Opportunities

 

It seems as if the moment of my recent exhibition in Denmark was a bit of a push-factor in my so long lingering quilting mojo. First, of course, it was a very good feeling to see several of my quilts together “out in the open”, which hadn’t happened in almost three years. And second, somehow things are moving now.

I have several ideas for quilts that I want to enter in challenges, or that I need to make for the group challenge for “Voyage”. (I even had an idea for 20 Perspectives’ challenge Flowers, but am not following up on that as I am currently taking a sabbatical from the group challenges there.

 

This is not my idea, and I am not making a flower quilt, 
but it is a nice shot of my mother's sunflower heads 
that she is now saving for the birds to put out for them during winter.

)

Another interesting thing has happened as well. In August I met a friend from the town where we used to live until the fall of 2024, who has since changed position and is now the museum director in Dingolfing, Bavaria. This is a fairly rich town as a large car manufacturing company is located there, accordingly, the museum is not only scraping by. He told me about an upcoming outside exhibition next year by a group of descendants of former refugees, Germans who had been living in what is now Czech Republic and were displaced after the end of WWII, as happened to many Germans at that time. They had brought their every-day and celebratory costumes with them, although they soon stopped wearing them during every-day activities when they realized that this was not usual in the places where they had ended up. The group of approx.. 3,000 people dispersed around the world, but some pockets of them remained together, albeit at various places in Germany. They have since founded an archive where they preserve the traditional costumes, they have documented their form of German dialect as it was spoken, and they have participated in parades such as the traditional parade of ethnic and regional groups during Oktoberfest in Munich. Since the end of communist rule in Czechia contacts have been established between descendants of the former refugees and the people who are now living in the area from where they were displaced. And they have staged exhibitions to inform about their traditions and culture in various places. Dingolfing will be the next one.

My friend the director wanted to broaden their concept of exhibition, has invited a video artist, who is working on the topic of displacement and home – and while we were talking about this event, he bore the idea of including some of my quilts in it as well. Did I have more quilts on that topic than the one he owns? Would I be interested…? Things have been developing from there. Would I be interested in making a quilt out of fabrics from their collection?

Dr. Matthias Witzleb amongst a group of "Wischauer" women 
when their costumes and language compilation were named immaterial heritage last year.

 

Meanwhile, I have talked to one woman from the group, who herself was born in Czechia and was displaced with her family at age four. She will send me some of their history pieces and I will see how inspiration will strike me then, whether it will lead me onwards from the idea I have already brewing in my mind. I am thinking of a piece for the text messages series.

And just yesterday a new exhibition opportunity was developed between the local minister and me in northern Bavaria for late October next year. Things are moving!

Carrefour le 31ème...

 

Last week was completely dominated by the annual visit to Ste. Marie-aux-Mines for the European Patchwork Meeting/Carrefour. As it is now the location for premiering EQA's small size quilt challenges, and the location where EQA holds the AGM, the visit has become virtually unavoidable - in a good sense. It is familiar, I know the place, and it feels like almost coming home.
 

It was very depressing to see the empty fountains 
throughout the valley, though, and to learn that 
they had had a water crisis during the heat wave 
of the summer, with drinking water being transported in 
in lorries. Climate change for real experience.

 This year I gave myself permission to have a little fun beforehand, I revisited the Butterfly Garden in nearby Hunawihr on the day of my arrival. I had been there before,  seberal years ago, and as I had just read a book about butterflies I thought it was time to go back. I remembered some things slightly differently,  but it was still very nice to be in the midst of these fascinating creatures. 

 

 

On Wednesday I prepared the German contributions for hanging. And started counting various species of insects as depicted in the quilts. The idea for counting different species had occurred to me when out of the 45 German contributions we had two with a Praying Mantis. The total of those was 11. There were over 70 quilts with butterflies. 18 quilts with ants. 37 with Ladybirds/Ladybugs, 39 with grasshoppers. We didn't count the bugs overall, although I did notice there were many, perhaps that is a homework to be given to the Belgian guild which will be exhibiting the entire collection at their Quilting Event in October. I did notice - because I made one - that there were three Picasso bugs, however, a personal bias is always fascinated by similar things! 

 

The complete collection of Insects can be seen once again in 
Belgium October 7-11, details can be found 
@eqa_europeanquiltassociation on Instagram, or on 
https://www.belgiumquilt.be/nl/.

 
Then I proceeded to help hanging Barbara Lange 's exhibition with the wonderful title 'Embarrassing Mothers ', for which Barbara keeps finding new and interesting names, AND turns them into absolutely adorable quilts with a multitude of ideas. No way telling which are my favorites!

In the process of hanging... Barbara Lange and Gabi Fischer.

 
The German Patchwork Gilde 's Tradion bis Moderne was exhibited in Église Madeleine in the center of town, and I was happy when somebody showed me that my quilt had been used as the photo for the exhibition in the catalog. 

 
Four days of intensive work traveling to ALL of the exhibitions in the 17 different locations followed. I was especially happy to see Brenda Gael Smith's Forza Vitale  in Ste. Croix-aux-Mines, but was equally impressed with most of the other exhibitions as well.  
And again, very moved by the many ideas quilters come up with when using Guldusi embroideries for different topics. I had recently arrived at a state where I didn't have 'loose end' Guldusi embroideries hangout in my boxes because I had managed to use several in the 'Conversing with Earth' series for 20 Perspectives and in 'Seeing Red'. That status has now changed and been reversed. The challenge continues.

 

I won't go into detail about the other exhibitions, each of which had their own impressive characteristics. I can't do all of them justice here and suggest you check out @carrefour_patchwork on instagram for a complete overview. 

 
Needless to mention that it was fun to meet friends more or less unexpectedly, to have wonderful chance encounters with people whom I 'knew' but hadn't met in person yet, and just to be out and about in nice sunshine, and to eat a sufficient amount of Tartes flambées to tie me over for the year.

 

Allison James and Ildiko Polyak, two of the five 
(ex)members of 20 Perspectives that I happened 
to run into.We could have arranged a European Members Meeting... 

Looking forward to going back. And I am thinking about perhaps entering the contest next year. A vague idea is building.

What would one have done?

 

On our way back from Denmark last Monday my husband and I took a bit of a detour to the west coast of northern Germany and stopped at the Emil Nolde Museum in Seebüll. You can't go much further north and stay within the borders of Germany. Lots of sky out there, 

 

and it is the location of one my absolute favorite novels by a German writer, "Deutschstunde" (The German Lesson in English translation). Last time I had been there was 15 years ago. That time the weather was fantastic, this time it was raining cats and dogs. We couldn't even go into the famous garden because the pathways were flooded and everything was closed off.

The museum itself hasn’t changed, but the paintings on display are different every year. 

 

I forgot to take note of the exact title of this watercolor, but it was something 
like "Three children in 1946 in (some place name)"; I noted the 
year as it was the year his first wife died.

And they are now showing a documentary film from 2017 about Nolde’s life - and his involvement with the Nazi-party, his continued attempts to find approval from the rulers even after he had been declared a “degenerated artist”, and his anti-semitic publications during that time. 

He was declared a ‘victim’ of the Nazis and very quickly received international fame again after the end of the war, scrapped a few anti-semitic sentences from his writing and went on to rebuild his fame. Most of this had not been talked about when I was at the museum last, and although I had heard about this through media I had not been quite aware of the extent of his involvement and political standing, I admit. It bothers me, of course, and I am still trying to figure out how it is going to affect my evaluation of him.

 

 His paintings are great. But can they be viewed completely separately from this political attitude? He was not known to express deomcratic opinions publically.

It is a topic that has been on my mind quite bit recently. It affected my father's coach, Karl Adam. He was not only the coach for that first Olympic gold medal in an eight in 1960 but coached several winning boats during the next 15 years before dying of a heart attack in June 1976. 

 

A bust of Karl Adam usually on display at his former school.

In honor of his achievements the German Rowing Association used to allot a prize to young rowers in his name, and he was made a member of the German Hall of Fame of Sports. But then a couple of years ago criticism appeared that he had been a member of faculty of a Napola school, and a member of the Nazi party as well. The prize was discontinued, and his admission to the Hall of Fame questioned. Historical experts have evaluated his history and his doings, and have exonerated him. The prize has not been reinstalled (yet?).

I am fully aware that many Germans covered up what they had done and thought during those times, and I am certain many of them did not change their opinions. But Karl Adam in particular was known for his attitude of helping young athletes develop as "mature persons", challenging them to arrive at their own decisions, and he was always outspoken about democratic principles and attitudes. Throughout the discussion around his person I kept discussing this issue with my mother - my father had already passed at that point - and she kept mentioning the fact that her father had been a member of the Nazi party because he was a teacher and simply had to be a member if he wanted to keep his job. He was never a follower of the Nazis, and the Sowjet occupiers wanted to put him into jail because he was not socialist enough but too oriented towards pre-Nazi times, which in the end led him to escape by swimming through a border river.

I keep asking myself  – what would I have done, had I lived in those times? I would not have had the privilege of having been raised in a democratic environment. How would that have affected my attitudes? Who are people of my generation or younger to harshly judge those who had to live through these times? Certainly, people who signed death warrants or shot others or were involved in concentration camps in any way must be held accountable. But a person who is not known to have done anything wrong and who turned an outspoken teacher of democratic principles after the war...

 These thoughts were also behind my involvement with refugees after 2015, and I still think I did the right thing at that time. We as an entire country could have done better, but I did what I could.

Now, a small federal state in Germany is having elections today, and prognoses are that the far right-wing party is going to win a majority, which will greatly affect national circumstances, connections, economy, citizens of the country who were not born German. What am I going to do? How will I get active?