Fiber artist weaves herself a colorful life
The wisteria vines wrapped across the atrium balcony of Meghan Shimek’s live-work loft in Oakland are oddly reminiscent of the fiber artist’s work — as if she’d designed the rough roots crawling throughout the multiunit space to match her own aesthetic. Inside the loft that she shares with her 6-year-old, Shimek’s massive roving wool projects are everywhere, from her art pieces on the walls and hanging from the wood-beamed ceiling to the 10-foot metal shelving unit holding hundreds of balls of colorful roving, each bigger than a basketball.
The 37-year-old native of the suburbs just outside of Flint, Mich., took a multistate, transformative journey to end up in an artist’s loft above the lively streets of her Oakland neighborhood. She’s now an Instagram celebrity, international installation artist, tarot reader and touring weaving instructor. She started as a nutritional researcher in Washington, D.C., and along with her thenhusband moved to the Bay Area to work in farmers’ markets and teach nutrition classes to low-income families. “I’m not an East Coast person,” Shimek confessed.
Shimek and her family ended up in a tiny cabin in San Anselmo, where trips to the sustainable farms of West Marin piqued an interest in organic fiber and weaving. “I would wake up early,” said Shimek, pushing her long hair away from her fresh face, “and weave before he (her son) would wake up.” Social media changed her life. “I made an Instagram page just for my weaving,” Shimek shrugged. “At that point, I wasn’t even trying to sell anything. I still felt like I was learning.”
It’s important to note that Shimek’s story is far more complicated than I’ve tried to quickly describe. To hear her tell it, every possibility-packed day and month in her life seems filled with some sort of metamorphosis, from temporary relocations around the country to her divorce and the death of her dad. Historically, to quote a postcard my mother used to keep on her desk, Shimek has jumped and built her wings on the way down.
As Shimek puts it, “The story that I have now about my own life has made me a much stronger woman.” She paused and then added, “And a feminist!”
Anyway, the divorced mom posted her weaving work in gorgeously staged shots on Instagram, and now Shimek is no longer giving lessons to anyone about nutrition. Instead, she charges $225 to teach sellout crowds of fans how to weave wall hangings. Her first class started from a request from one of her Instagram fans four years ago. Was Shimek willing to fly to Seattle and teach a pop-up weaving class?
“I was completely terrified, and I said yes,” she said with a grin. “That felt really exciting, because I was doing it purely as a hobby at that point.”
Shimek moved on to teaching classes in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley, all the while growing her Instagram fan base, which now has over 50,000 followers. Her classes sell out, she retails wall-art pieces for lots of money, she’s in the midst of a gallery installation at Glass Rice in San Francisco, and just booking this interview with her was an ordeal because Shimek regularly zips around the globe, a social media arts and crafts guru to thousands of tasteful followers.
Shimek took a break from preparing for her all-red “Incarnadine” fiber art show to teach me how to weave. She’d hung a metal bar from the ceiling and began ripping yards of roving from the massive balls of wool she has shipped from Oregon and England. “Oh, I know how to do this,” I stupidly announced.
I did not know how to do this. Weaving rope-size strands of delicate dyed wool into anything resembling art is a lot harder than it looks, perhaps worth a three-hour, $225 investment. Shimek was patient, clearly experienced with teaching cocky novices how to avoid ending up in knots. At one point, she had to move a pile of abstract wool breasts and penises she’d created for a Planned Parenthood benefit. I wondered what her 6-year-old thinks about living in an art loft, filled with natural light, exposed brick, fluffy piles of yarn and occasional naked-lady art.
“He’s over it,” Shimek laughed, walking over to a room-size white knit cocoon, an artistic interpretation of one of her many personal metamorphoses. Peeling back a huge side of the wool dome, Shimek revealed the dark inside the art piece, clearly perfect for a fort. “But sometimes,” her suddenly motherly eyes twinkled, “he watches the iPad in here.”
To hear Meghan Shimek tell it, every possibility-packed day and month in her life seems filled with some sort of metamorphosis.
Beth Spotswood’s column appears Thursdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@ sfchronicle.com