LMRM (loom room)

Name: Hope Wang & Murat Ahmed

Business Name: LMRM (loom room)

Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Website / social links: lmrmchicago.com, @lmrm_chicago

Years in business: 3

Number of employees: 2

 

 

1. Tell us a bit about your space. Do you have a mission statement? If so, can you share how that shapes your business model and creative development?

LMRM (loom room) is a weaving project space that supports artists and designers in bringing their textile work to life. LMRM currently operates parallel to Hope Wang’s artist studio at Mana Contemporary Chicago. By sharing weaving tools with other makers, we encourage collective experimentation with new ideas and greater connectivity in the local textile network. Our mission is to broaden opportunities for artists to grow sustainable practices through programs such as rental equipment, workshops, and more. LMRM stems from the desire to see a Chicago-based fiber art studio where creators have continuous access to quality equipment and community - with fewer hurdles.

LMRM is in its nascent stages as a textile art makerspace. This past year, we acquired a TC2 (Thread Controller II), which is a computer-assisted jacquard loom that can weave imagery created from a digital file. Users can essentially map single pixels to single threads, and create unique textiles with concentrated detail and complex customization. Access to this loom is sparse throughout the world and LMRM is currently one of two organizations in the USA that supports public access to this loom.

We are hoping to design LMRM as a facilitator of incremental access to equipment that has been largely defined by scarcity and an extractive pressure to produce. LMRM aims to diffuse that urgency through a practice of care and thoughtfulness in how we share resources in the creative ecosystem.

Our values around incrementalism shapes the hours we make available for TC2 loom rentals (pay-to-use daily rate). Our focus on community-building through artist-led workshops also means we are striving to secure funding that pays artists competitive honorariums. Our emphasis on experimentation and play means facilitating opportunities where users are exposed to low-stakes making and a wide range of materials and techniques.

2. Who is part of the LMRM team?

Hope Wang founded LMRM in 2020, and this year, expanded to include Murat Ahmed as Co-Director.

As an artist and arts facilitator, Hope started LMRM as a community weaving studio to broaden accessibility to fiber art equipment in Chicago. Through LMRM, she develops programs and collaborations that emphasize weaving as a contemporary art practice. Hope also believes artist’s pay is an equity issue, and her research interests include structures for better practices in the creative sector.

Murat Ahmed is a creative administrator interested in encouraging the mixing of practices, communities, ideas, and support. With a background in mathematics and quantitative research, his entry point into the art world was through another encouraging Chicago makerspace: Latitude, a community digital print lab. Murat is passionate about providing a similar outlet for others. Alternative economies centered around experimental support have been a constant in his personal work. At LMRM, he maintains operations around the weaving equipment, supports the execution of programming, and explores ways in which incremental and experimental making can thrive.

Between our shared passion for alternative art economies and maker spaces, we strive to build a more interconnected and cross-pollinating Chicago creative community through our work at LMRM.

3. How did you two meet?

Hope: After being jettisoned from art school and its institutional access to TC2 jacquard looms and 8 or 16 shaft floor looms, I was not in a place to purchase expensive equipment or rent studio space required to house that equipment, and the city I lived in did not have a community studio designated for textile artists. This lack propelled me toward a community print shop, because it felt the most affordable way to continue to create. It already had the expensive large tools, as well as the staff to maintain them. It was home to a community of printmakers who were excited to make things around each other without a huge investment. It was actually at that print shop’s joint benefit auction with digital print lab Latitude, where I first met Murat in 2019.

Murat: If Latitude wasn’t so welcoming to me, I wouldn't have gone to Spudnik. And had we not met, this wouldn't manifest the way it did. So it just goes to show that you can't really predict the way interactions are going to evolve. To me, it is really meaningful to encourage social interactions in creative spaces through low stakes ways, not like “This is a professional connection now. We should connect because we have a very specific agenda.”Honestly, I was just curious about learning more about art and had a genuine interest to learn screen printing.

Hope:  And then I think it came up that you really enjoyed Spudnik’s existence and wanted to support the organization more, and I admitted that my fellowship experience at this print shop had been really disappointing and exploitative. And you were like, “I don't like that, that sucks. I want to change that.”

Murat: Definitely.

Hope:  And then you proposed an experimental program with them called 1 x n?

Murat: Yeah, so the whole point of that program was to give artists subsidized studio access for a year to try an idea, fail a few times and hone it without any real time pressure. I wanted to work with artists who weren't primarily screen printers, so that it injected a bit of novelty into their practice, but I was not thinking about any of the problematic economic aspects or structural pitfalls of an organization. I was mostly focused on how to design a program that encourages experimentation.

Hope:  Yeah, I think over the years of knowing each other we were kind of adjacently exploring ways to mix things up. I mean, I was mostly complaining about my experiences and learning things I didn’t like about access in the arts.

Murat: Oh, you definitely opened my eyes more to that. I think if you're not in the world directly at a bird's-eye view, or the view that you see as a supporter outside of the organization, you often think, “Oh, these are just great organizations. They're doing great things for the community.” But once you're in the organization and hear people confirm some of the issues, I definitely am now way more sensitive to, “Hey, let's do things the right way.”

Hope:  And I definitely align with that as an artist, where you just don't want to feel wrong or ungrateful about a resource. But some of the subtle ways spaces might make you feel alienated and unheard takes away from your ability to be creative and to want to come back. So I think it's really important to be building spaces based on a framework of care for the specific community it serves.

4. Why the open studio model?

Hope:  We believe that the gap between self-funded access to art-making equipment and institutionally supported projects or residencies is often just too wide of a gap. There are several robust residency models, grant programs, and educational workshops for weaving and craft that have been around for a very long time and provide a lot of creative support (and prestige). They're doing a great job for what they are.

I’ve personally had amazingly fruitful residency experiences (for example, I’ve returned to Praxis Fiber Workshop’s Digital Weaving Lab twice now) but found that residency time and classroom time can often be marked with intense internal pressure. Especially when it’s about access to facilities and equipment, I feel the tension of needing to produce what worked in the past in order to gain future funding or exhibitions, or to weave as efficiently as possible to create fully resolved artwork.

Murat: When I was first introduced to the weaving world it felt like every third sentence had the word TC2 in it; I didn’t know what that was but knew it was a magical, rare piece of equipment. If a tool is that sought after it seems natural to increase access to it.

Unfortunately scarcity is an art world reality, so professionalizing your work enough to justify self-funding expensive equipment and space, often driving people to produce in a way that, again, is polished and marketable seems to be the norm. Only the most exceptional will have access, and coupled with the art world’s subjective ways to evaluate people, we will be biased to exist in this cleanly executed overly concentrated spot.

I think an open studio model allows us to address a gap and provide incremental access to this tool, so users at varying financial capabilities can use it however they see fit. For us, that feels like a prime space for experimentation and mixing of ideas to happen. We hope that LMRM can be one of many points in a constellation of textile art spaces offering different models of public access to this tool.

 5. Who is the ideal user for LMRM? Can you share more about your access model and how weavers can use the equipment at LMRM?

Hope:  I think our ideal user may operate along a separate timeline for how we roll out our rental programs vs our workshop programs? Looms are tools that present some barriers to entry, especially with larger and more complex ones. There are a lot of people out there already who have some amount of exposure to them, looking for continued access. Of course, we'd also like to support opportunities for those who are curious and new to weaving. But I'd say that our immediate focus for the next year is appealing to people who already know what these tools are and how they can use them right now.

Murat: I think that's a good point. I want to add that maybe our ideal user is a repeat user. If we're talking about experimentation or trying things out on an arc of creativity and community-building, it is going to come through repeat usage of these tools and coming back as a familiar face.

Hope:  And if you want to create a self-designed residency and book two weeks in a row, absolutely do that. If you’d like to rent out time to teach a private lesson on our looms, by all means!

Murat: Weavers can book access to our equipment in 2024. Floor looms are available for a monthly rental basis, with a sliding scale fee of $250-400. Again, because we aren’t running long-term classes at LMRM, these looms are for weavers who can independently use the tool. For TC2 jacquard loom reservations, we will offer short term rentals beginning Spring 2024. We’re starting with a minimum 4-hour session block of $100, with up to a total of two sessions (8 hours) per day, plus a materials fee for warp. We are going to set up an authorization workshop that’s required for weavers before booking time on the TC2. They will be available after Jan 2024. In the meantime, the best way to stay updated on any upcoming programs and loom availability will be signing up for our mailing list.

 

6. It’s so important to have spaces for play and to make without pressure. Can you talk more about that?

Murat: I mean, it's just extremely inconvenient to make something. So any external factor that makes it a little easier is probably going to result in a better creative outlet for everyone. Whether that's just being encouraging in the studio, getting excited about what someone's doing, or sharing what you're seeing in front of your eyes with someone. I mean, my favorite part about weavers is they love to geek out on the tech specs. And I think that's a great entry point for experimentation and getting to know each other. Some of the times I felt that it's the most fun is when you're just playing around, trying out ideas and creating happy accidents. Even in my day job, no one does their best work when they're under pressure, especially creatively. They always do it when honestly, nine times out of ten, it's just some mistake that ends up being interesting to them. So we want to encourage that kind of stuff. We want an environment where people are basically having fun.

Hope:  Yeah, fun is important.

Murat: Yeah. I mean it's frustrating. Can't help you there. There are technical challenges, but we should have a low-stakes, low-pressure environment somewhere.

Hope:  “Weaving should be fun,” yeah?

Murat: Peggy said that.

Hope:  Thank you, Peggy Osterkamp!

7. How does operating in Chicago shape LMRM?

Murat: Chicago is the kind of a city where it's cheap to fail. I think “cheap to fail” is a great quality to have if you want to experiment or try something new. I mean, I used to live in New York and it felt like everyone was at the top of their field there. It didn't matter what they did - if they were a barista, that's the world's greatest barista you're talking to. You get only the most excellent version of everything all the time. But the downside is there's no space to try something you're not world class at, and no one's even interested in what you're doing if you're not world class at it. Whereas in Chicago, people are super interested in whatever you're doing, and they care less about how good you are at it or what status you have in that domain. I think maybe that's why makerspaces are more ubiquitous here. I don't know. But I do think that that aligns nicely to the culture we want to establish, which is if you're a world-class artist, great. We have something for you. And if you're just curious, we have something for you too, and hopefully anything in between. Chicago kind of embodies that for me.

8. We’d love to know – any 2024 goals, upcoming collaborations or exciting news to share with our community?

Hope:  My goal is just to test all the big ideas that we have at least twice. Since we met before LMRM even started, we've spent years talking about values and visions for what LMRM could be. In this past year alone, we’ve discussed many ideas about programming, making the digital loom more accessible, and building robust artist relationships in the studio. I’m excited to execute our ideas as soon as possible to see what works, what we hate, what's pleasurable. That will give us enough to respond to and adjust how we can shape LMRM in a way that isn’t entirely self-sustained so we can actually plug in the help that we've been offered in terms of labor, financial support, collaborative partnerships, etc.

Murat: Honestly the most interesting part to me is the unpredictability of interactions between people. The way LMRM has evolved is hard for me to imagine a few years ago. So yeah, I would love to see intersections of people and what they produce together, both on and off the loom.

Hope: I feel like our biggest responsibility as facilitators is getting people in here and talking to each other and then seeing what comes out of it.

Murat: But also to your point about sustainability, it's been intense this past year, and there have been moments where I felt like we're always barely catching up to things we need to do for LMRM, so it would be nice to also get to a point where it feels very sustainable.

Hope:  I don't think we'll do that in a year.

Murat: Maybe a little more, like 20% more sustainable.