{"id":458,"date":"2009-04-28T17:26:15","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=458"},"modified":"2009-04-28T17:26:15","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:26:15","slug":"a-studio-visit-with-margaret-whyte-montevideo-textile-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=458","title":{"rendered":"A Studio visit with Margaret Whyte, Montevideo Textile Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"p3190010\"Recently\u00a0I visited a prominent Uruguayan artist, Margaret Whyte, well known for her large scale fabric and\u00a0stitch conceptual installation works,\u00a0 featuring\u00a0extensive use of recycled and salvaged materials, particularly textile-like materials.\u00a0 Just by chance I met her a few weeks ago at a\u00a0gallery in the Museo des Artes Visuales,where her work was then on show.\u00a0 See picture right, photographed with permission of the artist, showing part of the exhibiton ” Belleza Compulsiva” \u00a0\u00a0 It was the second show of hers I had seen in several years, and to my delight she seemed very interested in our meeting.\u00a0 \u00a0I love meeting other artists\u00a0and talking directly about what we each do.\u00a0 \u00a0She works in a studio located in the Fundacion de Arte Contemporaneo, www.facmvd.org<\/a>\u00a0 in the old\u00a0city area\u00a0of Montevideo, in a quite small room surrounded by other artists in other rooms on the several floors\u00a0of an aged apartment block.\u00a0\u00a0 Some were working when I\u00a0visited,\u00a0all doing a wide variety of very contemporary 2-d and 3-d art with\u00a0 a preponderance of painting.\u00a0 In addition to Margaret’s work which had interested me for some time, I was especially taken with the paintings of Fernando Lopez Lage – check the above URL – go to the list of artists and scroll to his name.\u00a0 His colourful paintings comprise bands and stripes\/strips of colour,\u00a0 wonderful combinations,\u00a0quite reminiscent of some contemporary quilters’ works, and the Australian abstract landscape\u00a0artist, Jules Sher. (one of my favs)\u00a0 Very large portaits are painted by Maria Carla Rossi, who was\u00a0 not around, but a striking work in progress was waiting for her return.\u00a0 I was however puzzled by the art of Cecilia Romero, who presents objects she picks up on the streeet, such as a cupboard door handle or a piece of cutlery or jewellery, encased in frames where they nestle into backgrounds of padded fabric looking as if they are in presentation cases, and I wonder does framing them in some way confer preciousness, value ….I didn’t come to clear terms with that.\u00a0 There was another young female artist\u00a0 painting\u00a0 an image of a clutch purse as if seen through cyclone mesh – from the pics around her work area she has a message about women being victims of the fashion industry. I liked her work, and will try to find out her name although she did not seem to be listed on the fac website.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But back to my visit with Margaret.\u00a0 She keeps another studio space\u00a0where she stores\u00a0most of her fabrics and threads.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In this room at the fac \u00a0was a big work table with a mezzanine storage area above her head height – of course, older buildings have very high ceilings.\u00a0 Margaret herself has done a lot of\u00a0 abstract painting but is currently working in fabric.\u00a0 Her sculptural works are large panels of colour, texture and shape, \u00a0worked directly onto artist canvases, or\u00a0 richly ornamented 3-d\u00a0 large figures.\u00a0 She uses a lot of paint on the canvas and then adds manipulated fabrics and other materials, perhaps more paint and large hand stitches\u00a0and\u00a0coils and drapes of\u00a0wrapped stuffed tubes – the whole having a rather rich\u00a0voluptuousness, a medieval costume quality, and yet sudden details disturb, such as fish hooks appearing from somewhere in the manipulated fabric….\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00a0meant to ask more questions about the rationale behind Margaret’s work, but we also got talking about my work, too. \u00a0I took\u00a0 ‘Maelstrom’ and Timetracks, 8, to show her what I actually do since she only knew my work from the website.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She commented my work was ‘neat’ and was pleased she referred to it as ‘art’\u00a0\u00a0.\u00a0 Even the tracks\u00a0 works such as Timetracks 8 she thought is neat, too, and\u00a0I was a little taken back at that, even with all the raw burnt edges and hanging threads.\u00a0 Interesting.\u00a0 Should\u00a0I \u00a0be concerned about this?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 Everything is relative, and her work is definitely not ‘neat’ – it is exhuberant, \u00a0almost wild, by some measures\u00a0 ‘raw’.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We had\u00a0 a conversation too about mixing with and working among other artists.\u00a0 I have mixed views on this, it could be interesting and exciting, on the other hand loaded with potential distractions, \u00a0and I know, or think UI know, \u00a0that\u00a0I do best when working on my own.\u00a0\u00a0 That conversation caused me to look at\u00a0the various\u00a0feedback structures I have access to, and consider their importance to me.\u00a0 It also set me thinking yet again about the ‘quilt industry’ and its relationship with the realities of the C21.\u00a0 On that note I am especially looking forward to the SAQA conference where someone will be speaking on this very aspect – where to from now kind of thing.\u00a0 Contemporary craft and art will change to reflect to some extent the pressures the world is under, I am certain.\u00a0 This was a thought provoking visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently\u00a0I visited a prominent Uruguayan artist, Margaret Whyte, well known for her large scale fabric and\u00a0stitch conceptual installation works,\u00a0 featuring\u00a0extensive use of recycled and salvaged materials, particularly textile-like materials.\u00a0 Just by chance I met her a few weeks ago at a\u00a0gallery in the Museo des Artes Visuales,where her work was then on show.\u00a0 See picture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,88,1,4,135,117,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craftsmanship","category-finishing","category-general","category-recycling","category-reflection","category-stitched","category-textiles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-7o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}