A striving in textile

My artistry is a striving in textile to achieve wholeness of form, construction and colour, a tactility akin to a rhythm. The point of departure is to decorate a person, a wall or floor; to open a window into nature’s chest of wonders, to where we are at home. One is tempted to call it ‘a note and a beat’.

The very first time I sat at a loom, even before it was dressed with its interconnected threads, it left me with a feeling which can best be described as a fine thread stretching back though time. I was on a three month summer course whose middle month was on weaving. After the first week the teacher didn’t want to talk to me. I had my own ideas as to what I wanted to make. Instead of the pre-set wool plaid in ecru, with yellow and green, that we all had to weave, I found a bright turquoise mohair yarn to use instead, the end result being that my things stood out in comparison to my fellow students. I still work with contrast. I see it as being rather Danish.

A year later I am at a natural dyeing and spinning course with Berit Hjelholt in the north of Denmark, she being a well known Danish weaver. I can truly say that it came to me naturally, to spin the wool into yarn and then to dye it in order to weave something. Berit taught us to dye clear, happy colours. To dye with plants was in. Afterwards it was looked down upon and now it’s in again. Chemical colours do not have the same spectrum and depth I believe plant dyes to have. More about that on www.

Through Berit I got in contact with a woman newly graduated from art school. I spent four days a week at her house. Lis had just bought four large used looms. They arrived as a pile of sticks and stocks which we assembled and then set about to weave on. As I have moved loads of times with my looms it was a useful exercise. After six month with Lis, I moved on to an art academy in Aarhus. There I learned lots about the theory of weaving and the milieu of artists was fantastically lively with much installation art and jamming.

A studio trip to 'The Strangers Wool Shop' in Norwich, U.K. became the beginning of a new adventure. We established a studio in our front room, one silversmith, two weavers, I and my pupil. A friend brought an article from 'Country Life' magazine about an older woman weaving tweed on an old, old loom, and how she spun and naturally dyed some yarn as well, with photos of her among rocks, low-lying land topped with heather, sea and sky. She sold her tweed to people all over the world. Many sought her out there on Harris, the southern part of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. It went straight to my heart.


In Norwich I had many exhibitions and took part in many 'Open Studios', sold privately as well as on commission. One was from 'Cartwright Hall Art Gallery' in Bradford. I held a solo exhibition at Norwich 'Assembly House Gallery'. To exhibit at institutions such as banks, big corporations, and churches is not for me. For me it is important that we all care about our society. Fast fashion is out.

The thread runs behind the industrial ideal we are surrounded by. My struggle is to preserve the natural. We ourselves must take care to preserve our inherent nature. That perhaps goes to explain why painting is held in such esteem. It still is a hands-on artform. I strive towards the art of painting. On my loom I weave a canvas in order to colour a piece of textile for decor.

Often the question of time arises. 'How long does it take'? Once my answer was that time stands still when I submerge my self. At once I was corrected with: 'if I had found a way to make time stop, then....' By describing it as a rhythm I fare better. And rhythm is important when a piece of cloth is to be woven. One strives not to drop that rhythm. Like the rhythm of the tide, ebb and flow, thread upon thread, a cloth emerges. When weaving a tapestry, mainly abstractions, that's quite another rhythm. I am in my element.


Then a day came when, to my surprise, my husband and I happened to be on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. We were on holiday and were standing in this totally unique flat landscape, without trees – just rocks and peat. And all of a sudden I remembered the woman who was weaving Tweed on Harris. The small hair at the back of my neck rose – I had to find her. But 10 years had passed and in the article it was mentioned that she was 73 years old. We found our way to 'The Harris Tweed Marketing Board'. Yes, she was still around and still doing some weaving. We moved from Norwich on the night train 'The Flying Scotsman', London - Inverness, and settled in Lewis.

The Golden Road was the address. One takes the bus from Stornaway, Lewis, to Tarbert in Harris. From there there is one bus a day down The Golden Road, a road with only one track – and, yes, it is its real name – as it winds itself around a small peninsula hugging the coastline. As we do not drive we waited for our son to visit us. He rented a car and we set off. It was grey, wet and drizzling when with my heart in my throat I knocked on her door. The now late Miss Marion Campbell asked me inside. With a cup of tea in hand I told her why I had come. She showed me her very old loom in the shed and the guestbook with names from all over the world and about her life. I was given the exact recipe of her tweed. I have woven tweed since then. 


A year later we moved to the mainland of Scotland. I sought out two gentlemen that were still weaving Tartan cloth on hand looms, Peter MacDonald and James Scarlett, both historians as well. I had a commission for 20 metres Tartan, the Dallas, Macintosh pattern, for a kilt. A kilt takes 17 metres to make. I still have a metre from it. For the most part, all my finished textile pieces are one-offs. In Scotland I had the offer to settle as a production Tweed and Tartan weaver. I chose not to.

Years later we ended back in Norwich. We also lived some years in Copenhagen. Now we live outside Nakskov on a small Danish peninsula. I enjoy the wide, open land. I never thought we should live next the Baltic Sea. While out cycling here I feel as if submerged in an ever shifting painter's pallet. There are surfaces of colours as far as one can see.

I am aware that I am possibly spreading myself too thin. I create things in textile, from clothes to and fabrics for interiors. It is what I do. When sitting at my loom and to keep the rhythm, I follow the movement of the thread with my eyes. One strives to beat the threads, one by one, with the same beat, softly for fine cloth or with some force. Or at the tapestry loom where the yarn is laid in by hand which can best be described by saying that, at the hour of writing I am weaving a tapestry which I call 'Min Ro' as it has some Miró about it. 'Min Ro' translates into English as 'My Peace'.

"Silence is a denial of noise - but the smallest noise in the midst of silence becomes enormous," said Miró. "As the only referential element, a blurry point acquires a powerful presence, burn also makes the space around it resonate. Therefore the point reinforces the presence of the space while also emphasising the weave, the material quality of the canvas".