so weird.
And I'm like, oh, OK, I guess you have a lot of artists in the
collection and you're maybe not giving out special invites to
be. I don't know.
(02:53):
I don't know if that's normal. Yeah, this is a really large
museum in The Hague. I'm really thrilled to be part
of the collection. And I met the curators when I
had a show in Amsterdam, what, 6months ago now, OK.
Then you were doing a show there.
Did you have a residency? How'd you end up in Amsterdam?
(03:14):
A solo booth at Unseen, which isa fair in Amsterdam alongside A2
person show that was up. So that's how we met and then I
was really excited when they acquired the work and now we'll
see what happens. Yeah, totally.
OK, cool. Well, congratulations on that.
(03:34):
OK, well, so to kick off the side woo line of questioning,
what sign are you? I know we talked about this when
I first met you, but I'm totallyblinking.
Well this just got more complicated, but I'm an
Aquarius. Wait, how did it get more
complicated? I was just in India.
Oh. Vedic.
And it turns out in Vedic astrology, I'm a Capricorn,
(03:56):
which really shifted everything I thought about my identity.
Yeah. 'Cause I really identify as a
hardcore Aquarius. OK, we took a little break for
tech support, but we're back. OK, So yeah, Vedic astrology, if
you've never like as a Westerner, if you're like all of
a sudden exposed to it midlife, it it does fuck you up.
(04:19):
Yeah. So you were saying you actually
really identify with the Capricorn of Vedic astrology.
Is that what you're saying or? It was.
I'm in western astrology. I am an Aquarius sun, a Taurus
rising, and a Sagittarius moon. OK.
So now in Vedic astrology I was just told I'm really a Capricorn
(04:40):
sun, an Aries rising and a Scorpio moon which is.
Some of the mean a little bit different because I'm a Scorpio
and then in Vedic I'm a Libra and I see it and I do have a lot
of Western Libra in my chart, soit doesn't feel so out of left
(05:00):
field. But Virgo and Capricorn there,
there's some shared interests there.
I don't know. Did it ring true at all?
Did you have a full reading or? I did it was really a lot of
things rang really true, especially when they talked
about the past when we started my childhood that were never
(05:22):
sort of explained that like really big and intense and I was
sold once we started. OK.
And had you ever had a reading of your birth chart in Western
astrology like that? Oh, you had and they didn't get
into all that. So it was a very different
(05:42):
reading than I've had before, feeling wise.
Yeah, that's interesting becauseI know like your moon is
supposed to be about your childhood and your relationship
to your mother up till like age 7.
OK, I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's one of the things
I've heard. Jessica Lenyadu, my by proxy
astrology teacher, I feel like most of what I've learned has
(06:03):
been through her. But in your Sagittarius moon in
Western. So my sister is that and I
remember looking it up because I'm a Capricorn moon.
My mom was a Capricorn moon, hersister is a Capricorn moon, and
we're all Scorpio rising, including my sister.
(06:24):
So there's like a lot of shared commonality, except for my
sister who has this Saj moon. And I remember looking it up and
it's no one can tell you what todo or teach you how to do things
when you already think you know more than them.
Yeah. And that was like the
description of like the Saj moonis no one can parent you when
you already know better than they do kind of thing.
(06:46):
So I don't know if that rings true for you, but.
Does, though I was surprised that the Scorpio moon was the
only thing that really hit in the Oh, OK, all right.
I was like, oh, this I somehow understand.
I'm not sure how yet. Still fully.
This was two weeks ago. OK.
What did they say about it? We actually think that very deep
(07:07):
into that part, but when they just like, ah, OK, this I can
the rest, we'll see. And my moon in Vedic is you will
gain everything and then you'll lose everything multiple times
in your lifetime. So I was like I don't really
(07:27):
want that. Thank you though.
We're always like having to release all the time that never
stops that surrender. So it's nice that you like, you
know, each time. Yeah, but it's like one of those
kind of militia or malevolent placements in Indian astrology.
Like you don't really want it, but yeah, that's fair enough.
(07:51):
That is a very Scorpio thing to say, talking about death and
rebirth like. What?
You just keep going. That part's really cool.
What's your background with Wu, other than like a kind of
interest in astrology? It sounds like you're into
Reiki, right? Yeah, I did 5 levels of Reiki
training. And so you blame a grandmaster?
(08:14):
You can shoot lasers out your hand.
Is that what happens? By the end, eyes too.
Out of your eyes. Yeah, no, I did all my Reiki
trainings. I finished what, 2-3 years ago
now. But, you know, I was brought up
around meditation and I didn't really personally feel attached
(08:38):
to it until much later, I think,as the rebellion of growing up
in the household with it. I my mom.
Like you were forced into meditation at a young age or
something? Really.
But, you know, I grew up in a really academic, intellectual
Jewish family that also my mother's a Hanuman devotee,
(08:58):
which is the monkey God in Hinduism and which Ramdas is
also very well known as a follower of and used to know him
and was very much part of a community with him, with his
teachings. And so when I grew up with that,
I think because we were also like that intellectual Jewish
academic family, I just thought we were using like a lot of
(09:23):
brain space on things we could use for other things.
It felt like a lot of stuffy, a lot of sort of academia.
And I was like, why don't we just discover a new gene before
I had my moment where? Wait, how old were you when you
were thinking that? I don't know, like middle
school, high school sort of growing.
Why don't we just discover a newgene?
(09:44):
Mom and dad like this is so lame.
What could be possible instead of, oh, that is what is
happening right now and possibleeven though I don't see it on
this plane. And so it took a while for me to
have that aha moment. And basically, once my eyes
opened and I saw the light, I dove in as hard and fast as I
could to all sorts of different modalities of meditation, energy
(10:10):
work. I just wanted to explore and see
what connected with me. So yeah.
And how what it like? What it seeing the light look
like for you? I had a full out of body
experience. I was with someone who basically
we had a full energy energetic experience where we
(10:32):
energetically connected and had an out of body experience.
I literally saw lights and a couple other.
Back up. So what was the context?
I feel like you need to tell this whole story if you feel
comfortable. I was like, I think this is
enough, this part because I was like, what was really important
was to be fair, I was in a really stressful moment in my
(10:53):
life. I was going through a really
difficult breakup, and this was what the new partner had just
started seeing. The world was felt really
difficult as this bleak moment in my life, totally stressed
out. And when this happened, I
thought I lost my mind. Like I totally thought I
cracked. I was like, OK, I pushed too
far. Turns out it's going to be sick
(11:13):
to be crazy, but I can't tell anybody what just happened.
So you were like meditating withyour partner or something and
ended up having this like astralexperience or?
Taken psychedelics before but not with.
I knew this person didn't dose me, and I didn't just take
psychedelics too. And so I was like, OK, what else
could it be? Like I've lost it.
(11:34):
And so when I came back to my body, I very sheepishly asked my
partner if anything happened forthem, right?
And they then explained exactly what I had just experienced.
The lights, the same place, the same sort of astral sphere that
we were on. And can you describe it at all
or is it private? Are you?
I think that's that part isn't the detail that matters so much
(11:55):
as that all of a sudden someone saw the exact same thing too.
And I was like, Oh my God, what happened?
And he assumed that because I had some deities around my house
from like my childhood growing up that I knew about those
things, which I didn't know at all.
I didn't know. Used to live at an ashram and
(12:16):
wanted to be a monk at one point.
And I just quit pretending or had quit being a Yogi and like
pretending he was a civilian, like I like to say, so he could
go back to his tech job. And so we both were coming from
these really different places, not knowing.
So he actually had all this training and knew all about it.
And I had no idea, no idea. He knew that and he had no idea.
(12:38):
I knew none of it. And so then started to explain
to me what happened. And basically I said, well, how
do I do that again? What is this?
And he's, oh, well, that's you meditate.
And so that's when I started meditating and then very quickly
understood sort of my relationship to the universe
changed and the expanse of the universe.
(13:00):
And so that became a really small piece of what I was
searching for, but in the beginning really was the seeking
for this kind of like wild experience, so.
To kind of replicate what you had experienced the first time.
Yeah, OK. Well, without knowing more
details, I think it's fair to say that it was just compelling
(13:23):
enough for you to like, believe in something bigger than the
material world, essentially. It's like all this, yes,
exponentially expanded in a verycosmic way.
Yeah, OK. No more.
Cool. Well and then it's OK, so you
went into Reiki, you just like dove into like researching
(13:44):
everything around that. And then where have you kind of
landed now? Do you feel like you've gone
through your exploratory phase and you're leaning more towards
certain perspectives, or is there anything that you're like
most interested in now that supports maybe a more civilian
life as an artist Or I don't know, what are you up to now?
(14:06):
Well, with my spirituality, I think I was like took that deep
dive and ran in as fast as I could.
I like this intensity. I do that with a lot of things
in my life. But then I think the lessons of
meditation finally hit where youget to slow down and you're not
seeking for this thing in your being.
Yeah, yeah, it can get addictingI think to be seeking, seeking
(14:29):
and like the journey of self improvement can be really
addicting too, which becomes like self defeating after a
while 'cause you're always trying to be better when the
whole point is to just be enough, so.
I'm really lucky that after whatlike four or five years, I
slowed down from intensive trainings and different
(14:49):
practices and have just understood how to have been
practicing integrating it into my life in a very day-to-day way
instead of just searching for these things that are outside of
my life. But I practice bhakti yoga.
Bhakti is devotion from the heart.
I also am a Hanuman devotee now.And so that's.
(15:13):
Going back to your roots, your family.
Yeah. And so actually I was just in
India for a little sort of pilgrimage where I was visiting
my Gurus ashrams in the northernpart of India.
And so that's really the most, it's a really devotional
practice that's less about when I think people hear yoga, you
(15:35):
think about like postures to putyour body in an asana practice.
And for me it's about how to live every day like you hear,
love, serve, remember. And it's love all beings, serve
all beings, and remember Onenessor God or whatever you want to
call that, and how to make that everything you do.
Yeah, I definitely didn't get that message at the Bikram yoga
(15:59):
studio I used to work at. Yeah, I know.
I was just talking about this the other day with someone
because we were talking about different phases of yoga
interests that we've been in andlike how I want to get back into
it. But there was a period where I
worked at the studio and would do Bikram like at least three
days a week in addition to working there, which is like a
(16:20):
real workout because it was in San Francisco and the studio is
in the upper floor and the laundry room was on the bottom
floor. And so after class, we would
take all the sweaty towels, dropthem down the laundry chute, and
then have to like carry these massive tubs of dry towels up
(16:41):
the stairs, which was like 3 flights of stairs after, you
know. And then.
So I was just reminiscing about that whole experience and like
the energy of people who need begrim yoga, which is like a more
extreme or which I really enjoyed it in some ways, but I
(17:02):
think it was just also fatiguingin a way that I don't think was
sustainable for me personally, like.
I sometimes I love Kundalini yoga, which I know is having its
own moment of people's understanding what it can be.
But it's about such intensity somuch of the time.
(17:22):
And I don't know like that for me too.
Like I stopped doing the practice because I realized I
was chasing the high. Yeah, exactly.
Like I wasn't chasing the practice.
It was like like what I can do with?
There's like a rush and pushing yourself to the Max.
And yeah, and I think the cult aspect of the leader, the
(17:42):
teacher training, a lot of the teachers get encouraged to have
this mindset around be more in shape and more hard on your body
and endure more. And it's, yeah, there that's in
some ways that can be really helpful, but maybe not the most
holistically spiritual mindset. But you know, for some people it
(18:04):
works. Who am I to judge?
Totally. It's like I was just a friend
was in the studio yesterday and we're talking about these
different gurus that were comingto LA to speak.
Yeah, I was a little triggered by your use of the word guru.
I was, I was like, oh, let's talk about that a little bit
more, but continue. Oh yeah.
Gonna say and there's ones that I really don't connect with.
(18:25):
I like to see you different people who come to speak in LA
just cause I've been curious about who these people are and
realize that we all have different needs and different
things to connect to and like next to someone that I don't
connect to at all. But realize that both have to
exist in the world, so we all have a choice of who to connect
(18:46):
with and how to enter practices in different ways if they truly
are a teacher. Well, and I think for me, the
most problematic dynamics I've run into with spiritual teachers
is where they don't engage with me in a way that I have as much
agency as them. So I don't know what your
(19:08):
experience has been. Did you do a test run with any
of your guru people or because I've found I would start by
being really trusting and then further in it's oh, they don't
actually see me as an equal on my own equal Co like
collaborative spiritual journey where we're feeding each other.
(19:29):
And it was always like top down.And then I had to like withdraw
from that because, sorry, because that's not, that's not
real. We all help each other.
Yeah. I mean, I think that I've
definitely been in dynamics whenI was learning, especially my
early meditation days that I didn't realize because I was so
(19:50):
new or unbalanced or not healthyfor me in the end.
So I left, and I'm glad I figured out to do that, yeah.
You might maybe it's like part of the journey, like figuring
out, oh, I don't need the other person to go where I'm.
Like guru complex versus the guru to where I think I was
(20:13):
talking about someone who came Sri Sri Ravi Shankar also
thought of his guru Dev who is art of living here in LA and I
went to this top and he was someone at the end asked like,
how do you know if you're a guru?
Like you're my guru and he's I'mnot a guru.
You're why are you giving your power away?
(20:35):
We're just beings. And I.
Believe beautiful versus some people I've seen saying I'm your
guru and this is like what you but you know, everyone has their
own path. For me, my guru, so guru means
T-shirt, right? So lots of gurus, but your sock
guru like my ultimate guru is nolonger in body.
(20:58):
So I think for me, it took a long time when I started
meditating and following this path to figure out what that
meant for me to have someone. And by that you mean they're
dead. So yes.
Just wanted to check, not that I'm like don't buy in, but I'm
just like, let's be clear what we're talking about.
(21:19):
So they're in spirit form now and you check in by.
They left their body. So because we've we believe that
like there's spirits everywhere,we say it's when they left their
body because they can't really die.
Totally. I know I was just trying to make
a joke, but I'm on board with that.
I'm trying to move away from thelanguage of loss.
(21:40):
Like I've heard that as a way todescribe it, and I like that.
Yeah, well, when I first startedhearing people talk like that, I
was like, what are they drinking?
Totally. I don't want that kool-aid.
Don't come near me with that. I'm done with this stuff, but
you're going a little hard for sure.
But yeah, so I think that for mewas always interesting and
(22:03):
something to reckon with, which also felt really separate from
this issue. But level do I back away or
interact with someone because I don't necessarily have someone
in a physical body that is my ultimate teacher.
And that for you works better because of what you're talking
about. Or was there, was there a point
(22:24):
where you had someone in person and then they were like, we're
working with this energy or spirit?
You know, meditation teachers who wanted to cross like,
personal boundaries. Great.
Yeah, OK. How involved in my life they
should have been or not, I think.
(22:45):
And part of it was me, like I let that happen, of course, and
then I figured it out. And that was a great lesson for
me. Like, ultimately, I'm thankful
that it happened that way. Yeah, that was my experience
too. It was 100% me.
And then it took me, you know, the moment of crossing the too
(23:07):
many lines to be like, oh right,like all the way back there was
too far. But I didn't see it until now.
So now I see it. I had to.
Learn to make boundaries somehow.
Yeah, right. Like how many boundaries do you
have to cross until you've crossed too many or to?
Understand what you needed or togive myself my own power to see
(23:28):
that instead of giving it away to people, but.
Yeah. And so I'm curious.
I guess. If that mindset and that
evolution for you has played into your coming out journey at
all, it sounds like based on thetimeline there is some like
crossover between when you started this spiritual
exploration and coming out. There was somewhere in the
(23:51):
timeline. I don't know if it was
connected. But no, strangely, I let's see,
I've never thought about it quite in these terms before,
'cause my first reactions, like I always, I didn't really put
the two together. But I think maybe because of my
spiritual practice, I was feeling more confident in my
(24:13):
voice, but that I've always beenqueer and I think that.
So like even before dating womenyou were you identified as
queer? Yeah, I think when I was younger
I didn't have that terminology yet in the 90s.
Of course, none of us did. Yeah.
(24:34):
But yeah, I was. I think that the.
Reason I ask is because for me it is similar to what you said.
I wasn't deliberately connectingmy gender, sexual evolution with
my spiritual journey. There was nothing within that
(24:54):
that was connected in any way. Like the spiritual education I
was getting was totally different than any kind of
gender studies. And like the people I was
working with were even like theyweren't the most woke people.
I guess I'll just say to be diplomatic, but there is
(25:15):
something for me about how much time I spent alone partly during
the pandemic, and then the inward turning and the trusting,
like you said, my voice, my intuition in a new way and
getting more still within myselfthat I think allowed for this
other part of me to open up moreand be more present with it
(25:37):
instead of it being something that was always kept in this
containment, which energeticallyspeaking.
Yeah, I think like energeticallythings opened up because of the
work I was doing, but also I think part of the timing lines
up because I was in a heterosexual marriage and when
it so everyone is soon, which doesn't always mean that, you
(26:01):
know, I had dated women before that.
Oh you had? OK, I don't know why I like when
we were talking about it pre interview I didn't connect that
timeline. Gotcha.
Quieter. But like I said, I don't think I
really ever had, like we talked about before, an official coming
out. For sure.
(26:21):
Moments where I started talking about queerness in my work
because it was coming out in my work.
I was making me work in a different way, and so I started
using that language. I had a girlfriend but I never
like. You didn't announce it on your
podcast or on your blog? I was.
Dating Hannah it was like just asimple.
(26:43):
Can you say that again? Sorry you got a little cut off
because of the I was. Just saying that like when that
happened, I just told like my mom was like, Oh yeah, I started
dating this woman. And it just so it wasn't really
until there was a an article in the LA Times that was about
queer artists that like a lot ofthe other people knew.
(27:05):
That you were included in. Yeah, So that's when I started
getting like calls from cousins,like family members, like asking
about like my coming out. And I was like, oh, this is such
a strange way to do it because I'm queer.
I don't wasn't particularly hiding it, but I also they
didn't know anything about my life.
(27:27):
Some of these people were reaching out anyway.
And so, but realized how quiet Ihad been about it and had to
rethink what that meant for myself and what I was hiding or
not, what I was like scared of or not.
So it's been kind of amazing. But yeah, I think everything
sort of lines up together, but I'm not sure how it's related
(27:48):
exactly directly, especially with an energy.
I think we all have a female andmale energy.
Not really that interested in a lot of lines within gender, and
I think that comes out of my work and it comes out in how I
think about energy spiritually. But those ideas have already
always been there, if that makessense.
(28:10):
It does, yeah. Yeah.
Looking at your work, I mean on your website you have as far
back as 2018, which that work isnot as figure driven.
I don't know if it is like, but you're just not showing that
type of work from that series orsomething.
But your work becomes more aboutthe figure and is very like sex
(28:34):
forward, I would say, and then becomes more queer, like further
into the pandemic you get in terms of your timeline.
Yeah. And I just wanted to comment on
something you said about gender as an energy.
I think that's been the thing that I've used as my like
grounding as I've tried to come to terms with what my gender
(28:58):
identity is. I do feel like it's an like a
frequency or an energy that I'm trying to align within myself
and then on my external. So finding this harmony between
the internal and the outer external energy, because I think
our bodies can inhabit an energyand our souls inhabit an energy,
(29:19):
and it shifts at different timesin our lives.
So I was thinking about you and about my own story of this late
in life kind of shift. Even if you were queer before,
you shifted in terms of who you were explicitly looking to date.
Or maybe it was just who you were attracted to.
I don't know, like in the moment, do you feel like it is
(29:41):
for you more about the person ordid you feel like you're drawn
to like a different energy or? For me I think it's about the
person and like when I was younger I think I was.
I remember like moments in college having like crushes on
girls and not and feeling too scared to act on it.
Yeah, for sure. Moments like that, but I think
now I feel less that fear. Yeah.
(30:04):
Well, congratulations. That's great.
I know. Well, and thinking about how
that translates into your work, maybe we can move into you your
actual nitty gritty. If we are looking at YouTube,
behind you there is a beautiful textile that is very photo based
of it looks like a couple of legs intertwined.
(30:25):
There's like an enmeshment of bodies happening and you're like
behind your head, which I was thinking about the choice of
material, which is textile and the enmeshment of the weft and
the weave, right? Those are the two directional
thing. What is it?
The weft and the warp. That's right.
And then, yeah, like how you're enmeshing the bodies to kind of
(30:47):
mimic that interplay. And I was like, oh, you're so
smart. I don't know if that's
intentional or if you just like,naturally made that analogy
through the use of material, butI was like, oh, I get it.
My practice before I was a Weaver was based on stitching.
So I was embroidering these drawings of figures meshed
(31:10):
together in these different ways, but it was very minimal
and it was so much about drawingand I was really excited to
weave because I wanted when you're stitching your piercing
the surface to create thing. And when you're weaving, at
least the way that I'm leaving these works, the image and the
structure are the same. So like the body is the body of
(31:32):
the cloth. And that totally shifted the way
I thought about constructing image.
Say more about that. And they think it's interesting
too, to be depicting sheets which are cloth.
You know, until it's like using paper to make a paper airplane
or something. Well, I'm a textile nerd and so
(31:54):
I always love when like textilesimitate other textiles.
And like sometimes there's prints that are made to look
like nits and nits that are for clothing that are supposed to
look like a different thing thatwe can do in textiles.
And I kind of love because really strange moments, but
within my weavings, I think onesthat have textiles in them, I'm
(32:17):
sort of interested in drape and being able to pull out that
light and that sort of referenceto different moments in art
history and classical imagery. And how that can sort of also,
you know, sheets are so intimateand so are cloth.
And that's partially why I work in textiles, is the intimate
nature of cloth and how it's a place where we both have always
(32:41):
found it, I think globally as a place to come together as
community. But also it's our second skin,
it's our clothes, it's our curtains, it's our upholstery,
it's even our Band-Aid, it's ournapkins.
And we know so little about it, but we know it holds this memory
and intimacy for us. I also like how the Peach of
(33:01):
this piece behind you is like recalling like the Peach beat of
the cloth behind me. That was not intentional, but I
love that. Can you talk a little bit about
because I do feel like there's elements of this really
photographic image that are thenmade more sculptural or like you
(33:22):
insert these kind of abstract flat blocks of color and then
the thread hanging off. I don't know if it this is, is
this finished right? So can you talk about like how
then you bring it back to sculpture almost through these
more kind of like the flatness and it kind of makes you more
(33:44):
aware of the material again instead of it being this image
as a picture, images like a portal.
Totally. So I think that happens a couple
different ways with the work that I start by taking
photographs. I have people that models within
space, often alongside my own body that I photograph.
Then they get edited and manipulated and I figure out how
(34:06):
to leave it. And I go to the loom and I'm
really interested in how the pixels translated back into
cloth and what it means to make something like an image physical
again. Through the hand, through labor,
through material, through love, through energy.
Because also weaving is kind of slow.
Yeah, right. And you're all hand weaving, but
(34:27):
there's got to be like a computer program involved to
tell you what to do, OK. Assisted Lamb, which means.
What is it called? Sorry, you cut out a little.
Bit a digitally assisted loom. It's amazing.
So Jaccard looms used to be a punch card system, so you are
able to control the threads morethan if you just had six petals
(34:49):
on the ground. So it all of a sudden changed
how many patterns you could weave if you weren't just doing
it fully manually. And basically, I have one of
those punch card looms, but my punch card is digital.
So what I do is I make a big file that's 2640 pixels big
because I have 2640 threads thatrun across my loom.
(35:13):
Just like, Oh my God, OK YouTube, go to YouTube.
She's showing it. And basically I make a file
where it's 2640 pixels, so everythread is a pixel and I choose
which threads go up and down every single row before I start
weaving that information to my computer which talks to my loom.
(35:33):
And so I'm hand weaving. So I'm throwing the thread back
and forth as I'm going materialsand putting in stripes.
I'm basically my loom controls the threads for me based off of
the map. I give it every time I weave.
So I press my, I only have one foot pedal, I press the pedal
down, it lifts the threads that I sent in the map that I
(35:57):
manually decided in Photoshop and then they go down after I
press the pedal again and then they come back up for the next
row. And so it's just based off of
the threads lift based off of the file that I produce.
Cool. And you have to have a thread in
every gradient of Gray, I take it?
No. So basically cloth is
(36:19):
engineered, there's different structures and cloth and I
figure out which structures willcreate the different tones.
So that's what part of my math is.
I map these different structurestogether.
It's not like a one to one of bitmap of what's late and what's
dark, because that would probably be a strange tangle of
threads. And instead I figure out this
(36:40):
satin structure will fit next tothis twill structure, and this
one will be lighter and this onewill be darker.
And so that's how I start to figure out how I'm going to
weave the image. None of that makes sense, but I
really admire it. I'm like, I have no idea what
you're talking about. That just proves like how hard
(37:00):
this is to do, so I appreciate it.
But if people are interested, itsounds like you guys do open
studios occasionally. You're available for a studio
visit, I assume, so people should doubly reach out because
that's a whole conversation. Oh.
Yeah, I love when people want tolearn about the loom.
It's always exciting. So that's.
(37:21):
Awesome. It seems like you do a lot of
residencies. Maybe that's your sad moon, like
wanting to travel the world. Yeah.
Have you ever done the Blondeuest textile residency?
Do you know about that one in Iceland?
There's a really good textile residency in the north of
Iceland that you should check out.
I had applied and gotten in and then COVID hit and then it we
(37:47):
never rescheduled from there andI got my own loom.
I didn't have my own loom yet, and it's actually on the list of
things to someday circle back to, but haven't yet.
Oh, cool. But it sounds like you've been
recently maybe to the Netherlands or like what have
you done recently, I guess is a better question.
The most recent official residency was YATO, which is in
(38:11):
upstate New York and was amazing, really amazing
residency. I highly recommend if you've
been considering it and not trying to do it.
I felt it felt really amazing tobe there.
I love the cohort, the space is beautiful.
It was really inspired up there and actually I'm now starting to
work on any series based off of the images I took up there.
(38:32):
So cool. I feel like a lot of times I
don't have a loom when I'm at residencies general work on.
And so for me it's really this like moment of research and
reset. And so I find it really
generative. I really like the really
intensive time I have in my studio where I weave all day
every day, and then I'm forced to leave and like reset and
(38:54):
dream in a different way and then come back and sort of
output again. Yeah, that's really cool.
I've heard about the yatto. I've heard it's pretty haunted
up there. So haunted.
There's so many ghosts. I already believed in ghosts,
but I've never experienced like this, much like physical
paranormal activity of my life. And so is everyone else there
(39:16):
that they're friendly. Can we?
Is it like you can only be an exclusive yatto member to know
about the ghost stories or was there anything?
No, Everyone knows all about allof these ghosts.
But yeah, no, like locked doors opening and closing on their
own, as if like you're in an Addams family scene or things
(39:38):
like that where a it feels really friendly, like I was
never heard. They don't feel malicious.
I think they're like stoked we're making art up there and
using the space how it was meantto be or they hoped it would be
used. Which on that, No, you're in the
American Industrial building. Is that what it's called?
(40:00):
Or in LA, what Allied Crafts building?
I feel like there are some ghosts in that building
encouraging people to do textiles, because everyone I've
talked to who goes to that building doing something else
ends up doing textiles. Have you noticed that?
Yeah, I, I mean, part of it was I specifically got a Weaver in
(40:25):
here. Like I have a really good friend
whose studio building was closing right when I found my
studio. And there was a bigger studio
next door that was too much space for me.
But I know she was looking with a friend and I was like, and so
we've slowly been building out our textile club.
Yeah, I felt like you guys had an open studio in November and I
went through and was like talking to a lot of people and
(40:46):
everyone's like, well, I'm a painter and I'm a sculptor.
But I've really, I've gotten super excited about textiles
since moving here. And everybody's like, oh, well,
it used to be like a sweatshop, like a clothing factory.
And so the whole kind of runningjoke as I went through the
different levels was like, there's some kind of ghost here
(41:06):
trying to be like everybody working textiles.
You will. Or maybe it's the energy, like
the residual energy of the building or?
That's true, but also this neighborhood there's.
Yeah, you're in the fashion district.
Everywhere but I also think thattextiles are like contagious.
It's a really exciting medium. I think that we also are all
(41:28):
craving softness right now in the world in a really different
and this is powerful softness, how softness can have agency.
But I also think that I think inwhen a lot of people are
trained, if they're trained in fine art, not all of the places
they had training have textile programs or ones that are easy
(41:48):
to jump into if you're not part of that department.
And so it's just like another material that once you see it
around, you want to play with kind of like when I go see a
bunch of paintings I really wantto try to paint and then I like
remember that I don't. Right, and that's how I feel.
Yeah. But I yeah, I think it's like
really nice to have that sort ofshared energy in the building
(42:10):
and seeing like how everything cross pollinates.
Yeah, it was really cool to see,and it made me curious, like
what work I would make had I ever moved into the building.
But I know that maybe one day we'll see.
My life is a complete mystery atthis point, but I wanted to see
what you had coming up, like where people can find you, what
(42:32):
you got in the works. Yeah, it's already March, isn't
it? It sure is.
Hello. What?
I know. Crazy.
But let's see. So I have work going to Eric
Firestone, which is a gallery inNew York that is opening, which
I'm really excited. About wait, you said next week.
(42:53):
Next week I believe, or the weekafter Today's the 5th.
What's? The date so people can look.
I have to look but I believe it's the 13th or 4th the 13th.
So yeah. Stay in New York and then I also
have a show works headed to Hastings Contemporary, which is
an institution in the UK that I'm really excited about.
(43:14):
It's a show called Undersea and it's sort of about these how
different moments of water and Ihave works for my Siren series
headed there, which I'm really thrilled for.
So I'm really excited for both the really different shows. 1 is
like about these sort of really dreamy mythological sirens that
I was weaving works. And then the show at Eric
(43:36):
Firestone is called Erotic City.And it's these really intimate
works and these crops of bodies that are a little bit abstracted
in the way that we can hold ourselves and hold each other.
So I'm thrilled to be around this March.
Oh my gosh, yeah. What a great time to be in New
York and showing your work. That's exciting.
(43:57):
For the show, we'll see, but. Are you going to go?
You said. I I might go.
I have I'm a maid of honor for awedding and I think I have a
dress fitting I need to be in New York for so it actually
lines up. Oh, but it's a group show it
sounds like. Then not these are.
Yeah. OK, cool.
Well, awesome. So everybody look out for that
(44:19):
and then miaweiner.com/instagram.
Similar handle I assume. Name Mia Weiner.
Awesome. OK, well, thank you so much for
joining me on the side, Woo. And yeah, I love staring at your
work all day or during our conversation.
It was like a nice little backdrop to like what we're
(44:41):
talking about. And just I like what you said
about soft power. I feel like that's something we
can all take with us as we go into this hellscape timeline
that we're living in. A lot more agency then I think
we give ourselves. So it's time to remember that.
Thank you if you want to. So let's go.
(45:03):
Yeah, fuck yeah. All right.
Well, thank you so much, Mia. You.
Bye. That's all for this week's
episode. Thank you so much for listening.
This was your host TiVo with sound editing help by Natasha
Lowey. If you love this episode, please
share it with a friend, write usa review, and give us five stars
(45:23):
for good karma points. To watch along, subscribe to our
YouTube channel and see all of our videos and live top
recordings there. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next time on the side view.
Hello and welcome to the Side Blue.
This is your host, Tebow, helping you navigate the wild
and mysterious path that is the creative life.
Join me as I ask our guests about the tools they use to help
them survive in the creative wilderness.
So hello and welcome Side Wars to the latest episode of the
(00:24):
Side Move. This is Tebow.
I am here in Santa Fe, which if you're following along on my art
date sub stack, you will know why and what.
So feel free to go there and read the back story.
But I'm really excited today because I'm here with Mia
Weiner, who is an LA based artist.
And hello Mia. Hi, it's so nice to be here.
(00:46):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to read a little
bit about Mia, just for everybody's edification.
So her bio is responding to the historical textile.
Mia Weiner creates intimate declarations that explore
identity, gender and the psychology of human
relationships. She hand weaves each tapestry in
(01:07):
her Los Angeles studio, which you can see behind her there.
I love that. We're going to get a little
studio tour. And Mia received her MFA from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her BFA from
Maryland Institute College of Art.
She was awarded the VNA Parasol Prize at the VNA Museum in
(01:28):
London. That's really cool.
OK, we need to talk about that. Her work has been exhibited
internationally, including in New York, London, Los Angeles,
Miami, Chicago, and Rome. Weiner is a Yatto Fellow and her
work is in the permanent museum or permanent collection of the
Koontz Museum, Dunhog, Netherlands.
(01:48):
Have you been there to see your work?
I haven't. It was acquired very recently,
so oh. Cool.
And did they like invite you to see it or anything?
Did they do any kind of like event around it or?
There will be not yet. Oh.
Cool. And then museums take a minute
to what's the word I'm looking for when they acquire work to
(02:10):
get it into the catalog basically.
OK, that's cool. Yeah, my, I've had one piece,
like acquired by a museum and they're not open yet, but
they're supposedly opening in the fall.
And I was messaging on social media because I saw them.
I saw they had created a new account and I was like, oh,
(02:32):
well, that's so exciting that you're opening.
I'd love to get an invite because I am one of the artists
in your collection. And they were like, sorry, who
is this? They were so weird.
And I'm like, oh, OK, I guess you have a lot of artists in the
collection and you're maybe not giving out special invites to
be. I don't know.
(02:53):
I don't know if that's normal. Yeah, this is a really large
museum in The Hague. I'm really thrilled to be part
of the collection. And I met the curators when I
had a show in Amsterdam, what, 6months ago now, OK.
Then you were doing a show there.
Did you have a residency? How'd you end up in Amsterdam?
(03:14):
A solo booth at Unseen, which isa fair in Amsterdam alongside A2
person show that was up. So that's how we met and then I
was really excited when they acquired the work and now we'll
see what happens. Yeah, totally.
OK, cool. Well, congratulations on that.
(03:34):
OK, well, so to kick off the side woo line of questioning,
what sign are you? I know we talked about this when
I first met you, but I'm totallyblinking.
Well this just got more complicated, but I'm an
Aquarius. Wait, how did it get more
complicated? I was just in India.
Oh. Vedic.
And it turns out in Vedic astrology, I'm a Capricorn,
(03:56):
which really shifted everything I thought about my identity.
Yeah. 'Cause I really identify as a
hardcore Aquarius. OK, we took a little break for
tech support, but we're back. OK, So yeah, Vedic astrology, if
you've never like as a Westerner, if you're like all of
a sudden exposed to it midlife, it it does fuck you up.
(04:19):
Yeah. So you were saying you actually
really identify with the Capricorn of Vedic astrology.
Is that what you're saying or? It was.
I'm in western astrology. I am an Aquarius sun, a Taurus
rising, and a Sagittarius moon. OK.
So now in Vedic astrology I was just told I'm really a Capricorn
(04:40):
sun, an Aries rising and a Scorpio moon which is.
Some of the mean a little bit different because I'm a Scorpio
and then in Vedic I'm a Libra and I see it and I do have a lot
of Western Libra in my chart, soit doesn't feel so out of left
(05:00):
field. But Virgo and Capricorn there,
there's some shared interests there.
I don't know. Did it ring true at all?
Did you have a full reading or? I did it was really a lot of
things rang really true, especially when they talked
about the past when we started my childhood that were never
(05:22):
sort of explained that like really big and intense and I was
sold once we started. OK.
And had you ever had a reading of your birth chart in Western
astrology like that? Oh, you had and they didn't get
into all that. So it was a very different
(05:42):
reading than I've had before, feeling wise.
Yeah, that's interesting becauseI know like your moon is
supposed to be about your childhood and your relationship
to your mother up till like age 7.
OK, I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's one of the things
I've heard. Jessica Lenyadu, my by proxy
astrology teacher, I feel like most of what I've learned has
(06:03):
been through her. But in your Sagittarius moon in
Western. So my sister is that and I
remember looking it up because I'm a Capricorn moon.
My mom was a Capricorn moon, hersister is a Capricorn moon, and
we're all Scorpio rising, including my sister.
(06:24):
So there's like a lot of shared commonality, except for my
sister who has this Saj moon. And I remember looking it up and
it's no one can tell you what todo or teach you how to do things
when you already think you know more than them.
Yeah. And that was like the
description of like the Saj moonis no one can parent you when
you already know better than they do kind of thing.
(06:46):
So I don't know if that rings true for you, but.
Does, though I was surprised that the Scorpio moon was the
only thing that really hit in the Oh, OK, all right.
I was like, oh, this I somehow understand.
I'm not sure how yet. Still fully.
This was two weeks ago. OK.
What did they say about it? We actually think that very deep
(07:07):
into that part, but when they just like, ah, OK, this I can
the rest, we'll see. And my moon in Vedic is you will
gain everything and then you'll lose everything multiple times
in your lifetime. So I was like I don't really
(07:27):
want that. Thank you though.
We're always like having to release all the time that never
stops that surrender. So it's nice that you like, you
know, each time. Yeah, but it's like one of those
kind of militia or malevolent placements in Indian astrology.
Like you don't really want it, but yeah, that's fair enough.
(07:51):
That is a very Scorpio thing to say, talking about death and
rebirth like. What?
You just keep going. That part's really cool.
What's your background with Wu, other than like a kind of
interest in astrology? It sounds like you're into
Reiki, right? Yeah, I did 5 levels of Reiki
training. And so you blame a grandmaster?
(08:14):
You can shoot lasers out your hand.
Is that what happens? By the end, eyes too.
Out of your eyes. Yeah, no, I did all my Reiki
trainings. I finished what, 2-3 years ago
now. But, you know, I was brought up
around meditation and I didn't really personally feel attached
(08:38):
to it until much later, I think,as the rebellion of growing up
in the household with it. I my mom.
Like you were forced into meditation at a young age or
something? Really.
But, you know, I grew up in a really academic, intellectual
Jewish family that also my mother's a Hanuman devotee,
(08:58):
which is the monkey God in Hinduism and which Ramdas is
also very well known as a follower of and used to know him
and was very much part of a community with him, with his
teachings. And so when I grew up with that,
I think because we were also like that intellectual Jewish
academic family, I just thought we were using like a lot of
(09:23):
brain space on things we could use for other things.
It felt like a lot of stuffy, a lot of sort of academia.
And I was like, why don't we just discover a new gene before
I had my moment where? Wait, how old were you when you
were thinking that? I don't know, like middle
school, high school sort of growing.
Why don't we just discover a newgene?
(09:44):
Mom and dad like this is so lame.
What could be possible instead of, oh, that is what is
happening right now and possibleeven though I don't see it on
this plane. And so it took a while for me to
have that aha moment. And basically, once my eyes
opened and I saw the light, I dove in as hard and fast as I
could to all sorts of different modalities of meditation, energy
(10:10):
work. I just wanted to explore and see
what connected with me. So yeah.
And how what it like? What it seeing the light look
like for you? I had a full out of body
experience. I was with someone who basically
we had a full energy energetic experience where we
(10:32):
energetically connected and had an out of body experience.
I literally saw lights and a couple other.
Back up. So what was the context?
I feel like you need to tell this whole story if you feel
comfortable. I was like, I think this is
enough, this part because I was like, what was really important
was to be fair, I was in a really stressful moment in my
(10:53):
life. I was going through a really
difficult breakup, and this was what the new partner had just
started seeing. The world was felt really
difficult as this bleak moment in my life, totally stressed
out. And when this happened, I
thought I lost my mind. Like I totally thought I
cracked. I was like, OK, I pushed too
far. Turns out it's going to be sick
(11:13):
to be crazy, but I can't tell anybody what just happened.
So you were like meditating withyour partner or something and
ended up having this like astralexperience or?
Taken psychedelics before but not with.
I knew this person didn't dose me, and I didn't just take
psychedelics too. And so I was like, OK, what else
could it be? Like I've lost it.
(11:34):
And so when I came back to my body, I very sheepishly asked my
partner if anything happened forthem, right?
And they then explained exactly what I had just experienced.
The lights, the same place, the same sort of astral sphere that
we were on. And can you describe it at all
or is it private? Are you?
I think that's that part isn't the detail that matters so much
(11:55):
as that all of a sudden someone saw the exact same thing too.
And I was like, Oh my God, what happened?
And he assumed that because I had some deities around my house
from like my childhood growing up that I knew about those
things, which I didn't know at all.
I didn't know. Used to live at an ashram and
(12:16):
wanted to be a monk at one point.
And I just quit pretending or had quit being a Yogi and like
pretending he was a civilian, like I like to say, so he could
go back to his tech job. And so we both were coming from
these really different places, not knowing.
So he actually had all this training and knew all about it.
And I had no idea, no idea. He knew that and he had no idea.
(12:38):
I knew none of it. And so then started to explain
to me what happened. And basically I said, well, how
do I do that again? What is this?
And he's, oh, well, that's you meditate.
And so that's when I started meditating and then very quickly
understood sort of my relationship to the universe
changed and the expanse of the universe.
(13:00):
And so that became a really small piece of what I was
searching for, but in the beginning really was the seeking
for this kind of like wild experience, so.
To kind of replicate what you had experienced the first time.
Yeah, OK. Well, without knowing more
details, I think it's fair to say that it was just compelling
(13:23):
enough for you to like, believe in something bigger than the
material world, essentially. It's like all this, yes,
exponentially expanded in a verycosmic way.
Yeah, OK. No more.
Cool. Well and then it's OK, so you
went into Reiki, you just like dove into like researching
(13:44):
everything around that. And then where have you kind of
landed now? Do you feel like you've gone
through your exploratory phase and you're leaning more towards
certain perspectives, or is there anything that you're like
most interested in now that supports maybe a more civilian
life as an artist Or I don't know, what are you up to now?
(14:06):
Well, with my spirituality, I think I was like took that deep
dive and ran in as fast as I could.
I like this intensity. I do that with a lot of things
in my life. But then I think the lessons of
meditation finally hit where youget to slow down and you're not
seeking for this thing in your being.
Yeah, yeah, it can get addictingI think to be seeking, seeking
(14:29):
and like the journey of self improvement can be really
addicting too, which becomes like self defeating after a
while 'cause you're always trying to be better when the
whole point is to just be enough, so.
I'm really lucky that after whatlike four or five years, I
slowed down from intensive trainings and different
(14:49):
practices and have just understood how to have been
practicing integrating it into my life in a very day-to-day way
instead of just searching for these things that are outside of
my life. But I practice bhakti yoga.
Bhakti is devotion from the heart.
I also am a Hanuman devotee now.And so that's.
(15:13):
Going back to your roots, your family.
Yeah. And so actually I was just in
India for a little sort of pilgrimage where I was visiting
my Gurus ashrams in the northernpart of India.
And so that's really the most, it's a really devotional
practice that's less about when I think people hear yoga, you
(15:35):
think about like postures to putyour body in an asana practice.
And for me it's about how to live every day like you hear,
love, serve, remember. And it's love all beings, serve
all beings, and remember Onenessor God or whatever you want to
call that, and how to make that everything you do.
Yeah, I definitely didn't get that message at the Bikram yoga
(15:59):
studio I used to work at. Yeah, I know.
I was just talking about this the other day with someone
because we were talking about different phases of yoga
interests that we've been in andlike how I want to get back into
it. But there was a period where I
worked at the studio and would do Bikram like at least three
days a week in addition to working there, which is like a
(16:20):
real workout because it was in San Francisco and the studio is
in the upper floor and the laundry room was on the bottom
floor. And so after class, we would
take all the sweaty towels, dropthem down the laundry chute, and
then have to like carry these massive tubs of dry towels up
(16:41):
the stairs, which was like 3 flights of stairs after, you
know. And then.
So I was just reminiscing about that whole experience and like
the energy of people who need begrim yoga, which is like a more
extreme or which I really enjoyed it in some ways, but I
(17:02):
think it was just also fatiguingin a way that I don't think was
sustainable for me personally, like.
I sometimes I love Kundalini yoga, which I know is having its
own moment of people's understanding what it can be.
But it's about such intensity somuch of the time.
(17:22):
And I don't know like that for me too.
Like I stopped doing the practice because I realized I
was chasing the high. Yeah, exactly.
Like I wasn't chasing the practice.
It was like like what I can do with?
There's like a rush and pushing yourself to the Max.
And yeah, and I think the cult aspect of the leader, the
(17:42):
teacher training, a lot of the teachers get encouraged to have
this mindset around be more in shape and more hard on your body
and endure more. And it's, yeah, there that's in
some ways that can be really helpful, but maybe not the most
holistically spiritual mindset. But you know, for some people it
(18:04):
works. Who am I to judge?
Totally. It's like I was just a friend
was in the studio yesterday and we're talking about these
different gurus that were comingto LA to speak.
Yeah, I was a little triggered by your use of the word guru.
I was, I was like, oh, let's talk about that a little bit
more, but continue. Oh yeah.
Gonna say and there's ones that I really don't connect with.
(18:25):
I like to see you different people who come to speak in LA
just cause I've been curious about who these people are and
realize that we all have different needs and different
things to connect to and like next to someone that I don't
connect to at all. But realize that both have to
exist in the world, so we all have a choice of who to connect
(18:46):
with and how to enter practices in different ways if they truly
are a teacher. Well, and I think for me, the
most problematic dynamics I've run into with spiritual teachers
is where they don't engage with me in a way that I have as much
agency as them. So I don't know what your
(19:08):
experience has been. Did you do a test run with any
of your guru people or because I've found I would start by
being really trusting and then further in it's oh, they don't
actually see me as an equal on my own equal Co like
collaborative spiritual journey where we're feeding each other.
(19:29):
And it was always like top down.And then I had to like withdraw
from that because, sorry, because that's not, that's not
real. We all help each other.
Yeah. I mean, I think that I've
definitely been in dynamics whenI was learning, especially my
early meditation days that I didn't realize because I was so
(19:50):
new or unbalanced or not healthyfor me in the end.
So I left, and I'm glad I figured out to do that, yeah.
You might maybe it's like part of the journey, like figuring
out, oh, I don't need the other person to go where I'm.
Like guru complex versus the guru to where I think I was
(20:13):
talking about someone who came Sri Sri Ravi Shankar also
thought of his guru Dev who is art of living here in LA and I
went to this top and he was someone at the end asked like,
how do you know if you're a guru?
Like you're my guru and he's I'mnot a guru.
You're why are you giving your power away?
(20:35):
We're just beings. And I.
Believe beautiful versus some people I've seen saying I'm your
guru and this is like what you but you know, everyone has their
own path. For me, my guru, so guru means
T-shirt, right? So lots of gurus, but your sock
guru like my ultimate guru is nolonger in body.
(20:58):
So I think for me, it took a long time when I started
meditating and following this path to figure out what that
meant for me to have someone. And by that you mean they're
dead. So yes.
Just wanted to check, not that I'm like don't buy in, but I'm
just like, let's be clear what we're talking about.
(21:19):
So they're in spirit form now and you check in by.
They left their body. So because we've we believe that
like there's spirits everywhere,we say it's when they left their
body because they can't really die.
Totally. I know I was just trying to make
a joke, but I'm on board with that.
I'm trying to move away from thelanguage of loss.
(21:40):
Like I've heard that as a way todescribe it, and I like that.
Yeah, well, when I first startedhearing people talk like that, I
was like, what are they drinking?
Totally. I don't want that kool-aid.
Don't come near me with that. I'm done with this stuff, but
you're going a little hard for sure.
But yeah, so I think that for mewas always interesting and
(22:03):
something to reckon with, which also felt really separate from
this issue. But level do I back away or
interact with someone because I don't necessarily have someone
in a physical body that is my ultimate teacher.
And that for you works better because of what you're talking
about. Or was there, was there a point
(22:24):
where you had someone in person and then they were like, we're
working with this energy or spirit?
You know, meditation teachers who wanted to cross like,
personal boundaries. Great.
Yeah, OK. How involved in my life they
should have been or not, I think.
(22:45):
And part of it was me, like I let that happen, of course, and
then I figured it out. And that was a great lesson for
me. Like, ultimately, I'm thankful
that it happened that way. Yeah, that was my experience
too. It was 100% me.
And then it took me, you know, the moment of crossing the too
(23:07):
many lines to be like, oh right,like all the way back there was
too far. But I didn't see it until now.
So now I see it. I had to.
Learn to make boundaries somehow.
Yeah, right. Like how many boundaries do you
have to cross until you've crossed too many or to?
Understand what you needed or togive myself my own power to see
(23:28):
that instead of giving it away to people, but.
Yeah. And so I'm curious.
I guess. If that mindset and that
evolution for you has played into your coming out journey at
all, it sounds like based on thetimeline there is some like
crossover between when you started this spiritual
exploration and coming out. There was somewhere in the
(23:51):
timeline. I don't know if it was
connected. But no, strangely, I let's see,
I've never thought about it quite in these terms before,
'cause my first reactions, like I always, I didn't really put
the two together. But I think maybe because of my
spiritual practice, I was feeling more confident in my
(24:13):
voice, but that I've always beenqueer and I think that.
So like even before dating womenyou were you identified as
queer? Yeah, I think when I was younger
I didn't have that terminology yet in the 90s.
Of course, none of us did. Yeah.
(24:34):
But yeah, I was. I think that the.
Reason I ask is because for me it is similar to what you said.
I wasn't deliberately connectingmy gender, sexual evolution with
my spiritual journey. There was nothing within that
(24:54):
that was connected in any way. Like the spiritual education I
was getting was totally different than any kind of
gender studies. And like the people I was
working with were even like theyweren't the most woke people.
I guess I'll just say to be diplomatic, but there is
(25:15):
something for me about how much time I spent alone partly during
the pandemic, and then the inward turning and the trusting,
like you said, my voice, my intuition in a new way and
getting more still within myselfthat I think allowed for this
other part of me to open up moreand be more present with it
(25:37):
instead of it being something that was always kept in this
containment, which energeticallyspeaking.
Yeah, I think like energeticallythings opened up because of the
work I was doing, but also I think part of the timing lines
up because I was in a heterosexual marriage and when
it so everyone is soon, which doesn't always mean that, you
(26:01):
know, I had dated women before that.
Oh you had? OK, I don't know why I like when
we were talking about it pre interview I didn't connect that
timeline. Gotcha.
Quieter. But like I said, I don't think I
really ever had, like we talked about before, an official coming
out. For sure.
(26:21):
Moments where I started talking about queerness in my work
because it was coming out in my work.
I was making me work in a different way, and so I started
using that language. I had a girlfriend but I never
like. You didn't announce it on your
podcast or on your blog? I was.
Dating Hannah it was like just asimple.
(26:43):
Can you say that again? Sorry you got a little cut off
because of the I was. Just saying that like when that
happened, I just told like my mom was like, Oh yeah, I started
dating this woman. And it just so it wasn't really
until there was a an article in the LA Times that was about
queer artists that like a lot ofthe other people knew.
(27:05):
That you were included in. Yeah, So that's when I started
getting like calls from cousins,like family members, like asking
about like my coming out. And I was like, oh, this is such
a strange way to do it because I'm queer.
I don't wasn't particularly hiding it, but I also they
didn't know anything about my life.
(27:27):
Some of these people were reaching out anyway.
And so, but realized how quiet Ihad been about it and had to
rethink what that meant for myself and what I was hiding or
not, what I was like scared of or not.
So it's been kind of amazing. But yeah, I think everything
sort of lines up together, but I'm not sure how it's related
(27:48):
exactly directly, especially with an energy.
I think we all have a female andmale energy.
Not really that interested in a lot of lines within gender, and
I think that comes out of my work and it comes out in how I
think about energy spiritually. But those ideas have already
always been there, if that makessense.
(28:10):
It does, yeah. Yeah.
Looking at your work, I mean on your website you have as far
back as 2018, which that work isnot as figure driven.
I don't know if it is like, but you're just not showing that
type of work from that series orsomething.
But your work becomes more aboutthe figure and is very like sex
(28:34):
forward, I would say, and then becomes more queer, like further
into the pandemic you get in terms of your timeline.
Yeah. And I just wanted to comment on
something you said about gender as an energy.
I think that's been the thing that I've used as my like
grounding as I've tried to come to terms with what my gender
(28:58):
identity is. I do feel like it's an like a
frequency or an energy that I'm trying to align within myself
and then on my external. So finding this harmony between
the internal and the outer external energy, because I think
our bodies can inhabit an energyand our souls inhabit an energy,
(29:19):
and it shifts at different timesin our lives.
So I was thinking about you and about my own story of this late
in life kind of shift. Even if you were queer before,
you shifted in terms of who you were explicitly looking to date.
Or maybe it was just who you were attracted to.
I don't know, like in the moment, do you feel like it is
(29:41):
for you more about the person ordid you feel like you're drawn
to like a different energy or? For me I think it's about the
person and like when I was younger I think I was.
I remember like moments in college having like crushes on
girls and not and feeling too scared to act on it.
Yeah, for sure. Moments like that, but I think
now I feel less that fear. Yeah.
(30:04):
Well, congratulations. That's great.
I know. Well, and thinking about how
that translates into your work, maybe we can move into you your
actual nitty gritty. If we are looking at YouTube,
behind you there is a beautiful textile that is very photo based
of it looks like a couple of legs intertwined.
(30:25):
There's like an enmeshment of bodies happening and you're like
behind your head, which I was thinking about the choice of
material, which is textile and the enmeshment of the weft and
the weave, right? Those are the two directional
thing. What is it?
The weft and the warp. That's right.
And then, yeah, like how you're enmeshing the bodies to kind of
(30:47):
mimic that interplay. And I was like, oh, you're so
smart. I don't know if that's
intentional or if you just like,naturally made that analogy
through the use of material, butI was like, oh, I get it.
My practice before I was a Weaver was based on stitching.
So I was embroidering these drawings of figures meshed
(31:10):
together in these different ways, but it was very minimal
and it was so much about drawingand I was really excited to
weave because I wanted when you're stitching your piercing
the surface to create thing. And when you're weaving, at
least the way that I'm leaving these works, the image and the
structure are the same. So like the body is the body of
(31:32):
the cloth. And that totally shifted the way
I thought about constructing image.
Say more about that. And they think it's interesting
too, to be depicting sheets which are cloth.
You know, until it's like using paper to make a paper airplane
or something. Well, I'm a textile nerd and so
(31:54):
I always love when like textilesimitate other textiles.
And like sometimes there's prints that are made to look
like nits and nits that are for clothing that are supposed to
look like a different thing thatwe can do in textiles.
And I kind of love because really strange moments, but
within my weavings, I think onesthat have textiles in them, I'm
(32:17):
sort of interested in drape and being able to pull out that
light and that sort of referenceto different moments in art
history and classical imagery. And how that can sort of also,
you know, sheets are so intimateand so are cloth.
And that's partially why I work in textiles, is the intimate
nature of cloth and how it's a place where we both have always
(32:41):
found it, I think globally as a place to come together as
community. But also it's our second skin,
it's our clothes, it's our curtains, it's our upholstery,
it's even our Band-Aid, it's ournapkins.
And we know so little about it, but we know it holds this memory
and intimacy for us. I also like how the Peach of
(33:01):
this piece behind you is like recalling like the Peach beat of
the cloth behind me. That was not intentional, but I
love that. Can you talk a little bit about
because I do feel like there's elements of this really
photographic image that are thenmade more sculptural or like you
(33:22):
insert these kind of abstract flat blocks of color and then
the thread hanging off. I don't know if it this is, is
this finished right? So can you talk about like how
then you bring it back to sculpture almost through these
more kind of like the flatness and it kind of makes you more
(33:44):
aware of the material again instead of it being this image
as a picture, images like a portal.
Totally. So I think that happens a couple
different ways with the work that I start by taking
photographs. I have people that models within
space, often alongside my own body that I photograph.
Then they get edited and manipulated and I figure out how
(34:06):
to leave it. And I go to the loom and I'm
really interested in how the pixels translated back into
cloth and what it means to make something like an image physical
again. Through the hand, through labor,
through material, through love, through energy.
Because also weaving is kind of slow.
Yeah, right. And you're all hand weaving, but
(34:27):
there's got to be like a computer program involved to
tell you what to do, OK. Assisted Lamb, which means.
What is it called? Sorry, you cut out a little.
Bit a digitally assisted loom. It's amazing.
So Jaccard looms used to be a punch card system, so you are
able to control the threads morethan if you just had six petals
(34:49):
on the ground. So it all of a sudden changed
how many patterns you could weave if you weren't just doing
it fully manually. And basically, I have one of
those punch card looms, but my punch card is digital.
So what I do is I make a big file that's 2640 pixels big
because I have 2640 threads thatrun across my loom.
(35:13):
Just like, Oh my God, OK YouTube, go to YouTube.
She's showing it. And basically I make a file
where it's 2640 pixels, so everythread is a pixel and I choose
which threads go up and down every single row before I start
weaving that information to my computer which talks to my loom.
(35:33):
And so I'm hand weaving. So I'm throwing the thread back
and forth as I'm going materialsand putting in stripes.
I'm basically my loom controls the threads for me based off of
the map. I give it every time I weave.
So I press my, I only have one foot pedal, I press the pedal
down, it lifts the threads that I sent in the map that I
(35:57):
manually decided in Photoshop and then they go down after I
press the pedal again and then they come back up for the next
row. And so it's just based off of
the threads lift based off of the file that I produce.
Cool. And you have to have a thread in
every gradient of Gray, I take it?
No. So basically cloth is
(36:19):
engineered, there's different structures and cloth and I
figure out which structures willcreate the different tones.
So that's what part of my math is.
I map these different structurestogether.
It's not like a one to one of bitmap of what's late and what's
dark, because that would probably be a strange tangle of
threads. And instead I figure out this
(36:40):
satin structure will fit next tothis twill structure, and this
one will be lighter and this onewill be darker.
And so that's how I start to figure out how I'm going to
weave the image. None of that makes sense, but I
really admire it. I'm like, I have no idea what
you're talking about. That just proves like how hard
(37:00):
this is to do, so I appreciate it.
But if people are interested, itsounds like you guys do open
studios occasionally. You're available for a studio
visit, I assume, so people should doubly reach out because
that's a whole conversation. Oh.
Yeah, I love when people want tolearn about the loom.
It's always exciting. So that's.
(37:21):
Awesome. It seems like you do a lot of
residencies. Maybe that's your sad moon, like
wanting to travel the world. Yeah.
Have you ever done the Blondeuest textile residency?
Do you know about that one in Iceland?
There's a really good textile residency in the north of
Iceland that you should check out.
I had applied and gotten in and then COVID hit and then it we
(37:47):
never rescheduled from there andI got my own loom.
I didn't have my own loom yet, and it's actually on the list of
things to someday circle back to, but haven't yet.
Oh, cool. But it sounds like you've been
recently maybe to the Netherlands or like what have
you done recently, I guess is a better question.
The most recent official residency was YATO, which is in
(38:11):
upstate New York and was amazing, really amazing
residency. I highly recommend if you've
been considering it and not trying to do it.
I felt it felt really amazing tobe there.
I love the cohort, the space is beautiful.
It was really inspired up there and actually I'm now starting to
work on any series based off of the images I took up there.
(38:32):
So cool. I feel like a lot of times I
don't have a loom when I'm at residencies general work on.
And so for me it's really this like moment of research and
reset. And so I find it really
generative. I really like the really
intensive time I have in my studio where I weave all day
every day, and then I'm forced to leave and like reset and
(38:54):
dream in a different way and then come back and sort of
output again. Yeah, that's really cool.
I've heard about the yatto. I've heard it's pretty haunted
up there. So haunted.
There's so many ghosts. I already believed in ghosts,
but I've never experienced like this, much like physical
paranormal activity of my life. And so is everyone else there
(39:16):
that they're friendly. Can we?
Is it like you can only be an exclusive yatto member to know
about the ghost stories or was there anything?
No, Everyone knows all about allof these ghosts.
But yeah, no, like locked doors opening and closing on their
own, as if like you're in an Addams family scene or things
(39:38):
like that where a it feels really friendly, like I was
never heard. They don't feel malicious.
I think they're like stoked we're making art up there and
using the space how it was meantto be or they hoped it would be
used. Which on that, No, you're in the
American Industrial building. Is that what it's called?
(40:00):
Or in LA, what Allied Crafts building?
I feel like there are some ghosts in that building
encouraging people to do textiles, because everyone I've
talked to who goes to that building doing something else
ends up doing textiles. Have you noticed that?
Yeah, I, I mean, part of it was I specifically got a Weaver in
(40:25):
here. Like I have a really good friend
whose studio building was closing right when I found my
studio. And there was a bigger studio
next door that was too much space for me.
But I know she was looking with a friend and I was like, and so
we've slowly been building out our textile club.
Yeah, I felt like you guys had an open studio in November and I
went through and was like talking to a lot of people and
(40:46):
everyone's like, well, I'm a painter and I'm a sculptor.
But I've really, I've gotten super excited about textiles
since moving here. And everybody's like, oh, well,
it used to be like a sweatshop, like a clothing factory.
And so the whole kind of runningjoke as I went through the
different levels was like, there's some kind of ghost here
(41:06):
trying to be like everybody working textiles.
You will. Or maybe it's the energy, like
the residual energy of the building or?
That's true, but also this neighborhood there's.
Yeah, you're in the fashion district.
Everywhere but I also think thattextiles are like contagious.
It's a really exciting medium. I think that we also are all
(41:28):
craving softness right now in the world in a really different
and this is powerful softness, how softness can have agency.
But I also think that I think inwhen a lot of people are
trained, if they're trained in fine art, not all of the places
they had training have textile programs or ones that are easy
(41:48):
to jump into if you're not part of that department.
And so it's just like another material that once you see it
around, you want to play with kind of like when I go see a
bunch of paintings I really wantto try to paint and then I like
remember that I don't. Right, and that's how I feel.
Yeah. But I yeah, I think it's like
really nice to have that sort ofshared energy in the building
(42:10):
and seeing like how everything cross pollinates.
Yeah, it was really cool to see,and it made me curious, like
what work I would make had I ever moved into the building.
But I know that maybe one day we'll see.
My life is a complete mystery atthis point, but I wanted to see
what you had coming up, like where people can find you, what
(42:32):
you got in the works. Yeah, it's already March, isn't
it? It sure is.
Hello. What?
I know. Crazy.
But let's see. So I have work going to Eric
Firestone, which is a gallery inNew York that is opening, which
I'm really excited. About wait, you said next week.
(42:53):
Next week I believe, or the weekafter Today's the 5th.
What's? The date so people can look.
I have to look but I believe it's the 13th or 4th the 13th.
So yeah. Stay in New York and then I also
have a show works headed to Hastings Contemporary, which is
an institution in the UK that I'm really excited about.
(43:14):
It's a show called Undersea and it's sort of about these how
different moments of water and Ihave works for my Siren series
headed there, which I'm really thrilled for.
So I'm really excited for both the really different shows. 1 is
like about these sort of really dreamy mythological sirens that
I was weaving works. And then the show at Eric
(43:36):
Firestone is called Erotic City.And it's these really intimate
works and these crops of bodies that are a little bit abstracted
in the way that we can hold ourselves and hold each other.
So I'm thrilled to be around this March.
Oh my gosh, yeah. What a great time to be in New
York and showing your work. That's exciting.
(43:57):
For the show, we'll see, but. Are you going to go?
You said. I I might go.
I have I'm a maid of honor for awedding and I think I have a
dress fitting I need to be in New York for so it actually
lines up. Oh, but it's a group show it
sounds like. Then not these are.
Yeah. OK, cool.
Well, awesome. So everybody look out for that
(44:19):
and then miaweiner.com/instagram.
Similar handle I assume. Name Mia Weiner.
Awesome. OK, well, thank you so much for
joining me on the side, Woo. And yeah, I love staring at your
work all day or during our conversation.
It was like a nice little backdrop to like what we're
(44:41):
talking about. And just I like what you said
about soft power. I feel like that's something we
can all take with us as we go into this hellscape timeline
that we're living in. A lot more agency then I think
we give ourselves. So it's time to remember that.
Thank you if you want to. So let's go.
(45:03):
Yeah, fuck yeah. All right.
Well, thank you so much, Mia. You.
Bye. That's all for this week's
episode. Thank you so much for listening.
This was your host TiVo with sound editing help by Natasha
Lowey. If you love this episode, please
share it with a friend, write usa review, and give us five stars
(45:23):
for good karma points. To watch along, subscribe to our
YouTube channel and see all of our videos and live top
recordings there. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next time on the side view.
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