Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections, 2015.196.622b, Connecticut Historical S ...

Interview with Tsering Yangzom

IntervieweeInterview with Tsering Yangzom (Tibetan)

InterviewerInterviewed by Lynne Williamson

Date1996 April 9

Mediumreformatted digital files from audio cassette tape - MP3

DimensionsDuration: 39 Minutes, 55 Seconds

ClassificationsInformation Artifacts

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.622a-c

DescriptionAudio cassette recording of an interview with Tsering Yangzom, a Tibetan weaver, interviewed by Lynne Williamson at ICR in Hartford, Connecticut on April 9, 1996. The interview was recorded as part of the 1996-1997 exhibition project, "Auspicious Signs: Tibetan Arts in New England."

NotesBiographical Note: Tsering Yangzom weaves belts with traditional designs on her backstrap loom as well as wool material for blankets, aprons, jackets, and bags on a larger loom. Her skill, learned from her mother in a remote village on the Nepal/Tibet border, is one traditionally shared by rural women. When she was seven years old Tsering Yangzom's family fled Tibet, settling in a remote Nepali village near the Tibetan border. It was difficult for Tibetan exiles to make a new life there as they were foreigners, bringing few possessions and little money with them. One way for families to generate both income and necessary household furnishings was to utilize women's traditional weaving skills. Tseyang's mother made blankets, bags, warm coats - chupa, and married women's traditional striped aprons - pang-dhen out of cloth she wove from dyed sheeps' wool, as well as small carpets and seat coverings. These were also sold in shops in the town.

Tseyang and her younger sister were taught to card and spin yarn from sheeps' wool, and weave it into cloth, a common practice for Tibetan women. In school all children learned to make the patterned belts that Tibetans tie around their chupa. Later Tseyang worked in a factory handweaving Tibetan carpets as this industry grew in Nepal.

Tseyang brought to her new home in Old Saybrook the traditional narrow loom she used to weave belts, although she could not bring with her the larger loom for cloth. Belts are made on a thak-ti, a tension loom which uses a process called tablet weaving to create quite complex designs on belts up to six inches wide. Pierced thin leather cards, or tablets, are strung side by side onto individual vertical warp threads. Tension on the warp threads is provided as the weaver pulls against the threads attached to a backstrap tied around her waist. As she pulls, she rotates all the tablets at once, an action which moves some warp threads up and some down to create a space between them, in the manner of a heddle. She passes a thread horizontally through this space in a weaving motion, pushes it down tightly with a wooden beater, then rotates the tablets again to lift another set of warp threads before weaving again. The pattern is determined by the number of tablets strung onto certain colors of warp threads. In another photograph of this loom Tseyang has seven tablets strung with dark threads on either side, with twenty-four white thread cards between them, to make a simple two-color belt. Tseyang moved to Torrington, Connecticut then New York City to live.

"When we took refuge from Tibet and had no farms to grow things, to make a living, to survive we had to do this kind of thing...there was nothing we could do but making and selling cloth, blankets, bags, belts...the first thing is to keep the traditions of our culture. Second thing is when we lost our country Tibet, when the Chinese took over, there's no way to do other business. To survive we did this...the same things in Nepal as Tibet."

Subject Note: "Auspicious Signs: Tibetan Arts in New England" was an exhibit project developed by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CCHAP) at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford in 1996. The exhibit opening and a festival of Tibetan arts and music served as the major public events of an eighteen-month research and programming project conducted by CCHAP in partnership with the Tibetans. The project celebrated the Tibetan community's preservation and practice of their traditions in America.

Since the Tibetan Resettlement Project brought twenty-one Tibetans to live in Connecticut, the state has become home to one of the fastest growing Tibetan communities in the United States. Several Connecticut Tibetans are traditional artists of great skill who are deeply committed to expressing and passing on Tibetan culture. Members of the Tibetan community are also dedicated to educating others about the difficult history and circumstances of the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The collaborative project team consisted of three Tibetan project assistants, exhibit designer Sarah Buie, the Tibetan Cultural Center of Connecticut, artist Sonam Lama who was at the time Vice President of the Massachusetts Tibetan Association, and curator/folklorist Lynne Williamson, then director of CCHAP. The interdisciplinary nature of the team served to broaden the project's outreach to regional Tibetan communities as well as to incorporate a rich variety of expertise and perspectives.

The project team produced an exhibit displaying Tibetan religious art as well as everyday traditional arts, a day-long festival featuring artists, performers, demonstrations, and discussions, and an illustrated catalogue. Artists Jampa Tsondue, Ngawang Choedar, and Tsering Yangzom were featured in a video documenting their artistic process.

Funders included the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Community Folklife Program administered by the Fund for Folk Culture and underwritten by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts Program, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Institute for Community Research.

To mark the exhibit opening, the Tibetan community held a festival attended by over three hundred people, including Tibetans from all over the region. Four music and dance groups performed outside, while in the exhibit gallery three Tibetan artists demonstrated weaving, woodcarving, and thangka painting. The event also featured a bazaar, a common Tibetan cultural activity. Many Tibetans are keen traders, maintaining links to Dharamsala, India, and Nepal through import of goods to the U.S. and sale through small shops here. Six Tibetan vendors from all over the region set up tables during the festival with a great variety of Tibetan books and crafts. Lakedhen and five other community members had risen at dawn to prepare food, which they sold during the day. Several speakers described the background of the project, the story of the Connecticut community, the current political situation in Tibet, and the history and character of Tibetan culture. Cholsum dance group from New York City and musicians Lakedhen and Thupten performed and accompanied the dancers. Singer DaDon and her group played for over an hour.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this community and artist.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

Status

Not on view