RECAP:
CMYK Explorations
November 8 - 9, 2025
Chicago, IL
LMRM is thrilled to invite Liz Ensz and Heather MacKenzie to design an experimental warp for our November warp cycle on our 4W TC2 loom.
As part of our experimental warp cycles, LMRM partners with artists in the field to lead workshops that serve as a wider proposal to our weavers: how can we collectively explore new ways of designing at the loom?
Attendees will received guided instruction from Liz and Heather on various ways to design with a CMYK warp and double weave constructions. Using Adobe Photoshop to edit imagery, we explored color mixing strategies for a bright alternating four-color CMYK warp as well as the basics of drafting doublecloth color-alternating twills that emphasized the vibrational, graphic directionality of twill structures.
Check out our recap below!
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Liz Ensz is a weaver, sculptor, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY and Baltimore, MD. Ensz’s interdisciplinary approach is rooted in the textile logics of interconnection and entanglement, pattern recognition, and process-driven exploration. Their works of design, installation, textiles, and sculpture demonstrate a non-hierarchical consideration of materials, tools, and technology and engage the embodied knowledge of skilled handcraft alongside digital design and fabrication, coding, and electronics. The values at the heart of their inquiry inform a curious and critical dialog with technology and resources and a belief that everything around us (including us) is capable of transformation in a world full of abundance. Recent woven works trouble the grid and Cartesian philosophies as the foundation for Western culture (and weaving).
IG: @lizensz
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Heather MacKenzie is an artist, electrician, and educator with a practice founded in hand weaving based in Minneapolis, MN. The scale of their woven work is wide-ranging, from palm-sized weavings that explore mathematical models to a hand-woven bolt of cloth encoding a French Enlightenment text. From queer heirlooms to more abstract sculptural and installation works made using the TC2 loom, Heather delights at the intersection of the experimental, technical, and sensual worlds that weaving exists within. They are particularly interested in how cloth can behave queerly, creating forms that buck linear conventions, sprout cheeky flaps and folds, and generally escape the rectilinear premise of the loom.
Saturday
November 8
1 - 4 pm
Chromophoria
led by Liz Ensz
We explored color mixing strategies for a bright alternating four-color CMYK warp. Using Adobe Photoshop to edit imagery and create sample blanket templates, Liz demonstrated how they draft weaves that maximize color impact through structure and texture.
Most of all, Liz encouraged us to lean into whatever tools we do or don't want to use to make our art. With over 1000 weave structures that are possible in CMYK color mixing pattern sets, Liz reminded attendees that the TC2 is a "tool of possibility" and we each have our own unique work flows.
Attendance in this workshop included a library of over 1000 single weft satins tailored to the CMYK warp.
“BE A FREAK. Only YOU are going to make that totally obsessive artwork the way that you make it. Hours spent in the design process being attentive to masking and layers, color separation, color table, and labeling will help Future-You decode your work and process if you ever want to revisit it!”
Sunday
November 9
10 - 1 pm
Open Weaving Time
led by LMRM staff
Registrations for both workshops included group weaving time slots for attendees to familiarize themselves with the TC2 looms, get authorized for independent rentals, and to test weave a small sample file designed using tools presented from Saturday’s workshop. Attendees were invited to design their own file and drop it in a shared folder by Sunday morning for LMRM to combine into a composite file. They signed up for 10 minute weaving slots as each attendee wove a portion of the composite file of everyone’s samples.
LMRM staff then cut these weavings off the loom shortly before the beginning of Workshop 2 so that attendees could take their samples home for study.
Sunday
November 9
1 - 4 pm
ZIGZAG: Color-alternating Twills
led by Heather MacKenzie
With Heather, we dug deep into twills. This fundamental weaving structure is infinite on its own but “twilling” a CMYK warp brings us into a whole new realm (and these permutations only multiply when we weave with two weft colors!).
In the workshop, Heather led attendees through their abstract computational experimentation. They mapped out some core permutations, and then walked us through the basics of drafting doublecloth, color-alternating twills and other structures that emphasize the vibrational, graphic directionality of twill structures.
Attendance in this workshop included a library of 8-point color-alternating doublecloth twills for 2 wefts (84 structures) tailored to the CMYK warp.
