Transparency

Gauze is the thinnest of the materials I use. I love it for its transparency, the irregularity of its weave and the elegance of its movement. It is like a veil, covering, but not quite, revealing, but not all. Looking at a veil always includes an alternative. You can look through it and focus on what is behind it, because the partial covering makes you curious. Or you can study the veil itself. Here you need to focus more closely, because it is in competition with the images that traverse through it. I want the veil itself to attract the viewer’s attention, so I manipulate it so that it arrests the viewer’s eyes. But I also think that what’s behind the veil is of importance, because it adds a new dimension to the piece. 

wet gauze panel, stretched (detail)

My next panel is finished. While it is still wet, it anticipates an idea of its beautiful transparency. The challenge always lies in how and where to photograph it. So far I haven’t run out of spaces. Sometimes, though, I wish the sea wasn’t so far from my home. 

 

Some of the pieces would look so good at the beach,

 

competing in beauty with the sand,

the sparkling turquoise waters,

   a sunset sky reflected...

The view from my studio window used to show Takutea, a tiny island 16 miles offshore Atiu. Now the pine trees, established here for protecting the soil erosion after our island’s pineapple industry collapsed in the late 1980s have grown so tall I can hardly see the sea, sigh! So this is the best I can do today.

Detail of panel, gauze, bark cloth, lace, total dimension 2.90 m X 0.40 m

Crossing

When I look at the ‘fence’ that runs through the centre of my last panel, much of it looks woven. Wikipedia explains that “weaving is a textile production method which involves interlacing a set of longer threads (called the warp) with a set of crossing threads (called the weft)”. I like the word ‘interlace’. That ‘fence’ between the tapa strips is an “inter-lace”, if you think of it as a lace between (in Latin = inter) other materials.

My mind plays with the concept of crossing. Migrants cross borders. We cross boundaries. There’s that liminal element again that threads itself across the work. In a woven textile, threads cross (mostly) at right angles. They come from directions that are far from each other and they depart again into a far place. For a moment they meet, they form a double layer and give the material its strength. It is an altogether new thing, this fabric that is created thanks to the crossing of materials. A bit like the social fabric of a community which is composed of many different elements, men and women, old and young, nationals and expatriates. Once the element has crossed the other, it continues on its way, but it is not the same anymore. A common interface has been reached; its straight solitary line has been interrupted, texture has been added.

I want to weave a strip of tapa into a piece of coffee-dyed gauze. I make cuts at more or less regular intervals. When I weave through my tapa, the strip I use is much too solid, the areas between the cuts that will act as wefts look boring. Maybe they need to ‘dress up’ a little?

Y knot?

I proceed to knot them together in their middle and think of corsets and wasp-waists. They look like a collection of hourglasses. Hourglass – time – deadlines. Sometimes it is hard to remain patient in view of this deadline approaching when you work on slow cloth.

A backspine?

The effort is worth it. A great improvement. I weave through the tapa strip.  Instead of the long, but too solid first one, I chose three shorter yet delicate Tongan bark cloth strips. Bingo, that does it! Much better.

Ready for sewing

I add some embellishments to the gauze and start sewing. I want to get it finished tomorrow.

Deconstructing and re-composing

In order to combine the different materials, I sometimes deconstruct them first. When I do this to the beautiful long tapa panels I commissioned in Samoa, it always feels like breaking the material’s spirit in order to better manipulate and subject it to my will. Tapa making is hard work and best done in a group of people, mostly women. I made tapa myself, so I know what it is all about, and I have a lot of respect for the makers of this bark cloth. Here I am, all on my own, ripping apart what took my tapa maker perhaps an entire day to create.

One length of Samoan tapa torn into strips

I tear the bark into strips; I don’t cut them. I want to feel the resistance of the fibres which won’t break straight. Their beautiful flow will be my inspiration. When I lay the strips on my work table, they don’t lie flat. I play with their shapes and they form waves and spirals.

When it is finished, will I hang this panel so it can spiral around a centre string? Perhaps...

Torn interfacing

Yesterday I wanted to work also with bonded interfacing. It is a good man-made equivalent to bark cloth, fibres bonded together and non woven. When wet, it becomes as vulnerable as tapa, and it also tears best lengthwise. When I deconstruct interfacing, it doesn’t feel the same. I can tell that it is machine-made. It doesn’t have a soul. There is no resistance and its fibres don’t flow. The strips are all straight-edged. If I want flow, I have to make it flow.

I wanted squares yesterday. I saw a lovely photo from Leslie Avon Miller’s collection on Facebook which inspired me to use bark fibre for my lace held by interfacing squares and stitching.

Tapa, kiriau (bark fibre) and interfacing

This panel is only narrow, 20 cm wide at its widest part, but 6 m long. I like the contrast of straight fibres and square interfacing with the meandering flow of the bark cloth strips. I can see many similarities to my being a straight-edged “bloody German perfectionist” and my liminal position in between the relaxed, flowing Polynesian culture...

Third Space II - a work in progress

In February 2010 I exhibited “Third Space”, a site specific installation making reference to my liminal position between cultures. It consisted of 22 panels ranging in lengths from 2 m to 6 m, in width between 20 cm and 70 cm. Bark cloth, cotton gauze, bonded interfacing, Polyester thread and soluble stabilizer were combined to form composite lace.

Takamoa Theological College, Mission House, Rarotonga

The newly restored Takamoa Mission House, the first stone house erected in the early 19^th century on Rarotonga, the Cook Islands’ main island, was the venue. The exhibition finalized my thesis for a MA in Art & Design.

In June this year I was chosen as one of 135 finalists from 22 countries to participate in the International Lace Award competition at the Powerhouse Museum  in Sydney. My entry will be “Third Space II” which is based on my thesis exhibition. Installing the elements in such a totally different environment will be a wonderful challenge which I am looking forward to. But first I have to finish all the installation’s elements.

Materials and tools

Again, bark cloth (5 + 7), cotton gauze (2), bonded interfacing (6), Polyester thread (3), bark fibre (4) and soluble stabilizer will be my materials, scissors (1), a shark-tooth knife (8), a seam ripper and a sewing machine my tools. The shark-tooth knife helps to cut the tapa (bark cloth) in a very natural looking way. 

Hawaiian shark-tooth knife

Our good friend and traditional Hawaiian artisan Kana’e Keawe made this elegant and hugely useful tool and presented it as a gift to us in 1988.

Tongan bark cloth whole and deconstructed

I use Paper Mulberry bark cloth which yields the finest and whitest bark. Unfortunately, this tree species has been extinct on our island for many years. The common barks used on Atiu are Banyan and Breadfruit, both brown in colour, and Dye Fig which gives white bark. Tapa making is a lot of work and therefre mainly a group activity. Given my time frame, I found it easier to use the tapa from Tonga, of which I had some pieces left, and tapa from Samoa. 

Samoan bark cloth

The Samoan tapa was specially commissioned in 3 m lengths as just one layer and is of coarser fibre because of its length. The Tongan tapa consists of several layers of very finely beaten bast which are glued together with tapioca starch to form a more solid sheet. The holes that are found in regular intervals result from branches that grow from the stem. They are usually removed from the plant at an early stage to keep the holes small. For my purpose, the holes were a bonus, because they make the bark appear lacy. In the beginning I carefully separated the layers in their dry state, a hard job and often less successful than I had wished. 

Tongan tapa is composed of several fine layers of bark cloth

When I bleached a much yellowed piece, I discovered by accident, that in the bath the layers had separated. Thus I now soak the tapa in water to separate the layers and then lay them out carefully stretched to dry. Bark cloth has very poor tensile strength when wet and it is all too easy to rip it in its wet stage.

With the help of soluble stabilizer, lots of pins and sometimes water-soluble glue stick, I combine the different materials to form long panels of composite machine-sewn lace. I spend endless hours sewing before the stabilizer can then be dissolved in water. 

Washing out stabilizer

That is the most delicate job, as the very vulnerable wet tapa needs to be treated with utmost care. As soon as it is submerged in water, it becomes extremely soft and it can easily be damaged when washing out the stabilizer. At this stage it feels and looks a bit like a jellyfish.

The spiral is one of my favourite shapes

The panel is then rolled in a towel to squeeze out as much water as possible and, with the help of lots of pins I can now stretch it so it can dry and keep its shape. The spiral is one of my favourite shapes and often sneaks into my works like it did here.

My studio work space re-arranged

I had to rearrange my studio to provide for the extreme length of the panels (see tables at the back). As soon as it is dry, the tapa gains back its strength, though the fine layers that I use are still somewhat vulnerable.

Tapa lace panel and its cousin the tree

The finished panel is very light in weight. I had a hard time when I photographed this one. The wind kept blowing it about and it didn’t want to hang still. Only when I looked at the photos did I discover how beautifully the tree and the panel matched each other. The bark had found its cousin. Though nature often provides me with inspiration, not plants, but the flow of the fibres and the crossing of threads in the material trigger my ideas in this project.