Exhibition „Inspiration Bauhaus – textile art“ in Alfeld

Saturday was a beautifully warm and sunny day in Alfeld, somewhat south-west of Hanover, Germany. But I did not really get to see much of the sun that day. We – Mary Schliestedt, Gabi-Julia Weimer, both their husbands and I (my husband’s kind of help was the child-minding at home!) – spent almost eight hours downstairs in the basement of Fagus Werk, hanging our exhibition. Fagus Werk, a factory for shoe lasts, was the first building planned and executed by Walter Gropius after setting up as an architect in 1911. It has been beautifully restored for its centennial, and was awarded the UNESCO World Heritage title. In one part of the building, which houses an exhibition on the history of the building, art exhibitions are also possible. 

Because of the Bauhaus association of the building, we had chosen the title “Inspiration Bauhaus – textile art” for our joint exhibition, and have spent the better part of one and a half years working towards this date.

Mary’s husband, who had never hung an exhibition before, seemed rather surprised on Friday evening when I tried to tell him that his expectation that we would be finished by noon was highly amibitious... The decisions of where to place the almost eighty pieces that are on display were taken by just before one o’clock. But it took all afternoon after the lunchbreach to finish the fine-tuning of lights, straightening the quilts, determining the distances, putting up the signs with information.

Thanks to the tall men and the fact that the ceilings in this unique kind of venue were on the lower side saved us a number of trips up the ladder - two more worthy candidates for the title "supporting quilter husband".

The janitor of Fagus Werk, Mr. Dogan, was a very considerate and patient helper, too. He adjusted all the lights for best illumination, even suggested some changes in arrangements.

In the evening, we had a cohesive and beautiful exhibition on the walls.

And on late Sunday morning, the guests arrived.

A local politician came up to me after my brief introductory talk, 

in which I mentioned the position and role of many of the female Bauhaus students, and congratulated me on stressing this fact. She thought probably most of the attending visitors were highly surprised that there had been female students at Bauhaus at all!

I left Alfeld in the afternoon, after once again looking at this inspiring building. The site has a slightly magic feel to it, I think. 

I am really happy with our exhibition there.

It will be on display until December 19, open every day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"Kunst und Textil" exhibition in Stuttgart

When I set up my visit to the Textiles in Art exhibition in Bielefeld in January, my husband had suggested that I take a round trip, continue from Bielefeld to Wolfsburg, and also visit the exhibition “Kunst und Textil” (Art and textiles) there. The two had been been reviewed together in an article in the newspaper, as they had opened at about the same time and had very similar runs. However, doing them both one after the other in January wasn’t possible, as my son was traveling with me and we had to get back for school after the Christmas holidays. And I had already resigned myself to not being able to see the exhibition in Wolfsburg. But then I found out that this exhibition would be shown at a second venue, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, starting on March 21. Now that’s a shorter distance from where we live, in a direction where I am much more oriented – and I soon found a way how to combine a visit with other commitments.

This weekend I am teaching IQ for the Nürtingen quilt group. I had already made plans to combine this trip with picking up my quilts at Freiburg after the conclusion of my exhibition there. And Nürtingen is close to Stuttgart. A bit of rearranging the travel arrangements – the exhibition had to be done before the workshop, as the museum would be closed on Monday, so I would also pick up my quilts in Freiburg before teaching instead of after.

Thursday I drove to Freiburg – with a lengthy bit of traffic jam that I circumvented partly through remainders of local knowledge from when I grew up in the area of Karlsruhe. But traffic jams aren’t only annoying, they also give you opportunities for interesting photo shots.

Taking down an exhibition is always much faster than putting it up.

Spent the night with friends up in the Black Forest, and then on to Stuttgart. (No – my carbon footprint these days has not been exemplary at all. In my defense I can say, though, that I was smart enough to hop onto the S-Bahn from Stuttgart from Böblingen, my evening destination, which saved me the stress of driving in the city, finding expensive parking, and, most importantly, driving back there in Friday afternoon traffic.) 

Of course, no photography allowed in the exhibition, and because I already have so many others I had decided in advance that I did not want to buy the catalogue, although the exhibition was very good and interesting. There were so many guards in attendance that I decided to be really good girl and not take any illegal photographs. A few overlaps occurred with the exhibition in Bielefeld in terms of names of artists on display, but obviously this would mean other works by the same artists. The exhibit in Stuttgart puts slightly less emphasis on the Bauhaus-effect in textile art than the exhibit in Bielefeld did - it mentions only Anni Albers from amongst the Bauhaus women, with more emphasis on her works after her emigration to the US and her influence on ‘fiber art’ as such. Pieces of Raphia fabrics from Kongo or a large piece of Tapa fabric made from bark fibre from the Fidji islands show interesting correspondences to modern day design as it is familiar to us today, a felt cape from an Anatolian(?) shepherd, a tribal belt or necklace with tied knots and a divan cover from Bauhaus and are juxtaposed with works by Birgit Dieker, Ghada Amer, Brice Marden, Mike Kelly, Joseph Beuys, as is another Mappa by Alieghiero e Boetti from the 1970s with two small hooked rugs from Afghanistan in the best tradition – with military helicopters and war machinery as their ornaments. That certainly gave me the creeps.

My absolute favorite piece in the whole exhibition was  Lenore Tawney’s piece. (Lots of pictures of her works here and here.)

This must be the one I really liked - picture from the web.

The audio-guide did not really live up to my expectations for a its cost of 5 euros, in fact, I consider that a complete rip-off. Though it was fun to listen to a few of the pieces in the children’s tour, which I did when no ‘adult’ number was listed. If I hadn’t wasted this amount I might have relented and bought myself the catalogue after all…

Definitely a must-go for anybody who is interested in textile art and gets to go to Stuttgart in the next few weeks!

Little escap(ad)e: "To open Eyes" in Kunsthalle Bielefeld

A few weeks ago I found the announcement of two large exhibitions of fiber art in art museums in the paper: „To open eyes – Fiber Art from Bauhaus until today“ in Bielefeld, und „Art and Textile“ in Wolfsburg.

My husband immediately wanted to send me off to take a look at both of them one after the other, but as we live on the other end of the country, we could not really fit it in, although Germany is relatively small compared to some other countries. However, I was visiting with friends not too far away from Bielefeld right after New Year’s, and that gave me a chance to at least see this exhibition, which is still on until Feb 16.

Bielefeld used to be a city with several linen factories and the exhibition included information on that, as well as on Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl and Benita Koch-Otte and other weavers from the Bauhaus, fabric patterns from Wiener Werkstätten, Sonia Delaunay, former professor of art Sofie Dawo (some pictures here), fiber artist Marianne Meyer-Weißgerber (whom I had never heard of before, but really liked her miniature pieces), 

 

(taken from the website linked to her name above)

Sheila Hicks (some pictures here and a pinterest page here), and several other modern artist who have worked in fiber - some only occasionally, some more frequently. Aligiero e Boetti let Afghan women do the work of stitching for his series Mappa, embroidered maps of the world as boundaries changed (link to one that is in MOMA).

No photographs were allowed, not even without a flash. And although the catalogue is interesting and informative, it is would be much easier and probably more personal if I could show you a few photos I took and talk about them. But it is a very interesting exhibition and worth seeing, and it is wonderful to see so many pieces of art made from fiber in one exhibition together.

Although there were several pieces classified as ‚patchwork’ which would not have made it into any juried quilt show. Basically, they were pieces of fabric wonder-undered onto a white background, not stitched, no quilting – but with the topic ‘death’. Now what does that tell us about quilts in the art world? You have to have an art degree, and then make ugly fiber pieces, then you will get into museums. Or do you have to wait for 70 years, such as Gunta Stölzl, before they will start recognizing you? Well, Sheila Hicks didn’t have to wait for so long.

Nevertheless: well worth seeing!

Little escap(ad)e: Fagus Factory in Alfeld

Between last weekend, which I spent teaching a workshop at the “Nadelwelt” (World of Needles) in Karlsruhe, and the beginning of the four-day-event by the German Patchwork-Guild in Einbeck, where I will be selling my hand-dyed fabrics, I had two days off. My husband had suggested that I should rather save several hundred miles of driving and go north directly instead of going home Sunday night only to leave again early Wednesday morning. So I took a room in a modest guest house in Alfeld, north of Einbeck, in an area that every German child has heard about if it has been listening to Grimms’ fairy tales: it is the area of the “Seven mountains” where the Grimms located the story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, and which is mentioned in the story when the stepmother asks the mirror about how beautiful she is.

I went there on purpose, because I knew that I would have a wonderful opportunity to educate myself: Alfeld is the city where Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus school, got his first chance at realizing a major building. 

Sketch for Fagus factory in Alfeld

The industrial site of the Fagus factory, begun in 1911, has been beautifully restored and was awarded the title of Unesco World Cultural Heritage Site last year, which I learned from Mary during our Bauhaus-workshop in November. 

Fagus building today

Originally Fagus works was a production plant for shoe lasts, over the years other areas of business have been added. 

Shoe last from about 1915

The site is still a working production site, but the very first original buildings have now been turned into a permanent exhibit on Walter Gropius and Carl Benscheidt, the founder of the Fagus factory 

who accepted Gropius’ letter of application and was an essential part in the beginning and building of Gropius’ career. Further parts of the exhibit are a documentation of the renovation process, the development and history of shoe making and shoe lasts, a section on forests and their importance for the world climate, current-day tehcnical use of massive wood in building and industry, derived timber products, the people who work at Fagus, and the history of the firm and its position in the overall network of Unesco World Heritage sites. They also have changing special exhibits in the basement:

Special exhibit in the basement

The entire exhibit is very informative and well worth spending the larger part of the morning on. Each section is located on a separate floor of the building, which used to be the storage and drying location for the beech wood needed as raw material for the lasts.

Between the various floors you pass through the restored stairway, and the overall architecture already gives an impression of what was later to be called the “Bauhaus style”.

In the section on forests you get to see one complete cubic metre of wood – and you learn that it takes between two and five seconds for this amount of wood to grow back (measured over the entire size of Germany), and you need between five and ten cubic metres of wood for the construction of the wooden beams that carry a large roof.

On the premises is also a little café where you can get a warm meal if you happen to finish your visit around twelve o’clock – which is when the Fagus workers come to fetch their lunch. I happened to be sitting next to two nice researchers from New Zealand and had a nice chat with them while waiting for the rain to stop that had started while I was in the exhibit. Which didn’t happen, though, so I now have a new umbrella.

There is also one little building facing the railroad tracks that hasn’t been restored yet. I think they should restore this one as well and put the bookstore or souvenir shop in there:

If you’re planning on coming to Germany for a visit any time soon, and happen to be more in the northern part of the country, and are interested in Bauhaus history, this place is definitely a “must see”!

Colour of the month

My first introduction to daily art occurred when I was studying about conceptual art, and almost at the same time I also discovered Kathleen Loomis' blog, on which she regularly reported about her daily art projects. I have been making art on a pretty regular basis, and taking lots of pictures, almost every day before, so I was very attracted to the idea of doing something in the art realm according to self-defined rules on a daily basis. The inspirational power of daily art made itself felt already by just following Kathy Loomis' blog during the first half of 2010. It grew much stronger through our cooperation project 'Daily Mail' which started in September 2010. Last year I then started my own daily art project "Daily Oak" which ended on December 31, 2011. When Daily Oak was nearing its end I knew I wanted to continue with something similar, but it took a while for me to make up my mind what I would be doing. (I have started several 'daily' projects which are more comparable to daily finger exercises on the piano than to real art making, but those were not enough. But taking part in the Bauhaus-workshop last November gave me the final clue for my new daily art project for 2012. The initial idea had been hovering around me for quite a while, yet had long refused to take a definite shape.

As we were thinking about yellow triangles, blue circles and red squares I decided it would be worth the while to concentrate on taking photographs that focussed on colour. Each month will be dedicated to either a primary or a secondary colour. The primary colours will appear during the months that have 31 calendar days, while the secondary colours will appear during the shorter months. The photos will be posted at least twice a month, and numbered, one photo for every day. Preferrably the picture will have been taken on that day, but if no beautiful purple flower was in bloom that day and happened to appear right before my camera I may go to my photo files and pick a purple picture from there.

So for the first six months of the year the pictures will concentrate on 'one colour'. After that time I will decide how I will continue for the remainder of the year – I might choose to simply do a second round, or I may do ‘double occurrences’, or perhaps something else yet.

The first month of the year is dedicated to the primary colour red.

Here are the first four pictures for RED:

1

2

3

4

Sketchbook, handmade

When I took part in the Bauhaus-workshop by Margit Amann vonGlembotzki in November we were all given a welcome present by the organizer of the workshop, Dörte Bach. She had bought very nice sketchbooks for each participant, measuring 12 x 12 inch. Simply bound, but very pleasing to look at and hold.

Spontaneously I decided to make this my sketchbook for the workshop, although I did feel the urge to save it for future use. But what future occasion could be better suited than immediate employment?

Prior experiences with notepads and sketchbooks, either ringed or tightly bound had led me to just bring a stack of paper which I was going to have bound after the workshop, when I would have developed any pictures I wanted to include in it. But this beautiful sketchbook immediately changed my mind, and throughout the entire workshop I was always pleased to open it and enter more information, or glue the sheets of paper into it that we received as material. We received a number of copies that I glued next to each so that you can fold them up easily, but that they don’t all sit on top of each other, adding to the thickness of the whole thing. Thanks to 12 inches of paper size several pages could be added next to each other:

Here you can see a few more pages from the book. Photos were glued on the backsides of the copies, into empty spaces, or sometimes onto extra pages that I added:

The sketchbook now contains the entire workshop up to its last page and is a wonderful memory and stock of ideas.

Dörte Bach was so kind and did give me the link to the place where she gets these wonderful books.

After the workshop, however, I was so inspired about this new experience with a sketch- and notebook that I started making my own. I still had large sheets of paper which I had obtained a while ago because I thought I would again take up book binding. This hadn’t happened, though, and the paper was still sitting there, waiting to be used.

At first I cut the large sheets into smaller pieces. 

They ended up being 10 by 14 inches. Not exactly square as the inspirational one, but not bad as a format either – some of them in landscape orientation, others in vertical orientation.

The paper store downtown had two pieces of interesting paper that would be perfect for the outside. Leftover from a long-ago order, so really cheap.

Then I punched the holes.

And used my Shibori-thread for the binding.

Finally I folded the extending pieces of outside paper over the first and last pages of the booklet and sewed them tight with a zig-zag stitch.

Probably not usable as a sketchbook to drag along with you on a long hike or journey, but certainly well suited to use as a sketchbook in a workshop.

I will not be producing these in large numbers, although it was a lot of fun. But there are still a few more large sheets of paper left, so if I find another suitable piece of carton paper for the outsides, I might make a few more.  

Bauhaus philosophy and transformation into textiles

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, close to the “Museum der Phantasie” initiated by Buchheim. (I have already written about our visit to the museum here.) The house is located in a hugepark area which has been saved for the public through the generous donation by Wilhelmina Busch-Woods.

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.