Dear ALL
Dates to diarise:
- Friday 29 March 2024 Entry forms the Fibreworks Members' national exhibition.
Friday 26 April Photo's and details of artworks to be sent to Helga to check. Once correct they will be forwarded to the gallery for jurying and advertising.
Friday 17 May The physical work to be delivered to Tilly de Harde. Cell 0721484201
26 May 2024 Opening at the Tina Skukan Gallery 11.30 am.
Sunday 26 May 2024 - Thursday 20 June 2024. Exhibition in Pretoria at the Tina Skukan Gallery.
5 September to 16 October 2024 TAPE exhibition at the GFI Gallery in Gqeberha. More on this later.
- Collaborative Panel discussion. Zoom meeting on January 27th 2024
Here are notes and stories people sent:
Tessa Horan
There are those rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything to others but lose nothing of yourself.' Ian McEwan
This is a brilliant quote, thanks Tessa.
Lynn van Wyk
The ArtCraft gallery in Stellenbosch has a tag line: innovation and Collaboration.
Maryka Wyngaardt-Brooks, the Operational Manager for Crafts Alive Stellenbosch, spoke about their collaboration to create a craft shop selling the wares of other crafters. They partner with Legacy in Kayamandi, Work4living and Imbali western Cape. At the Crafts Alive they run the gallery and craft shop, and the training centre. There is also a coffee shop.
The coffee shop to attracts local guest house patrons to come over to view the space, plus they partner with the Adventure group next door that ends their adventure for the day with the stop at the shop. The waiters and the kitchen staff are all from the partner groups that help young people get training to find work. Here they train them so they can go and find work as they have real life experience. They have the training centre in the back that teaches people to sew and make craft items like cushions, aprons, place mats etc. They also have offered Lino cut printing classes. This has enabled a person to Lino print fabric and then another to sew it together, earning money for two people with one product.
In addition, they create corporate gifts which gives them a great boost.
My view was that it is an amazing space and has huge potential. My thoughts were that the items for sale were lacking originality. They have the skills but could use help to push their products from bland to amazing. They need growth in education to take their skills they have learnt and to be able to make their pieces original and unique.
Imbali Johannesburg is doing this very successfully. My view of this centre that it needs to give makers opportunities to make unique work and not copy others. Skills in printing, dying, fabric manipulation; fabric weaving, collage, recycling, and handwork could take this to the next level.
Corina Lemmer
I had a beadwork project in the nineties. It was later taken over by American missionaries, as my strength does not lie in marketing, selling or administration! Initially I wanted to help preserve traditional Zulu beadwork by using the items or designs for interior decorating purposes. Later we mainly made jewelry and Christmas decorations. The only way I am still involved in this is that one of the beadworkers, Ngoneni Kubheka, does the beadwork I need for artworks etc, in exchange for a monthly stipend, varying according to the amount of work.
The project taught me not only the exceptional skills, terminology, and rich symbolism in the Zulu beadwork of the Amangwe tribe, but also the great need for rural women to find a way of earning an income in rural areas.
The HIV pandemic was rife in KZN when we started. The women of Amangwe Crafts mourned family members living and earning in the cities who disappeared, leaving only their children with no financial support. Many had to take over neighbouring child-headed households on top of their own. I visited doctors and the small hospital serving the vast population and gained as much academic knowledge about treatment and prevention as I could. The government was still in denial. We made a series of works entitled "By a Thread". A title suggested in a discussion with a local community theatre group who had the aim of teaching about HIV-AIDS through drama.
'By a Thread' consisted of 8 panels, each named after a bead worker whose experience with HIV and AIDS represented an aspect of the group's lived experience of the pandemic. The women made the traditional beaded discs that they wear on their hats to special tribal ceremonies. This time the choice of design and size had a symbolic interpretation: Jabulisile was a beautiful young bride whose life had hardly been touched by HIV- AIDS. The discs on the panel named after her were colourful and decorative. Pelisiwe was getting thinner every week we met, her skin and eyes duller. The discs on her panel were small, simple, black and white. A thin layer of gauze over discs in some panels suggested the silence and stigma about the pandemic in some women's lives. I expressed my experience of HIV- Aids by mutely sewing the worthless medical phrases I had learnt into blocks, by expressing my frustration through my sewing machine, in helpless circles around the emptiness of the blocks representing dear Nthombi, who passed away when her adult life had only just started… (see attached images). We sewed everything onto handmade reed mats, those that people eat on, sit on and get buried in. A whole precious life lived.
The stark contrast between my privileged life and that of the beadworkers was clear in our approach to these panels. I gathered academic knowledge and transferred this onto our art with my sewing machine, a treasured item in the Zulu community. They worked with beads and had a tragically lived experience.
For the first time I befriended women of another race, growing especially close to Ngoneni Kubheka, despite my poor Zulu and her non-existent English.
As South Africa moved into a period of great political and social changes, I felt the need to express the strange times in art. I worked on a theme of comparing my life to that of Ngoneni. We grew up on two sides of the same hill and lived in vastly different worlds, yet in our love of craft and people we found so much common ground! We discussed subjects like 'What our grannies taught us', our childhood years, fashions, our personal and our country's history. The most successful results came about in series of works that continue, entitled "Lessons" and "Loveletters" in which our handwork is used to represent our culture, but also how each of us experienced that aspect of our lives. The concept expressed in these works is that at heart people are the same, in spite of all cultural, political, religious or language barriers.
In my attempts to tiptoe around the taboos of othering, our differing expectations of the outcomes, different backgrounds, etc, I decided to let Ngoneni's beadwork speak for her. The colours, techniques and designs of the beadwork are always that which people of the Amangwe tribe use in their traditional dress. The collaboration consisted of discussions about possible topics, usually initiated by pieces of traditional beadwork Ngoneni brought to show me. She then makes more pieces to represent her side of the theme. I make design decisions of the whole piece around this starting point and am responsible for putting her bead work and my sewing or crochet work together. Sometimes she helps with the hand sewing.
My latest work centres around farm life where I use khaki shirts to depict landscape scenes. Pieces of beadwork and crochet work again represent different cultures in the farming community, although it is more of an underlying theme. In these the collaboration consists of a discussion where Ngoneni explains her point of view, with her beadwork representing that in a symbolic way. The main concept and design is mine.
Perhaps our way of working together is a symbol of our upbringing and history. My aim is to express concepts, try out new ideas, make artworks and some money, while hers is to make beautiful craft, preserve their traditional beadwork and earn money through that. She understands my approach but doesn't have the luxury to indulge in experimenting with designs and colour combinations that have not been tried and tested by her whole community for decades.
See attached images and the story I wrote for an exhibition where some of the Loveletters were exhibited.
A master's student at UKZN fine arts dept is writing a thesis on the collaboration between Ngoneni and me. She had interviews with us, using a Zulu speaking friend as interpreter for Ngoneni. It will be interesting to read how she interprets our relationship!
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Love letters no 5 and 6 A True Story
Corina Lemmer (1961- ) and Ngoneni Kubhekha (1963-)
Once upon a time there were two little girls: Corina Lemmer, and Ngoneni Kubheka of the Amangwe tribe who lived on either side of a huge koppie near the Drakensberg Mountains. Both their fathers were farmers, and their mothers were tailors. However, their people were at war with each other, and the two girls could never play together.
When the time came for the girls to go to school, Ngoneni did not like her schooldays and soon stopped attending, preferring to help her parents with their work. Corina's teachers were kind, and she eventually studied at a university far from her home, until she got a degree and then even studied further. She travelled around the world and eventually came back to the farm to raise her own family.
By then the war had ended, and at last Corina and Ngoneni met through their shared love of handwork. They became friends and started sharing the stories of their lives with each other. This was difficult, as they could not speak each other's languages very well, so they started using the language of creating beautiful things!
One of the tales they told each other was about their teenage love. Corina wrote letters to a boyfriend fighting the border war, while embroidering table linen for her trousseau, as was her people's custom in those days.
Ngoneni sent coded messages in beaded necklaces to her boyfriend working on the mines. He was collecting money to pay her lobola, while she was making bayi, fabric trimmed with beads, for her ceremonial dress as a bride-to-be.
Corina and Ngoneni are both gogos now and still meet regularly to make beautiful things together, each working according to her own custom.
This is a true story.
Sensitive and heart felt, Corina. Thanks so much for sharing this story with all of us!
Dal Botha
Define the purpose and a theme that will showcase everyone's discipline.
Theme can be based on a technique, colour palette or concept that ties work together.
Develop a concept together with all participants or representatives of the groups.
Discussion of common threads between participants.
Set up clear guidelines.
Can divide into pairs and swop/work on each other's work.
- This was successfully done by GHQG who paired quilters from around Africa. Each person started a piece and then sent it to their partner. We worked on each other's piece and sent it back to be finished by the original owner. It was very interesting to see the outcome. There would probably need to be strict guidelines in place.
Find commonalities and work with those.
Identify things not common to both and do a swop e.g. Fworks = more western while Zulu = bolder colours, non-traditional type of work. Each group could use the other's traditions in their own way.
When planning the exhibition:
What do you want the outcome to be?
How do you want people to experience it?
This will drive the vision.
Venue determines practicalities such as size and number of works.
Many thanks Dal for participating in our Zoom meeting and your insightful comments.
Dal Botha suggested that we contact Angie Weisswange for her thoughts on collaboration. Here is Angie's reply:
- From the age of 15 when I first drove a collaborative sewing project for an after-school club I've been very aware that someone does need to be the 'driver'- take the reins and assume responsibility for the duration of the project, whether this is an individual who understands inclusivity at their core, or a committee that can work together respectfully, democracy in true facilitation is important. Big egos step aside.
- Autocratic or singular dispositions need to do their own thing, or they become difficult to work with laterally (or horizontally as someone mentioned). Collaboration and cooperation are of their very nature democratic, inclusive and respectful of allowing equal weight to others' opinions and offerings - whether they appreciate them or not.
- Criticism should be as constructive as possible and part of facilitation should always allow the balance of critical thinking and observation in an atmosphere of positivity. We can always learn something and must be open to possibilities and opinions which are different - with humility. This is of paramount importance when working or collaborating with other cultural and language groups where much can be challenging regarding understanding, sensitivities and nuances of meaning.
- Mutual respect is always extremely important. Listening is the first step to understanding and respect. I'd advise any cross-cultural groups to listen to a few TED talks before starting out. There are so many helpful teachers and leaders with experience to share the skill of listening and collaborating.
If you get a message saying "Your browser is up to date" click on "browse youtube in the middle of the page.
The 7 Keys to Creative Collaboration (youtube.com)
Collaboration
The power of collaboration: Dr. Shelle VanEtten de Sánchez at TEDxABQWomen (youtube.com)
https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_tammfirst_step_to_collaboration_don_t_be_so_defensive
How to fall in love with collaboration: Investing in our relationships | Chris Bramley | TEDxWoking (youtube.com)
Listening and learning Collaboration for those who are not keen on collaborating
Why Collaboration Is An Individual Effort: Emily Eldridge at TEDxMU (youtube.com)
Inclusive language
https://youtu.be/RwETzaEbr64?si=rNhAC3evi0wJLqYG
https://youtu.be/INo0mbc9wvk?si=vjKHH64c50BgMSse
- At the initial stage of any collaborative project it is helpful to have a brainstorming of ideas as well as a flexible guideline (some nuts and bolts - but not set in stone) and protocols to be agreed upon with the whole group before proceeding.
- Team Building activities are a great way to jumpstart any collaboration. Team building generates knowledge, trust, mutual appreciation, collaborative cooperation and ultimately friendships. Fun art collaborations can be team building for cross cultural groups with simple and playful efforts to get a group to understand what might be expected of further more serious collaborative work. Collaborative staff artwork - Eden Project (youtube.com)
- Workshopping the initial stages of a project (whether techniques, materials or process) is recommended in collaborative work. And now that we have zoom and digital media this enables collaboration across continents as well - if the participants are all reasonably tech savvy - even having access to WhatsApp is helpful for local rural people. The Keiskamma Arts Project proved this collaboration to be successful during Covid with Mapula Embroiderers.
- Collaborative work can proceed as individuals work on their own contributions, checking in from time to time (or being checked on) to enable a successful outcome. It's important to have good communication before, during and after completion of a work to learn more about and appreciate that particular process and outcome. Someone needs to assume responsibility for this. Sometimes someone needs to be paid for this.
- Payment for work is always an issue with collaborative work where individuals do not have the luxury of a set income and may need to work for an hourly rate. This is a potential for them to learn and contribute while earning themselves. A set fee for work can be predetermined and quality control of work must be carefully monitored so that the outcome is not compromised by the need for funds. If a collaborative artwork is sold for a good profit, then profit sharing must be decided by the group, once materials and other sundries are accounted for. To this end a treasurer portfolio (accountable to the group) is necessary and may be incentivized with a treasurer fee for keeping the books. So many rural groups start out small and while funds and fees are small or limited, most are grateful just to have the opportunity of participating while not losing other potential income.
- Double or triple (or flexible) deadlines are helpful when working with group projects that have completion dates.
- There are many ways in which to collaborate. Individuals can work on their own pieces of a whole result (unknown or aware of the final plan) - or share work or work all together physically to create a single piece. As TAPE we are currently working as individual artists as well as on a collaborative piece for our upcoming exhibition in September entitled 'Unsettled' The most 'unsettling' part of our collaboration will come after the first deadline when we have to hand over the individual piece we are working on to another member of the collective to continue!
- When collaborators can't function for whatever reason, show disinclination, or become disruptive within groups it's important that the facilitator/s allow them to withdraw gracefully and without recrimination (and limit their remuneration if applicable). The space should be allowed to be filled by another (or shared by the remainder of the group) and the project remain open or available to be contributed to in some positive way should they change their minds or circumstances and wish to be included again.
I hope some of these observations culled from working over the years with children, in classrooms, with friends and adult groups as well as rural crafters, quilters and fibre artists will be of value. I have many stories as well but little time at the moment to flesh out more than the above points.
Thanks, Angie, for your enormously illuminating observations.
Celia de Villiers
Celia has a wealth of experience working collaboratively with various organizations worldwide. We have asked her to host and conduct a Zoom meeting for Fibreworks members towards the end of July where she will share her experiences.
Below is a small taste of one of her collaborative projects. We look forward to hearing more from Celia and a lively interaction with the members
- National Members' Exhibition 2024
Remember this is our national show and it is important that you submit work for this show. We hope to see as many of your works as possible as it is the most important exhibition in our calendar.
- TAPE Exhibition
Date: 5 September to 16 October 2024
Venue: GFI Gallery, Gqeberha
Theme: UNSETTLED
Helga sent out the invitation for this exhibition. If you need the entry form again, contact her.
Website: https://www.fiberworksart.com/
New members are encouraged to send their work to Helga to be included in the Fibreworks website. It is up to you to make the effort. You need to send a high-res pic of the work - Surname first and then the title i.e. Beaumont The state of my mind 2024. Add a description of no more than 200 words, dimensions and materials.
If there is a query, we put the buyer in touch with you the artist and you negotiate the postage and sale. Remember there is then a commission of 10% that goes to Fibreworks.
That's all for now folks!
Jeanette and Helga
