Thoughts at Christmas

Every year, the holiday season feels odd to me, as in this warm and sunny climate and the souterhn hemisphere’s summer I find it hard to develop Christmas feelings. Christmas for me comes along with early darkness and cold weather, quality time inside the home, foods that keep you warm and hot chocolates or toddies.

On our island, this year’s end is sunny, but not yet as hot as it has been most other years. I really appreciate this, because it makes working easier. One doesn’t dribble sweat all over the work... The last element of my installation is in the sewing machine. Soon I will be able to bundle them up to send them to Sydney.

Jeanne Humphreys with her recently finished painting

I had a lovely visit from a Cook Islands friend who is from Atiu, but lives in Christchurch most of the time. Jeanne Humphreys is a painter. We had spoken on the phone about her last work in progress, a special commission that she had only been reluctant to accept. I know from my own experience that at times it can be hard to force your creativity to follow someone else’s dreams. I was happy when she brought along her friend Penny and her finished painting to show me. Her client, a masseur, had wanted hands to feature in the painting. Jeanne’s friend Penny admired the detailed work in which she could “even see the fingerprints”. I enjoyed that Jeanne shared her finished work with me as a special Christmas treat before she left the island again to celebrate Christmas with her children.

Juergen and I celebrated Christmas the German way, on Christmas Eve. This year we had decided not to have a tree and just enjoyed a nice dinner together. I had given Juergen a DVD that showed features from his birth year, 1942. It was interesting to watch and catch up with some history. Learning about the fashion of that year was what I enjoyed the most. But the film clips were, of course, taken from British, American and Australian footage. We would have enjoyed seeing what happened that year in war-torn Germany. It must have been so hard for Juergen’s mother, who already had a three-year-old girl to look after and whose husband was at war, to give birth to this little boy who is now my husband. I know from the stories my mother told me, who was in Berlin during the war, that it was terrible there. Everybody was hungry and afraid. Winter was cold in the bombed houses. People were poor. Many, like my mother, had lost their homes and everything in it and had to make do with what friends shared with them. Life was a daily struggle for ordinary people, how much more so for a young mother who, at Christmas 1942 had two children who were born on the exact same day eight months back, but three years apart.

I am glad that today we are safe and satisfied, living a peaceful life on our little island. But I am sad for all those who are not as lucky as we are. Nearly 70 years later, the world is still not at peace and there are mothers in this world who are hungry at the end of this year, who worry about what to feed their children the next day, how to keep them alive for another year, and what their lives will be like. I feel for them and wish them strength to survive the bad times. I wish them the same good fortune our mothers had: to live through war’s end and in more peaceful times, seeing their children grow up into educated and healthy adults with children of their own.

I wish all of you, my friends, happy holidays, merry Christmas or whatever you chose to celebrate these days in the company of your loved ones or, if you preferred, on your own. Enjoy the snow, the sunshine, a family meal inside a well-heated home or a picnic at the beach.

Creative encounter

Tivaivai, the Cook Islands traditional textile art form, is very different to the quilts that most other countries make. For many years, I have held workshops in my Studio to share tivaivai techniques with quilters from around the world. Tivaivai are not quilted and consist only of two layers of fabric, a patterned top layer and the background fabric or backing.

There are three kinds of tivaivai. Tivaivai manu, the snowflake-style appliqué, consists of a mostly uni-coloured top layer that is folded, cut out and appliquéd on to a background layer of contrasting colour. Tivaivai taorei, the mosaic piecework, consists of tens of thousands of tiny squares (1” or 2.5 cm) that are arranged to form large symmetrically repeating designs. While the Cook Islands share the snowflake-style technique with French Polynesia and Hawaii and the piecework with French Polynesia, tivaivai tataura, the emboidered appliqué is uniquely Cook Islands. Large stylized flowers cut from uni-coloured fabric are arranged in rotational symmetry and heavily embellished with raised embroidery.

There are no traditional patterns, but only traditional motifs which, apart from butterflies, the odd fish and bird as more recent introduction, chandeliers or candles, are mainly floral. The first thing my students therefore learn is to design their own patterns. Since our visitors from overseas are not bound by tradition, I encourage their artistic freedom.

Left to right: Cindy and Sylvie

Cindy from Texas, a travel agent, has waited many years for this workshop and I have looked forward to meet her after a long email correspondence and to put a face to the name. I have already met Sylvie from France on Rarotonga where she has been living for the last several months. Sylvie is an artist and has brought her husband Michel along who is a carver. We are looking ahead towards a creative week together.

Cindy has chosen to learn how to make a tivaivai manu in more than two colours. She begins by learning how to develop a pattern using paper. Soon the entire table is covered with her imaginative designs. 

Sylvie intends to learn the piecework technique, but joins in the paper cuts just for an alternative. Her artistic mind breaks the boundaries.

After lunch, Sylvie is ready to start working with hand-dyed fabric squares, her preferred medium for this workshop. Cindy wants to spend the afternoon sketching flowers and thinking about a composition.

The next day is sunny and the colours on our table brighten it further. Cindy enlarges her paper pattern to life size and soon her small sketch has become a colourful tivaivai ready for basting and sewing. She decides to sew it by hand and it will take some time to finish.

After Sylvie has laid out the patches of her final design, she strings them up in the right sequence. I have brought her “Mami Tepu” my “patron of the tivaivai makers” to keep an eye on her efforts. 

Sewing together those tiny squares by hand is fiddly and time-consuming, but also quite a meditative activity.

As alternative I show Sylvie a more contemporary method of sewing by machine. When she discovers the delicate fibre structures of the lemon hibiscus bark that I am currently working with, she asks me for a piece and incorporates it into her work. Creativity knows no limits. 

On the fourth day, both my students have finished their preliminary tasks and are ready to sew the ‘real thing’. 

We decide that we are more comfortable around the coffee table. 

Michel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the two women are busy cutting patterns from paper and sewing fabric together, Michel chisels away at a large tree stump that “guards” the entrance to the grave area that leads up to our house. He has no pre-conceived idea and lets the wood speak to him. 

On the first day, a friendly face appears next to a hand raised in welcome. 

The following day a heron lands on the man’s shoulder. When I see the heron in the afternoon, I am reminded of the white heron that came to visit when my father lay dying. The elegant bird sat in front of his bedroom window for quite some time, then left and later returned. The thought had crossed my mind that it might me my mother’s spirit calling him to follow her.

When I visit the sculpture at the end of the third day, I am surprised to find a second heron sitting on the man’s other shoulder. After my father’s funeral – he is buried close by in the family cemetery behind our house – a grey heron came. The dogs chased him and he flew up into a tree. When the dogs weren’t looking he flew down again and landed on Dad’s fresh grave. As if he were visiting, making sure that we were OK, as if to tell me that he was OK, too. Now both herons are framing the friendly face, all three released from their hideaway in the tree by Michel’s artful chisel.

On midday of the forth day, Michel has finished and signed his sculpture and we go outside to take a photo of the artist and his wife for memory’s sake. I take Sylvie and Michel down to Dad’s little house to show them his picture and to tell them the story of the two herons. They are tattooed on my ankle. 

When I have a closer look at the photo later, I can see that the face resembles Juergen, my husband. The three most important people in my life together as a unit, what a wonderful present Michel has made me!

In the evening, we gather to share a farewell dinner for our French guests who are returning to Rarotonga the following morning. Fresh pineapple on ice cream concludes a lovely evening in the company of new friends. 

Cindy stays another day of sewing. She promises me to email a photo of the finished tivaivai. I look forward to that.

Hidden qualities

The most enjoyable works are those that speak to me right from the start. Two narrow strips of tapa blinked their holes at me and took me away to where the dreams live. After a day of dreaming and sewing, listening to great music and to my inner voices, a long strip was finished and ready for washing.

I like the stage when the bark is at its most vulnerable, floating in the water like angel’s wings (Ricarda’s description), but also the most beautiful stage. The sun was so bright, even the grid pattern of our screened doors shone into the washing bowl – another lace of a different kind. 

The strip is 7.5 m long and for drying I had to pin it diagonally to my long table where it could just barely fit. The material is so different when it is dry and before it has received a lot of handling... Manipulating it will make it softer again, may even break it in parts. Just like human beings, I think. The change in texture brings up thoughts of the difference between vulnerability and strength, softness and hardness. In this case, both are part of the same thing. But they can only be seen as part of it when it is submitted to different influences. Pretty much like human beings who are soft and vulnerable at times and can be, even prefer to appear, hard and strong. It is so good at times to accept one’s vulnerability, allow ourselves to be soft and give life a chance to remold us. It is also necessary to be strong, bendable perhaps, but unbreakable – if possible.

I let it meander around itself so I can get much of it into one photograph. The meandering tapa-lace strip has an almost architectural quality to it. I think of the balconies and walls in Arabian countries, richly carved into intricate patterns. They use their delicate designs to conceal from view the beauty (or ugliness) that lives behind them, allowing only an undetected glimpse into the reality of the outside world; tempting viewers on both sides to wonder curiously about the concealed.

Shadows of the past: Hoarding

As a child from the post-war generation I grew up in half a house. The other half had collapsed when the house was bombed. Our apartment had a looong corridor on whose one end was a living room that would be dad’s bedroom at night and a bath room; on the other end a kitchen and the day-room, at night mum’s and my bedroom. When I was very little, there were no doors except for the main access to the apartment. Wood was precious and had been used for heating in cold war winters. Instead curtains gave some privacy. They were made from old coal bags – today’s eco dyers would probably have delighted in the traces of the coal that my mother had not managed to rub or boil out in the wash. She would certainly have preferred better than that, but that came later...

Open-mouthed I used to soak in her stories of how she would trade her only (!) one slice of bread of the daily ration for one (!) cigarette – dreams that went up in smoke were more important than the harsh reality and kept her going, I guess. I remember her as a very beautiful, but VERY skinny woman – not much different to today’s fashion models, except that these can probably buy lots of cigarettes... Dad was only just starting his own business as a photographer. Neither money nor commissions were abundant in the early years. Who needed and could afford a photographer?! Needless to say that very little was thrown away in our household. Things were reused and recycled and misappropriated for something else. We had nothing to throw away.

That’s how I became a hoarder. This trait qualified me greatly for living on a remote island with no significant shops. Do-it-yourself brought out the best in me. One of my great satisfactions was the separation of rubbish. We have one container for burnable waste (only paper and the odd fabric scrap that is REALLY too small to keep and use elsewhere!). Another is for rubbish like empty cans (no eco dyeing, yet!), broken glass, plastic and such. Stuff that will be collected and taken to the dump (from where our art teacher friend Bazza occasionally picks it up – his creativity goes along other lines than mine). Edible waste goes to the pigs and I do no longer have to overeat, "because otherwise the poor black children in Africa starve" – or did I remember something wrong there from my mother’s message??!

Occasionally I intend to free my house and studio of too much clutter, but often this good intention doesn’t go far beyond the sorting and re-arranging stage. Often, the day after I have bravely thrown something away and the rubbish truck came and got it I would have needed exactly that something... 

I am therefore glad I kept this piece of lace that had served me to try materials I wanted to work with during my recent studies. It hung on my soft-board studio wall, usually in my way when using the wall for photographing something pinned to it, as a screen for the overhead projector for enlarging or just to pin up a new composition. It was pinned here and there, but never banned to one of the boxes that contain my UFOs (translation for non-artists: ‘Un-Finished Objects’) where I would probably have lost it from sight and therefore mind.

I'm glad for a reason: It is now the centre piece of a new panel. I added two lengths of interfacing to either side and extended parts of the pieces patterns so they meander down the new sides, holding pieces of delicate tapa as embellishments. I like this combination, as it juxtaposes the entirely man-made non-woven cloth with the natural material, fibres bonded and spread out thin. Both are strong and hardly breakable in the direction the fibres run. They are soft, though, and delicate to handle when wet. Bark cloth is made from the inner bark of certain trees, that means it is – like interfacing’s original purpose – a material between two outer layers, liminal in its changing state.

The way I intend to hang this panel will enable the centre piece to cast a shadow – on a surface more suitable for display than my raggedy lawn. Today the bright south-seas sun supplied the best of all spotlights, so I had to take advantage. I was hoping to show you the shadow and that’s how it got me thinking about those shadows of the past...

Gaps

I’ve had a day off from the studio providing me with a creative break. When getting back to my panel, I know what to do, even though it is still not my most favourite panel... Work now comes easy and finishing it is just a question of time and perseverance.

After I have washed out the stabilizer and start stretching the bark cloth and lace, I discover that accidentally I have left some gaps. I can decide whether to leave them or to fill them in while the material dries. I decide on filling the gaps. The tree adjacent ones I fill with a needlepoint stitch. I fondly remember the time when I used to make nothing but hand-sewn lace. What a lot of patience I had back then. I was nearly half my current age and, looking back, it seems that I had twice as much time on my hands back then. The only commitment was to me and to my art – no deadlines yet!

The second gap is mended better with a crochet chain, best resembling the machine sewn-lines of the finished (or in this case unfinished) lace. I used to love crocheting – haven’t done any for a long time...

The panel that has decided to remain ‘estranged’ from me draws closer when I put on the finishing touches. I want it to remain open and not curl up when hung. That means that I will have to insert a rod underneath the tapering strips that I have left at the panel top for attaching it to the strings that will hold the panel from the ceiling. An overlaid strip that acts as a sleeve needs incorporating into the panel. The piece of bark cloth which catches my fancy begs for some lace work before sewing it on. I can blend in its edges so they become part of the entire panel. I move the lace up the hanging areas. Making lace is such an organic process; on a good day it just grows out of my mind. Now that this problem panel is finished I could go on forever!

Blank

A blank piece of soluble stabilizer is my canvas this time. I want to work with strips of tapa. Inspiration seems to evade me. My mind feels as blank as the new length of material and I wait for the strips of bark to kindle a spark. 

I want to weave, but decide that I don’t like the squares the weaving produces. I end up weaving triangles instead, zigzag. Lots of empty spaces to fill with lace, and some interesting areas too.

 

Still not very inspired – that’s why I hate deadlines. You have to stay at it, whether you want it or not, because the works needs to be finished. I hate pressure, when it comes to my art, because it takes the freedom out of it... And being on my own and having no-one for brainstorming or to bounce off some ideas doesn’t exactly help :-(. Anyway, got to be motivated and get cracking!

At the end of the day I’ve finished a quarter only. Not happy with myself.

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.