Each year I volunteer to mentor a fellow SAQA member, and recently my mentee mentioned a fibre artist she’d discovered while attending an exhibition in her own city. She was impressed, so I visited that artist’s website to learn more about her art. In her bio Lizz Freeman described herself as “an under-educated, community-taught artist based in New Orleans, LA.” Her art itself is interesting enough, but that particular comment really set me thinking about how textile and fibre artists learn to put inspiration into some form using the manual and intellectual skills we’ve acquired during our lives so far, and I’ve concluded that to some degree we are all “self taught”.

Throughout my husband Mike’s exploration geology career, mining companies frequently required us to move between towns, across the country or around the world. I never seriously considered signing on for a formal tertiary fine arts course knowing I’d probably have to abandon it part way through. Now he’s retired, and there’s nothing stopping me: it’s never too late, they say, but as the world has changed, these days there are excellent online in-depth courses available. I feel I’ve been well suited by taking a multi-day symposium kind of masterclass every few years, followed by several years during which I absorb what I learned. Frequent relocations shaped my fairly low-tech art practice, too, as my main equipment is a basic domestic sewing machine, a cutting table, plus an iron and folding ironing board – all highly portable. I don’t have the space for a long arm machine, or facilities for fabric dyeing, and for photography, I’ve always invested in a good working relationship with a photographer wherever I am. Tertiary courses offer opportunities to use art departments’ wide range of facilities and expensive equipment, and students experience regular critiques and guidance, networking and possible career opportunities. On the other hand, I’ve seen how within such a group of students working under particular professor/artists, inevitably at least some of them become influenced by their teacher’s distinctive style elements, which begin to appear in their own work, and the issue of derivative art comes into play. However an artist learns, though, really depends on their own individual drive to learn and refine the skills needed to produce their art.

I identify as self-educated, because as an adult I’ve continued to add to my childhood education by taking workshops from prominent practitioners in their fields. I’ve only ever signed on to workshops I really wanted to take, and either I’ve been lucky in those choices, or perhaps I’ve soaked up everything they offered me because I was ready for the treat of an in-depth workshop. The most significant teachers I studied with have been Cynthia Sparks, Constance Howard, Meg Douglas, Nancy Crow, Arturo Sandoval, Dorothy Caldwell, Ann Johnson, and the StitchClub workshops of Debbie Lyddon, Clarissa Callesen and Jessica Grady during that first difficult year of the pandemic.

I remember our son Ivan telling me in 1992, that as a visual artist I needed my own website, which he then set up for me. I knew very few people then who had their own websites; but now anyone can have one, either paying someone to set it up and run it or by using one of the many free templates available. At least once a week I visit an artist’s website to read their bios and artist statements because of something interesting I saw in their work.

Today, I believe that in addition to our own website, an artist needs to be on several major social media sites which is where a lot happens as people interact with others out there. Youngsters tell me Facebook is mainly for older people now, but most artists, galleries and businesses seem to be there and on other prominent ones, too, so for the moment anyway I have two FB sites – one strictly related to my fabric art, the other more general . Instagram is more visual than wordy and I love it for that. On Pinterest the images on most of my particular pin boards are textile and fibre art related. There are plenty of other platforms, but I just don’t have time for maintaining more, because besides sleeping, eating, walking, and spending time with hubby Mike, I love writing, and updating the ones I have… and making my art takes time, too 😉 Our offsprings and other family are scattered around the world, in Australia, USA and NZ and they need regular attention. I love to read and belong to a book club, and also play mahjong.

All my adult life, part of my ongoing self-education has been within the many sewing circles, quilting bees, embroidery and quilting guilds and associations I’ve belonged to. I joined StitchClub when it started 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic. It was welcomed by literally thousands of stitchers around the world, ranging from beginner to advanced, all stuck at home during the pandemic, with time to spend and an interest in learning something more in embroidery – lots of self education going on there! I let my membership lapse last year because I realised I was no longer doing many of the fortnightly workshops. However I’m still a member of a small group of SitchClub embroiderers who met through the club. Calling ourselves PINKS, apart from myself in Uruguay, all the others are located across N. America and the UK. In fortnightly Zoom calls over the past 3-4 years we’ve stitched as we talked over stitch and textile art related things, and usually something about the current StitchClub workshop. We’ve become good friends, and everyone’s managed at least one in-person meet-up over time. I stayed with Barbara of Atlanta last time I was in USA, and hope to see her or someone else down this way, sometime. We share a lot of what we’re currently doing or learning, pass on information about artists, exhibitions and resources, and give opinions and critiques when asked. This group is a vital part of my ongoing self-education, as have been all the embroiderers groups, quilting bees, craft guilds and artist associations I’ve belonged to down the years.

(I provide direct links in my text where I think readers might like further information, and always welcome readers questions and comments in reply)

I found a few more photos from Dorothy Caldwell’s Expressive Stitch workshop that led into my previous post This workpiece, on black+tan cotton, has never been out of my sight for long, really, as I’ve repeatedly pinned it up and taken it down from my design wall many times over the years as space permitted. I’ve never got sick of it , and now I realise just how much influence this workshop has had on the what I’ve done since. Some of these styles I haven’t used much, like the heavy line of 6-strand embroidery floss couched down with one thread.

The other day I was going though some images saved on the external hard drive, deleting duplicates and rubbish, and labeling and saving some interesting pics I’d forgotten about. These were taken years ago, and I still have hundreds to do, but here’s one example, taken during Dorothy Caldwell’s Expressive Stitch” workshop I took at the Fibres West Symposium in 2005. (Where has all that time gone?)

Such an inspiring artist, Dorothy is also a terrific teacher, and we did some interesting explorations in stitch, including learning about Kantha embroidery from Indian state of Bengal and neighbouring parts of Bangladesh. Very basic running stitch and variations are formed into patterns and/or used to tell stories. They’re valued collector items these days, bringing useful income to the women of the region who make this work. Then we each chose a motif from our own life to produce several embroideries in Kantha-style.

I now use this one as my Instagram profile pic, @schwabealison and it immediately put a stop to adoring amorous declarations from wealthy widowed businessmen, body building hunks flexing their pecs while draped over luxury sports cars, and decorated military types posed in uniform in front of mostly USA flags.

In this next photo, I and another student were stitching onto our black fabric while blindfolded, following Dorothy’s verbal instructions which she gave us every few minutes. It was both challenging and good fun !

When we removed our blindfolds, everyone’s panel of the stitching exercise was pinned to the wall.

I don’t still have my class notes, so I only remember that before blindfolding ourselves we all had to make marks down the left side of our fabric that we could detect with our fingers – because these were the starting point for the next instruction. On some of them you can pick them out – on mine for example, shown lowest right.

I don’t think there’s any particular virtue in stitching while blindfolded, but it does point to how mark making in stitch can be truly expressive in creating mood and atmosphere, and many artists today combine stitch with other media – for example as a component of sculptural works like Bernardo Cardarelli’s https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=8142, and stitching into paintings such as Christina Lambi’s work https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=8888 , and Clyde Olliver of UK stitched principally onto or into slate. While writing this, I’ve been thinking of other favourite stitchers, who include Carolyn Nelson , Christine Mauersburger, and Amparo de la Sota, and realise they all use the simplest stitches in very simple ways – straight and running stitch, french knots, fly stitch and stemmed versions of those.

I noticed the other day that someone’s offering online classes on the currently trendy craft/art form of stitching into photos. Good heavens, I’d suggest saving that class fee, gathering up a bunch of old postcards or someone’s family photos from a thrift shop, and just start stitching, trying out different styles from the masses of material online. Once you’ve worked out how you want to do this, then start stitching your own special photo of whatever… because needle holes in paper are not forgiving if you make a mistake, which is one reason why I continue to stitch into fabric – though I have been known to use non-fabric materials in embellishment mode. My PINKS stitcher friends on our fortnightly zoom call today tried to interest in me in exploring ways to stitch into paper, citing some of the exciting sounding ways they treat and use their own favourite papers; and while I never say ‘never’, for the moment I’ll continue with methods that are familiar and comfortable to me for what I am doing in my textile art. For future experimentation I’m interested in a soft sculpture path for the mask project, and I’m thinking about adapting and using the very contemporary needleweaving I just saw, and there are only 24 hours in a day!

I’ve often heard a stitcher say ‘the back of this looks more interesting than the front….’ and though this is not the same, it’s another interesting expressive stitch thing, and those workshop photos reminded me a bit of my post of a few weeks back, “Brainstorming With an Algorithm” on how I gave chatgpt the image of the reverse side of a stitched work and asked it to produce a possible pattern, about which I’m still amazed.

There is currently a call for entries open to Uruguayan and international artists to submit our own full mask creations to an exhibition later this year, and I blithely agreed to make one and enter. However, as I don’t think I’ve ever made a mask, this will be something of a learning-by-doing-challenge! I’m currently researching ways to do this, and now I think I should just start – entries close July 10th.

Of course, a mask placed over a face of a living person either renders that person unidentifiable, or, as has been used in theatrical and musical performances since early Greek times, a mask can symbollise a character known to the audience, or its expression can convey to the audience how the performers want /need the onlookers to react to that character. Masks are found in most indigenous society rituals as essential props to the performances through which a non-literate society orally hands down the values and history of their society from one generation to the next.

Something in my mind repeatedly returns to some sinister sueded leather I once bought in a crazy moment – perhaps it needs dripping blood and big sharp teeth ? (what on earth is trying to emerge here?!!! ) Shakespeare’s character Hamlet, declared in the play of the same name, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so?” and when you put on a mask you will be perceived as whatever character you want it to be – goodie or baddie. In a previous post, I showed pics of some of my favourites

A couple of days ago I began some serious researching into how to make masks – I found a couple of demos on YouTube that appealed, and now I can’t find either of them 🙂 but I remember enough to get started and if necessary will improvise as I go along. One was pressing some metallic mesh over my facial contours and attaching all the decoration to that, but I’m wondering if that would that hold its shape really well – the mesh would need to be fairly study. Another one was using a cardboard rectangle and putting notches in it to make ‘tucks’ around the edge, and yes I have cardboard packaging I could use, also plenty of old xrays I salvaged a while ago in a cleanout. In either, I’ll cut eye and nose holes, adding a bit of a flap over the nose one, so now I think I have enough info on how to make one.

The brownish stuff in the photo above is actually a darker grey/light black leather which I can only describe as ‘damaged sueded leather’ since I don’t know how it was produced, and I’m not even sure where it came from. The surface intrigues me and could lead to something rather nasty, of the “Creature from the black lagoon” kind of theme. Over it I’ve draped some of about 3m of a chain of little glittery stars each about 1cm diameter that it seemed a good idea to buy years ago, somewhere… I also have gold lame and plenty of other glittery stuff, including glass beads, so I’ll decide on all this and make a start sometime very soon.

With husband Mike, I visited another marvellous exhibition of about 300 Carnavale masks from the MAPI museum’s huge collection (900) of central and Caribbean masks known as the Claudio Rama Collection of Latin American Masks from across the subcontinent. This exhibition is currently showing in MAPI, the Museo del Arte Pre-Columbino y Indigeno (Museum of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art) here in Montevideo.

The exhibition takes up the whole floor, flowing from one room to the next, and the masks range from warlike ferocity to highly spiritual (Chistian and indigenous themes) to political-anti colonial statements, and humourous expressions of the natural and especially the animal world – creatures of the air, land and water.

This first group really grabbed my attention, with very clever projections of sinister anger and dark evil in each of them… the teeth and eyes are really something!

Using simpler modelling skills, you might think this next group less “professional” as they also use just simple materials, including an embroidered sock with some scrap fabric, hessian from the garden store, and one recycles a dead tatu’s or armadillo’s capapace. But I really admire their creativity:

These next photos are some of the many wonderful animal masks in the collection :

I might go back to re-visit this exhibition again before it closes in a month or two’s time, as it was almost overwhelming! For my Uruguayan readers and anyone who might be in Montevideo in the next month, I urge you to head down to The Old City soon and see these terrific exhibitions. It’s open six days a week, but on saturdays there’s less traffic in the city, so plenty of parking across the road from the museum, and they have a nice cafe where you can have a coffee or a snack. The museum’s website https://mapi.uy/visita/ details opening hours, entry fees, bus transport and current exhibition information.

There is currently a call for entries open to Uruguayan and international artists to submit our own full mask creations to an exibition later this year, closing date July 10th. I blithely agreed to make one and enter, but as I’ve never made a mask, this will be something of a learning-by-doing-challenge! I’m currently researching ways to do this, and now I think I should just start – entries close July 10th. Something in my mind repeatedly returns to some sinister sueded leather I once bought in a crazy moment – perhaps it needs dripping blood and big sharp teeth – what on earth is trying to emerge here?!!! Shakespeare’s character Hamlet, declared in the play of the same name, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so?”