Fiberworks - A Celebration of South African
Fiber and Textile Artists

Title: Perhaps a Princess

Description: Kim's two pieces were the result of some thoughts about the lives of artists in this, and previous eras.

Artists,in all media, have much in common with the heroes of mythologies and fairy stories: they have metaphorically hacked through brambles, and plumbed the Perhaps a Princess suggests a palace, floating on water, perhaps it is an illusion. It may hold a sleeping princess as the prize at the end of a courageous journey. It may contain Bluebeard's chamber…opening doors is a risky business. The palace is at once a place of safety, and a prison; a goal, and a further challenge.

The overlays of fabric suggest the uncertainty of vision and the layers of experience in the search. The pale colours represent the ephemeral dream vision which draws the adventurer on.

Title: Klee in my hands

Description: Klee in My Hands is a tribute to Paul Klee in his exploration of colour, his simplification of form, and his gleeful pleasure in simple child-like line and detail. Small patches of colour complement and echo each other in varying harmonies. Fish-like creatures surprise each other and the plants as they explore the depths and consider moving across the spaces. It is a celebration of freedom and adventure.

As artists we hope that T S Eliot's words will become a truth for us ...And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.

Machine needle sketching, raw edge applique, machine embroidery.

Title: Okavango - flood plains

Description: As the flood waters move rapidly across the waiting dried beds, life "on the edge" changes for the river dwellers. Puddles are transformed into a sparkling, flickering tangle of water, light and vegetation. Sky becomes water, mud becomes green growth, new hiding places appear in the luminous, shifting twilight. Papyrus and shrubs criss-cross, spears point to the sun, grass heads droop to become nests protected by the barrier of reeds. New patterns of light and dark conceal and reveal!

Title: Microcosm 2, Stone Wall
Mirocosm 3, Brick Wall,

Description: Both these pieces were responses to the diversity of texture, colour and botanical detail on stones and bricks. Microcosm 2 was prompted by a stone wall spattered with orange lichen. Microcosm 3 was suggested by a number of old, damp bricks in a dark corner. Mosses and exudations from the brick have produced a richly coloured surface.

Title: The Elements of Life: 2000

Description: These four quilts (90 x2.3 cms) hang next to each other in a very wide wall space at second floor level. The edges touch, so that the impression is that of a large oval design in which the elements overlap, yet have their individual spaces. The wall is part of a double volume space in a large vestibule, so the quilts are designed to be viewed from ground level.

Title: The Elements of Life: 2000

Description: These four quilts (90 x2.3 cms) hang next to each other in a very wide wall space at second floor level. The edges touch, so that the impression is that of a large oval design in which the elements overlap, yet have their individual spaces. The wall is part of a double volume space in a large vestibule, so the quilts are designed to be viewed from ground level.

Title: Confluence

Description: This quilt represents the parallel flow of Western and African influences in South Africa. Zulu basket weaving, African symbols and a Fibonacci series combine as a starting point. The smallest section are those where the divisions are lost in an optical illusion of confluence.

Title: Looking Inwards 2006.

Description: This quilt is largely based on the repetitive geometry of African basket work. I attempted to capture the atmosphere of flickering shadows in a wintery setting.

The palette reflects the dusty greys of the earth, the bleached gold of grass, nd the startling oranges and russets of bushveld winter foliage.

Title: Noughts and Crosses

Description: This work is a response to the failure of democracy in Zimbabwe. The optimistic crosses on the ballot papers have become the crosses on the graves of those who have died of disease, hunger, farm burnings, and murder.
Wild animals are hunted down as trophies, conservation is a wry joke.

Democracy has become no more than a spectral x-ray reading of diseased tissue. "Nought for our comfort."

Title: Pod 1

Description: The central image in this quilt suggests both a pod and shield. It has its origins in the colours and prickly bark of the coral tree, and the woven baskets sold by the women who sat in its shade. The flowers on the tree are brilliant red-orange, the bark almost black. When the ‘lucky beans- poisonous red and black beans’ are ready, the pod opens to send them on their life journey.

Title: Marking Time

Description: The crumbling villages in the Eastern Cape are characteristic of the old ways. The mud and grass structures are markers of the rural lives that have been left behind in the jostle of the urban search for employment and temporary shelters.

The palette reflects the pale beginnings of spring after he veld fires have seared the pastures.

The fragmented sections represent scraps of memories and experience - sometimes connected, sometimes flickering back and forward, in and out awareness, tinged with with dark and light.

Title: Tuscan Memories.

Description: Linked to an earlier work, (Tuscan Summer) this piece was commissioned as a memento of summer holidays in the Tuscan countryside.

Title: Klein Karoo, four seasons.

Description: This work followed the creation of Tuscan Memories. It is a more abstract representation of a countryside dominated by wide open spaces, distant mountains, cultivated land, dorpies with the always visible church spire - and surprising numbers of birds. Birds in flocks, in fields, on fences, and in the air.

Title: Chaos and Almond Bread.

Description: The title is a pun on the name of Mandelbrot, the mathematician who was fascinated by fractal geometry. I was fascinated by the knowledge of chaos theory - that order re-establishes itself again and again, in even the smallest fractions of life. The work was created for the exhibition titled "Round the Bend."

Title: Karoo Cloudburst

Description: For millions of years animals, from dinosaurs onwards, have left tracks across the plains of the Karoo.

In recent times men have decanted the herds of antelopes, and shed each other's blood on the soil.

Now sheep and ostrich farmers, and the traveller who stops to listen, may hear the whisper of the past in the wind and in the sudden cloudbursts that echo the conflicts. The trickle of brief threads of water offer a thin stream of hope, as does the sudden brilliant blaze of sunlight.

Title: Losing the Thread

Description: Losing the Thread is about losing the focus of an idea , slipping into an unexpected direction in the search for a particular meaning or outcome, or finding the thinking has slipped off track.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a new place, sometimes the trail peters out.

Title: Tuscan Summer

Description: This early work, and experimental collage of thread work, piecing, applique and painting was awarded a 'Highly Commended' comment by the judges at a quilt festival. However, they caution against mixing thread and paint. We've come some distance since then.

Title: Interwoven 1.
Major Minors III

Description: Women's work, women's life, women's destiny. The three fates decide?

Title: Interwoven 2

Description: A further take on the elements of rural life in South Africa. Weaving, tending fields, making maas in calabashes. Sometimes dreaming of the finery of grandmother's beads.

Title: Shades and shape-changers.

Description: This quilt is influenced by the mythology of the stories that African older women used to tell children at night around the fires. Sadly the stories are fading from memories, fast being replaced by TV soapies and city life

The shades known to most African people are those of the ancestors who watch over the family who are currently alive. The shades hover where they once lived, aware of current family life. They must be revered, sometimes placated by sacrifice. A suggestion of ghostly figures appears in the close stitching in the left panel.

Other panels in this quilt reflect some of the shapes adopted by the Shape- changer - a creature who is common to Vendan, Zulu and Xhosa mythology. The shape changer may assume a human or animal shape in order to trick human beings. Sometimes his mischief is innocuous, sometimes quite vicious.

The panel on the right is a reference to the story of the mantis and the moon. The mantis tried to catch the moon, but after several failures was obliged to acknowledge defeat, and repent of his arrogance. The story is thought to have its origins in Khoi-San legend.

Title: Homage to Klee

Description: This small piece is derived from a watercolour, Red and White Cupolas, painted by Klee in response to the architecture he saw on a visit to Tunisia. The date was around 1914.
Klee uses the structure of the buildings as a basis for the exploration, and the development of blocks of colour.

In similar vein, I have used Klee's work as a starting point for using overlays and embroidery to add texture and dimension to the base of hand-dyed cottons.

Kim Tedder