In the
middle of November I spent four days on a workshop by Margit Amann vonGlembowski. I had spontaneously signed up for it after talking to Margit at the
German Patchwork Guild’s Annual Meeting in May, when she was so enthusiastic
about the atmosphere of the house where the workshop would be held. I had
figured it would be a good way of summing up the year, which had brought me a
lot of teaching, by being a student myself again. And by being a student with a
different teacher than Nancy Crow, who was the only one I had been taking
workshops from for several years.
Margit
certainly was right about the peaceful and creativ atmosphere of the place
where we were staying. A monastery on the western side of Lake Starnberg
I went for
a short run before breakfast almost every morning and enjoyed seeing the
different appearances of the old trees in the park, depending on the thickness
of the fog. (I did not really enjoy the fog, but...)
When I had
received the supplies list for the workshop I had been briefly tempted to chicken
out and cancel. There were so many things on there that I had finally removed
from my many kinds of collections when I decided that I had not used them in
several years and was probably never going to use them anyway, such as sweets
wrappers and things like that. (One of Margit’s attitudes is “anything that
fits under a sewing machine foot can be sewn!”...) But then I thought “what the
heck” – I have enough experience to manage in a situation like that with little
material available, so off I went.
The car was
FULL up to the roof, because I was taking my handdyed fabrics for sale, so at
least there wasn’t going to be a lack of fabrics.
The topic
of the workshop was “colour - form – object: textiles after
Bauhaus-philosophy”. I have done a bit of studying about Bauhaus over the
years. Not only did we take a brief stop at the actual Bauhaus building on a
family trip up north, where my son, who had just learned to walk, very much
enjoyed the staircase, and climbing up and down the famous Bauhaus design
chairs.
But I also
have several interesting books on the Bauhaus, its history and its most famous
protagonists. Many times have I admired the beautiful desings for carpets which
were carried out in the weaving department. Nevertheless, I had so far not made
any attempts at integrating Bauhaus design or philosophy into my own work, so
the workshop would possibly open up new fields of activity for me.
We started
off with some history of the Bauhaus and the various developments of and
changes in the faculty. After that we did a couple of exercises as they might
have been done by Bauhaus students (e.g. touching and feeling various materials
and shapes that were hidden under a piece of fabric), and trying to apply them
to the textile medium. For example, we sewed a number of pieces that dealt with
Kandinsky’s attribution of yellow, red and blue to the triangle, the square and
the circle respectively.
Amongst
these were hollow objects in color, difficult to sew, delicate to handle, and
intriguing to look at. In the final „exhibition“ of all our completed works at
the end of the workshop we presented a collaborative textile sculpture “Objects
in Color” in which we combined every participants’ objects on a black
background.
As for a
way to ‚use’ the objects at home I have decided that I am going to try to find
foam that can be cut into the respective shapes to stuff them, so that these
delicate little things don’t get squished completely. Beyond that I haven’t
made up my mind yet. They are certainly too interesting to just leave them
lying around, too voluminous to fold them up and pack them away as reference
material to remind me of the workshop, and too nice (and too big) to turn them
into a needle cushion.
The various
types of „sewable“ materials that almost scared me off were needed for an
exercise in which we were supposed to create a small collage inspired by a pair
of opposite adjectives which we had drawn from a bag of papers. My pair of
opposites was „starr – bewegt“ (stiff –
in motion) and used up a pair of knitting needles with additional string
attached to them which I happened to have with me. In addition, I made creative
use of a little bag of organza in which we had received a little
welcome-present, and a few items from Margit’s large collection which we were
allowed to take from. And suddenly I had again produced something about the
topic “dance”, although I claim that I never work in a representational
manner...:
The entire
workshop lasted for four days, which made for a pleasant and leisurely
atmosphere. We weren’t rushed for time or pressing deadlines, we had plenty of
opportunities to sit down with our sketch-book, and I jotted down many ideas
about the triangle – square – circle combination.
Here’s another small piece for which I had the idea during
my morning run before breakfast.
Unfortunately
it turned out just a little bit larger than the assignment had called for,
which is the reason why it couldn’t be mounted on a frame for the final
exhibition.
I’m
planning to use this as a study for a larger piece. And then we will see how
much of the Bauhaus will enter into my future work.
No comments:
Post a Comment