Weaver’s work to benefit Buddha garden
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Bonnie Tarses knew from the minute she first heard about the Dalai Lama’s planned visit to Arlee that she had to do something to help prepare for such a momentous occasion.
“For some reason, it just resonated so strongly with me,” Tarses said of the phone call she received from a friend telling her the news.
Just a few weeks later, Tarses packed her loom and drove from Seattle to the Ewam Garden of 1,000 Buddhas outside of Arlee. She and Grace, her 32-inch Gilmore loom, would spend three days there doing what they do best: weaving.
But Tarses wasn’t weaving just any cloth. Forty years ago, she developed a technique of translating people’s horoscopes into a woven pattern by superimposing a colorwheel over the astrological chart. Just as there are 360 degrees in a circle, there are 360 degrees in a horoscope and 360 threads in each weaving, Tarses explained. Using 12 colors, each representing an astrological sign, house and planet, Tarses has more than five billion possible color combinations, making each woven horoscope a truly unique pattern.
And what better way to honor the Dalai Lama’s coming than to weave his horoscope? Tarses discussed her idea with Ewam overseer and Buddhist monk Konchog Norbu, who was more than happy to host Tarses while she worked on her project. The finished product, they decided, would be made into eight pillows stuffed with lavender grown at the garden site and buckwheat. The Dalai Lama horoscope pillows will then be auctioned off at fundraisers to benefit the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas as preparations are made for the Dalai Lama’s visit.
On Aug. 10, halfway through her project, Tarses said the experience of weaving outdoors for the first time, at the very site the Dalai Lama will visit next fall, was even better than she imagined. She hopes that her project will inspire others in the Jocko Valley area to take up weaving — an art that she feels is remarkable in its ability to transform the weaver.
“I believe that weaving is the opposite of everything that’s wrong with the world and that it has great potential for healing,” she said.
Tarses said although she isn’t Buddhist, she finds great meaning in many tenets of Buddhism, and the chance to participate in the Ewam project was especially poignant to her.
“There’s something about this place that transcends any religion,” she said of the garden.
And in an interesting turn of events, Tarses recently learned that a former weaving student of hers in India was also working on a Dalai Lama horoscope cloth last week.
“So it’s like all the way around the world,” she said.
Tarses, a former Missoula resident, headed home to Seattle on Friday, but she said she’ll be back to Montana soon.
“(The Dalai Lama project) just set things in motion and now I’m moving back to Montana,” she said. “I have a feeling I’m gonna wind up in this valley.”
