Sue Weil Shows ‘Small Works’ Tapestries at MV Chamber in August – First Tuesday Artwalk Aug. 1

Longtime Marin artist Sue Weil’s choice of medium isn’t one you’ll see dominating the walls of galleries all over the Bay Area. But that fact doesn’t inhibit her ability to convey an array of messages or engage her audience. In fact, she says it enhances her ability to do both.

“I’ve enjoyed working in all sorts of visual media over the years, but I’ve always returned to the medium of weaving yarn because I just love the warmth,” she says. “It could be done with paint or something else but there is something about fiber that is very inviting and draws the viewer in more than other mediums.”
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Weil, whose work has appeared at Mill Valley City Hall, Multipearl in San Francisco, Art Works Downtown in San Rafael and Thompson Dorfman Partners, where she worked for many years, is showcasing her “Small Works” tapestries handwoven of cotton, wool & tencel at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton Ave.), throughout August, with a wine reception set for the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk on August 1, 5:30-7:30pm.

Born and raised just outside Chicago, Weil connected with art at the age of three, and never strayed from it. She learned to knit and crochet as a young child, and after graduating Harvard University, she turned her talents into an eponymous clothing line – coats, jackets, pants and outerwear – that she sold out of her showroom at the Apparel Center in Chicago and at trade shows all over the U.S.

She ran the line for six years before getting to the point where she either needed to significantly expand the business or close it. She chose the latter.  “I didn’t have it in me to hire a staff and all that,” she says. “It just sort of ran its course.”

Weil moved to the Bay Area in 1992 and has lived in San Rafael since 2001. She maintains close Mill Valley ties, having raised her daughters in Marin and served as a board member of Ring Mountain Day School. Before joining Thompson Dorfman in downtown Mill Valley in 2008, she served as the Northern California Account Manager for GreenPoint Mortgage.

In 2011, Weil got deeply into creating tapestries and has been exploring the medium ever since. The ranges from abstract designs where she explores concepts like geometry and assymetry or more of-the-moment themes like “Building Walls” with the swirling immigration debate or “I’m Right Here With You,” the phrase uttered by the daughter of the woman who filmed the fatal shooting of her boyfriend Philando Castile by police in MInneapolis in 2016.

“Weaving attracts me for its simplicity: two opposing sets of threads twining together to create a whole,” Weil says. “Working at the loom provides me the opportunity to sit in the stillness of my thoughts, allowing my hands to think.”
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The 411: Sue Weil showcases her “Small Works” handwoven tapestries ​at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton Ave.)  throughout August, with a wine reception set for the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk on August 1, 5:30-7:30pm.