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!