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As an artist I believe it can be really important to once in a while take a step back and re-set your making. As we move through our practice over many years, it can be only too easy to become reliant on certain modes of making, certain familiar materials, and the constant need to “perfect” what we do. Instead, I think it is really important not to loose sight of art practice as an endless process of lifelong learning, where you are constantly in conversation with your materials and never entirely master of them. After a recent period of intensive making in paper-based collage, I knew that for my work here in Iceland I wanted to push myself out beyond my usual area of material comfort. Coming to Blonduos was an opportunity to try something completely new and see what came out at the end.

I cannot deny the that process has been something of a struggle. At first I found myself overwhelmed by inspiration, then somewhat “scared” of my unfamiliar materials. Later came indecision about the conceptual direction I should take, then hesitation about tackling my final idea. The final intensive period of this journey has been characterized by experimental making, trial and error, and dipping my toes into new technology that I would probably run a mile from in my usual practice.

As my major project here I have decided to create a quilt documenting my own/the collective experience of the Field School. This, I happily admit, is a slightly bonkers idea, since I have never made a quilt in my life. So far the process has been a learning curve, during which I have worked my way through material set backs, acquired new skills, and come to several realizations I would never have otherwise. The following are several points of advice I now find myself ready to impart based on this experience:

1. Trust your first instinct, it’s usually the right way forward.

2. Sewing machines aren’t nearly has complicated as they seem. Feeling intimidated? Just sit down and sew. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to un-pick the stitch and start over. Its not that big a deal, just sew something! Incidentally the infrastructure of a sewing machine is astounding. Have a close look at one someday…whoever thought up that machine was a genius!)

3. The process of quilting is as easy or as complicated as you choose to make it. A perfectly patterned, perfectly assembled quilt is all fine and dandy, but for now I think I will happily stick to my slightly wonky sewing and uneven squares. The evidence of my hand in the making, of recording trial and error and the process of assembly is far more interesting to me than creating something “technically proficient” on the first go. There is something beautiful to be found in the mess, trust me. The “right way” and “perfect” are overrated.

4. Try new technology if you have the opportunity to, you never know what might happen. If it works then that is great, if not, you learnt something and can now go back to your usual way of doing it. It is a win/win either way.

oh and…

5. Never try to hand embroider finicky detail at two o’clock in the morning. If you are tired, you loose concentration and end up spending 45 minutes embroidering the wrong part of your work. Again this is simply a case of unpicking the stitch and starting over. It’s not a global crisis, but it can wait till the morning…go to bed!

Also…

6. When all else fails, there is nothing that a cup of strong black tea brewed 4 minutes with oat milk can’t solve. It is fantastic and a balm to all life’s ills. You should try it.

That is all! Happy making!

Jacob Le Gallais, MA, BFA (Student, Ph.D. Art Education)

By Paule Gilbert

English follows
Voici la vue, ou devrais-je dire quelques vues, sur l’embouchure du fleuve Blanda — une des plus longues rivières d’Islande — à partir de la chambre #20 de l’édifice Kvennaskólinn. Le fleuve Blanda coule vers le nord, du côté nord-ouest du glacier Hofsjökull vers la baie Húnaflói, où se trouve Blöndúos. Cet écotone, une zone de rencontres des éléments, où les écosystèmes aquatiques d’eau douce et salée coexistent, est riche en biodiversité. Tout au long de ma résidence, j’ai documenté ce paysage en choisissant un seul point de vue, en espérant souligner ainsi les changements constants. Les photos ont été prises à l’aide de mon téléphone, à tous moments de la journée, la plupart du temps avant de quitter la pièce ou quand j’y entrais. Un geste répétitif, comme une tentative de saisir le temps qui passe et les fluctuations de la vie, tantôt flagrantes, tantôt subtiles, mais toujours en mouvement. Je montre ici une trentaine des 128 images du projet. Celles-ci n’ont reçu aucune modification, si ce n’est l’ajout de la date et de l’heure.

Here is the view, or should I say multiple views, of the mouth of the Blanda River from room #20 in the Kvennaskólinn building. The Blanda River, one of the longest in Iceland, flows north from the northwest side of the Hofsjökull Glacier to Húnaflói Bay, where Blöndúos is located. This ecotone, a zone where the elements meet, where fresh and salt water ecosystems intersect, is rich in biodiversity and encounters of all sorts. Throughout my residency, I have documented this landscape from one viewpoint, hoping to bring forward the continuous variations. The photos were taken using my phone, at all times of the day, most of the time before leaving the room or after entering it. A repetitive gesture, an attempt to capture the passage of time and the fluctuations of life, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but always in motion. I show here 30 of the 128 images of the project. They have not received any modification other than the addition of the date and time.

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Who washes the washery? The machines are cleaned after every 4 shifts (usually every 2 days) in the Winter and every Friday in the Summer. They are hosed down with water and take about 2 hours to clean.

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Some rules to help you create “Your” own Blönduós Photo Album:

• Find pictures taken by previous visitors of Blönduós on the Internet. That way, you will get a great preview of what the place looks like. I found 779 photos.
• Focus on one topic of your choice. You will find that the river, the seashore, horses, sheep (so cute!), hotel rooms, and dishes at B&S restaurant are favorites. I chose: Textiles. I found 25 pictures that showed something related to textiles.
• Get to Blönduós and then try to go to and stand in the exact same spot as the visitor who took the pictures you selected.
• Take two pictures. For the first one try to take the exact same picture. Do not cheat. Same frame, same angle. The strong winds on the hills will certainly help you with this task, so will the mannequins at the museum (!).
• Second: take a picture of your selected picture in your next picture. Well, examples below.

Here is the Kvennaskólinn, our studio and our house. Hint: If you want to get this one, you will have to climb a hill.

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Below is the mysterious store. When I showed the picture to the owner to confirm that I was in the right place, she sighed and said: “Yes, and then Covid happened”. The store will be closing soon and will move to a more central location next to the grocery store. She will be selling much needed yarns and other precious materials for us, fiber artists.

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Here is a picture of the Textile Museum where I found most of “my” pictures (17 + 1):

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Here are some of my best finds: A collection of historical Icelandic costumes. From the 18th century faldbúningur to the more modern 20th century upphlutur and peysuföt, with charming details.

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Please come with me on a short visit of the Textile Museum collection.

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All I can say about this one is that I have noticed that her work has not progressed much…

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And I saved my favorite for last. One of the mannequins decided to sit down.

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Even though I am still not sure why visitors would take the time to post close-ups of historical textiles on a tourist website, I am really glad they did. And I was really happy to be able to also enjoy all the landscape shots as well!

There are 5 photos for which I could not find the precise spot where they were taken. Three were from a past exhibition at the museum, and to most likely the other two were taken in the store.

Last night, I browsed through all of the 779 photos of Blönduós I found before coming here. It is amazing how I now have a much better sense of this wonderful place. I can even know from which angle each of the pictures of the river were taken! And I had a great time at the museum for sure.

Thank you past visitors! You turned my stay here into a quest and great textile adventure!

Blönduós, June 2022

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– Hannah Ferguson

I am dyeing, I answer my faraway friends

met with reddening cheeks and mischievous giggles feasibly rooted in our collective tabooed associations with death and dying.

Explanation unfurls – I am colouring wool and cloth with plants. Mortality loiters elsewhere. Below the shell of this explanation is a knowing that there is a connection between infusing colour upon a neutral, receptive body (cloth or wool) and dissolving sentience and breath (death) – shapeshifting.

a connective tissue,

a single thread within a whole warp,

discreet until it is tugged on,

then a rippling affects the whole

weaving, body

Transformation steeps here.

When we dye a surface, we gather the pigment from a living, growing being. There is something that it is like to be that flower, plant, or root – that we will never know. In the process of colouring the porous fibre body, the plant dies. It is ripped from the soil, the fruiting body is pulled off, the petals torn, the bark stripped. Unfurled.

A death event occurs so as to allow for colour to bloom somewhere else.

The alchemical spiral – cycles embodied in coloured material to make things with.

I brought a skein of hand dyed wool from home.

An animated chartreuse yellow skein whose pigment was sourced from the fruiting bodies of wolf lichen – a slow growing algae-fungus found on the bark of dead or dying conifers in high altitudes in the Pacific Northwest. It was named wolf lichen due to its toxicity which was used to ward off or poison wolves (Galun).

Mordanting – the French mordre ‘to bite’, an essential element of the dyeing process. Through the mordant bath, the fibre is prepared usually with salts and heat to prepare it for colour. Wolves mordant too.

In Iceland there are Lupins everywhere. Etymologically, ‘Lupin’ uses the French root loup or ‘wolf’ stemming from Medieval times when the plant was thought to move through a landscape in packs, devouring everything in their path (Collins). We now know the opposite is true. Lupins are considered invasive species in Iceland as they do not originate from this place. However, they are highly adaptable plants – their “rhizobium-root nodules…allow them to be tolerant of infertile soils and capable of pioneering change in barren and poor-quality soils” (Kurlovich and Stankevich).

This characteristic of pioneering change in a barren landscape is a quality I wish to embody. I adore Lupins for this quality alone. Wolf Lichens and Lupins reflect one another – their etymology paralleling wolves, shadowy, poisonous, ravenous, and adaptable as well as the fact that they grow in dying landscapes and bring with them soil fertility and a spectrum of colours.

Bright yellow and pale blue. A palette of wolves.

Julia Woldmo

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Sources:

Galun, Margalith (1988). CRC Handbook of Lichenology, Volume III. Boca Raton: CRC. pp. 98–99. ISBN 0-8493-3583-3.

Kurlovich, B. S. and A. K. Stankevich. (eds.) Classification of Lupins. In: Lupins: Geography, Classification, Genetic Resources and Breeding. St. Petersburg: Intan. 2002. pp. 42–43. Accessed June 19, 2022.

‘Lupin’ definition and meaning. Collins English Dictionary Online. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lupin Accessed June 19, 2022.

 

As a person who works with natural fibres in both my job and personal work, I thought my yarn snobbery had reached a modest limit. Though I prefer to work with animal fibres, and I appreciate the qualities that come with them – smelliness, shrinking, felting, and scratchiness alike – I also understand that I am in a privileged place to be able to use them consistently. Before coming to Iceland, I thought I was a simple woman with a love for wool. I have since realized it is so much more than that. 

“The wool is alive”, said Johanna during our first spinning class. She was explaining how the newly spun yarn needs a day or so to relax on the winding wheels before it can be taken off and washed. We mused about the tension from our bodies and minds being translated into the wool we spun, our first skeins holding extra energy from the palpable frustration of a first-time spinner. Deborah repeated the living wool sentiment in our natural dye workshop, speaking on the ability of wool to warm up a bucket of water via stored kinetic energy, and recounting how when crossing a river, travellers would get their socks wet first so as to warm them up in advance. 

I am now thinking of the physical memory of wool in relation to immaterial memory. If the wool can hold information regarding the diet of the animal, the mood of the spinner, and holds enough energy to warm water, why should it not hold something from the wearer of a wool garment? What memory can I feel in my thrift store Lopapeysa – and what energy am I placing in the wool garments I create? 

I’ve come to accept that the wool is too magical to ever put down and I will be a yarn snob forever. My snobbery has shifted however, moving more towards the most natural, hand-produced, straight-from-the-sheep wool possible. While I still feel a certain lust towards shiny silk and 26 micron mohair, there is something about the rustic, earthy feeling of Icelandic wool that feels simultaneously of the earth and beyond it. 

Despite being transported by the beauty of the Icelandic landscape, particularly that of Blönduós, our first week at the Icelandic Textile Center was rich in learning. We received expertise from three exceptional women regarding the history and some of the textile techniques related to our host location.

At first, Ragnheiður Björk Þórsdóttir taught us the basics of tapestry weaving. Then, she introduced us to the history of Icelandic textiles by talking about the origin of spinning, the advent of the first stone looms, the symbolism associated with weaving in Nordic mythology and the critical role of fabrics in the country’s socio-economic system. Finally, we could appreciate some of the many textile structures, costumes, patterns and colours that have shaped the Icelandic identity. This meeting with Ragga also allowed us to visit her exhibition ÞRÁÐLAG, (Threadscape) in her company at the Textile Museum in Blönduós. Her woven works provide a contemporary look at the Icelandic textile legacy.

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Afterwards, Jóhanna Erla Palmadóttir taught us how to identify the different parts of the fleece and then to card and spin the wool from the Borgares sheep. Watching her transform this wool into yarn seemed so easy. Despite our first clumsy attempts, Jóhanna’s assistance and a bit of perseverance slowly transformed the fleece into a string. Fascinated by the gestures of spinning wool, many of us spontaneously devoted moments of our daily life to this discipline, refining a little more each day the yarn proudly produced by our hands. Capturing the precise moment when the texture of the wool transforms from soft fleece to smooth thread between our fingers is rewarding. It allows us to better grasp the complexity of this precious textile fibre.

To conclude this week’s workshop, Deborah Grey shared her passion for foraging plants for natural dyes. The landscapes of Blönduós provide gorgeous chromatic possibilities with their diverse vegetation. We joined our efforts to prepare and dye wool with many of the plants that surround us. We learned to recognize and discover their respective pigments with Deborah.

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As I prepared for this field school, I suspected my art practice would be transformed by the encounters and learning I experienced. My classmates and I are enhancing our technical knowledge through the enlightening conversations that accompany us throughout the days. The sharing of textile know-how echoes the landscapes of Blönduós, the plants, animals and humans that inhabit it. This manifests in my experiments where I combine the techniques I have recently acquired with Ragga, Jóhanna and Deborah. This time-space offered by this residency will undoubtedly impact my further research in textile arts.

Mylène

As a teacher and artist coming from an installation, painting and drawing practice, the thought of learning about new techniques and acquiring new skills is always exciting. With this mindset, these fresh experiences are usually enlightening and satisfying. Usually. Spinning wool proved otherwise at first.

Johánna, our very very experienced spinning instructor (not the stationary bike kind) was gracious, informative and physical in her demonstration. As she covered my hands with hers to help me mimic the gentle push and pull motion to feed the spinning wheel, I was confident I would “get it”, even though she repeated many times that our priority was to enjoy the struggle. I was SO not getting it. Mistakes were being made all over the place. I had no idea what I was doing, no matter how many times Johánna showed me. I was getting so frustrated that my fleece strands were not being spun evenly on the bobbin that I found it impossible to enjoy the struggle. I was more in the same frame of mind as some of my classmates who wanted to “get off the struggle bus”. My fleece was not turning into the beautiful, even, delicate and romanticized wool strands from the cute sheep I had seen earlier in the week, but rather became a gnarled, over-spun, thin, yet bulbous hot mess. But I still had fleece left, and my strand had yet to be plied (look at me using wool lingo!), so I was not done.

Besides learning about a new technique, what became relevant to me as the session wore on was how Johánna’s words connected to my current research on mitigating fears of making mistakes in the high school art room, so promoting the enjoy the struggle mantra was apropos. Putting myself in the frame of mind of my students who are expected to try new techniques with this same “it’s ok to make mistakes” growth mindset, I shifted my perspective.

I sometimes must remind myself that I am here not as a teacher feeding my professional development, but that I am here as a student; so, I am learning to spin. I took a few more stabs at it and plied my single strands together with not much more ease than with how I started. Yes, it’s a total disaster, but that’s ok. It’s gnarled and over-spun, thin, yet bulbous, and soft and light and two colours. It’s a beautiful disaster.

That gorgeous wool sweater I bought during my last travels? I think I need to perform a small gratitude ceremony to spinners past, present and future every time I put in on now. During my spinning time, I looked over at a classmate, who is clearly practised at this. I studied with awe their very carefully timed, deliberate yet unhurried hand and gentle arm movements. It’s not that I was unaware of wool’s passage through spinning on its journey from sheep to clothing. What occurs to me now is that I never factored the spinner’s physicality – their body rhythms – as connected to my garments, and subsequently to me, when I put on my wool sweater. It is sometimes the case, as has been proven during my talks with some of the vendors at the Blönduós knitting festival, that the spinner is also the knitter, but in most instances, the knitter gets all the glory. Here’s to those who “get it”, who can beautifully channel their inner-arachnid, and who need a little spotlight of their own.

Nancy Long, PhD candidate, Art Education