Arachne of Maeonia, wove, at first
the story of Europa as the bull
deceived her, and so perfect was her art,
it seemed a real bull in real waves.....
Ovid 'Metamorphoses' book VI

Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving competition and they each completed a tapestry with specific narratives. Athena, as a warning, depicted the power of Gods and Goddesses over humans and showed how humans were punished for forgetting this. Arachne depicted 21 instances of 'deceptive seductions' or rapes, deeds done by the olympian gods to mortal and immortal women.

     And she wove Asterie seized
by the assaulting eagle; and beneath the swan's
white wings showed Leda lying by the stream:

When Athena saw this, she was so angry that she tore the tapestry apart. Arachne, in her sorrow, tried to hang herself and Athena, now regretting her rash act changed her into a spider, an older and self-generating weaver, but silencing the woman Arachne, making of her a lasting symbol for the defiant woman, who dared to challenge the laws of the Gods.

This early Greek period interests me for the ways it reflects changing attitudes towards women through stories about of their work as weavers, from primordial Goddesses, who as spinners create life, to the Fates, feared for their powers to spin, measure and cut the 'thread of life', to Penelope, who has to lie about her task. Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' is my source for these stories from Greek mythology and I like his accounts that describe them clearly as acts of deceptions and cheating.

'Arachne's Tapestry' is a reweaving of the original work. It is part of a continuous series of works, which started with Penelope.