One Year Later, Now What?

April 28, 2023

“What part of Missouri are you all from?”

Mark and I were sitting in the hotel breakfast area quietly discussing plans for our new life when a very tall and surly man stopped in front of our table and asked the question without preamble. We just stared at him, frozen in place by his audacity. “I saw your cars, your plates,” he shrugged. “My kid is graduating from college, and we are moving back to Springfield. I’ve had enough of this place.” His visible displeasure turned fully into disgust when we informed him that we were moving to Minnesota. I don’t know why people are like this.

At the beginning of May, we will have been in Minnesota for a year. We survived our first winter and we thrived. The Twin Cities had the third snowiest winter on the books. The benefit of beginners’ mind is you don’t know what is unusual. We enjoyed winter and we expect to enjoy future seasons as well.

“Rag rug” sampling on the loom. Experimenting with the structure of a rug as a base for embroidery. Lots of color mixing and using scraps and random bits.

My studio work lately has been a lot of sampling and trying new things. Before I packed everything up I had some ideas that I worked on and I left those fabric samples to rediscover on the other side. I’m glad that I did that as I wasn’t starting from zero. I also had a sense that for the next year, I would sample, experiment, and see where things led me. I miss making my work and yet the work that I made before seems to have quieted within me. I have mostly gracefully allowed that to just be and to not pick at it. There are other times though where the inner quiet is interrupted by my own inner voice asking, now what? What will I make now?

I was finally able to voice what I’m thinking and searching for on a walk to our lake this week with my husband. All this time my work has been about an imagined place or places that have left imprints on memory—the places that I longed for. Now that I’ve discovered that place that I imagined, what does that mean for my work? My husband suggested that I still long for that place. I long for the place that I have. It was a subtle shift and a wise suggestion.

The places that I long for are now here. There are many of them – some are a block away, some a thirty-minute walk away, and many I haven’t seen yet. Spring has come to the north, and while the earth is slow to wake up, the creatures here are announcing the changes. The osprey are back, we see eagles almost every day again, and my long held wish to see a loon has been granted. We have seen about six of them now. The landscape here touches the small curious child that I once was and I can’t seem to get my fill of it. No matter the season. I just love being outside here, even if only in the driveway.

In Other News

I recently had an article published on the Norwegian Textile Letter, an interview with artist, Soile Hovila. Weaving Light and Meaning: A Conversation with Artist Soile Hovila

My piece This Land recently was given Award of Excellence at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The Spring Members Show runs until May 14, 2023.

New Year, New Plans and New Loom

January 10, 2022

After taking a few weeks off, I’m back in the studio. I’m rearranging some furniture, downsizing others, sorting out various stashes, and making donations. This year I have some transition occurring. My family is planning a move from St. Louis to Minneapolis later this year. It has been a few decades since my last move, but I still remember the process well enough to start organizing and downsizing early in the planning process.

After visiting Minneapolis in the fall, we began to research and talk seriously about making the move. My husband describes Minneapolis as a park with a city tucked into it. It isn’t far from the truth. The ready access to walking paths and parks that wind their way through the city and out into the suburbs were a huge factor in our decision. I’ve had a hunger to be near water most of my life we will be near so many lakes and rivers. I feel a particular link to the Mississippi River and I’m really looking forward to getting to know it upstream. A trip to the headwaters is on the list once we get settled.

As an artist occupied by place and nature, I know that the move will impact my work. It has already begun to seep into my idea sketches. I also look forward to engaging with the many cultural and arts organizations. The Weavers Guild of Minnesota is a rich active guild with a wonderful vision for building toward the future. The guild is house inside the Textile Center, their building with a gallery, shop, library, and meetings spaces as a result of a unique merging of thirty organizations. I plan to spend some time researching in the library!

A little over a month ago, I received a Bexell Cranbrook Countermarch Loom. The loom has been in storage for perhaps twenty years, and it needed a little cleaning. I’ve been tackling the cleaning a little bit at time. The loom will be wrapped for moving and storage before I can assemble it later this year. I hadn’t planned on adding a loom to the mix, but it will pack up nicely and is very easy to move. Even the largest pieces I can carry myself.

One of my favorite things about working in textiles is the many avenues for research for the history of tools, makers, and techniques. The Cranbrook loom offered an opportunity for some reading and the story is quite interesting.

The loom was designed by Finnish artist, Loja Saarinen and Swedish craftsman, John Bexell.

Saarinen designed the textiles for her husband, architect Eliel Saarinen’s buildings. Loja was unhappy with the looms in her studio and after working with Bexell, the Cranbrook Loom was born. Today, Cranbrook looms are made by Schacht Spindle Company. They are still highly prized by weavers. The loom I have was made by the original Bexell company. It is much smaller than most with a weaving width of only 36.” Countermarch looms can be enormous. Some are large enough for multiple weavers to weave side by side. The looms are well suited for a variety of woven textiles—everything from delicate linens to heavy rugs.

The loom has cleaned up beautifully and the craftsmanship is remarkable. The wood has aged to a rich honey tone. The same wood was used throughout even in places no one would ever see. Schacht has an article with more the history of the Cranbrook Loom that you can read here.

Eliel Saarinen designed many of the buildings at Cranbrook. He taught architecture and later served as president. Cranbrook has a rich art history, particularly of textiles, and many educators have studied there. I would love to take a trip to Michigan to visit the campus someday. Cranbrook offers on-campus tours, virtual tours and talks on a variety of subjects. Much of the archives are online, including many fascinating photos. They also hold the records of the Saarinen family. Last year I attended a fantastic lecture on Loja Saarinen’s studio.

To Learn More Visit: Cranbrook Center of Collections and Research

Marianne Strengell with Loja and Eero Saarinen (architect for the St. Louis Arch, 1958
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Hidden in Plain Sight

November 9, 2021

For many of us, there are topics that we keep returning to repeatedly; things we just think about over the course of our lives. They can show up in the literature and stories we are drawn to, the art we appreciate, or just pulse under the surface. As an artist, much of my work and research has centered on connections with nature, family, and heritage. These themes have been with me for a very long time. I thought about it when I worked with children of immigrants as a teacher. I wrote about finding home in an undergraduate literature class.

I have a long history of searching for my family story. Somehow, I’ve always known I needed to know more about my mother’s people even though it was difficult to get information. People that knew were often reluctant to talk about it and I spent many long years not understanding why this was the case. My mother’s people were deeply silent – by nature and because of unhealed trauma and secrets. Despite the silences, and the deaths of people who had the information, I’ve been able to piece a lot of the information together thanks to the internet. My childhood sleuthing has begun to provide answers. Through understanding my immigrant great grandparents, I even discovered why I was so drawn to express my love and connection to nature in my artwork. It was all there waiting for me.

I used to say that I didn’t receive any family recipes that were linked to family. This has turned out to not be quite true. My mother was a very good cook and she recorded many of her greatest hits for me before she died after years of me asking and trying to write down how she made my favorite dishes. Like many cooks, she didn’t record ingredients and how much she used. Finally, one year for my birthday she sat down, and I still use her set of handwritten cards. I’ve started to scan them for safe keeping.

There was one favorite dish that she would make, cauldummer, and the family would accuse her of making up the name. Cauldummer is a delicious blend of hamburger, rice, breadcrumbs, spices, and eggs made into oval shapes and wrapped in cabbage leaves and baked. I looked for the word in recipe books and menus and never spotted it. My mom would swear it was a real word, but I could never verify it until a few years ago. One evening after eating a dinner of cauldummer, I wondered if the internet could help me. After a quick search I found it, Kåldolmar, Swedish cabbage rolls. I had a family recipe, from my mother’s mother’s Swedish side! It was there all along, spelled phonetically, and hiding in plain sight. I’ve had this phenomenon happen many times over the years that I have been diligently searching. Seemingly separate clues with unknown connections.

The most recent example was found during a recent trip to Minneapolis. My husband and I were shopping in a Nordic store when I found a mug that tripped a memory. The Swedish flower design stopped me in my tracks. I remembered my mother had a set growing up. Here was another trace of heritage that was unexplained and unremarkable. I bought the mug, and it is now a favorite. After I posted about it on social media, a friend who was downsizing homes reached out to offer me a creamer that matched. I am delighted.

I recently finished a project connected to my Swedish ancestors. Many years ago, while visiting with my mother’s sister, I was shown a counted cross stitch sampler that my great grandmother, Maria, made while in Sweden as a twelve-year-old girl. I took a picture of it – unfortunately under glass with lamp glare, but I’m glad to have it now. I’ve thought about the piece a lot over the years. I don’t know what became of it after my aunt’s death. I thought that I would just have to be consoled by at least having a record of its existence. If I’m honest though, it makes my heart hurt a bit.

Last year, as part of the Swedish weaving group with my local guild, we had a challenge to use linen yarn to make something for the year. We did a group order for 16/2 linen yarn from Sweden, and I knew what I wanted to make. I wove the ground fabric to recreate my great grandmother’s sampler. I painstakingly mapped out Maria’s design, fudging here and there when I couldn’t exactly see or count her design. I finished stitching the piece two months ago and now it is framed and on my wall. It was a piece that I felt compelled to make, even when I had to rip out hours of work due to a miscount several times. Having the piece completed has soothed the ache that I feel with the original work not in my ownership. It is a work of devotion and honoring those that came before.

A photo print out of the original with notes (left) and my recreation of the sampler.

I love how Maria has included her family on this piece. Maria’s father’s and mother’s initials are in the middle on each side. Maria’s initials are on bottom center. I even left her original backwards S. On each side of Maria’s are her sibling’s initials. Maria was one of four children, but the youngest was not yet born when Maria stitched her piece. This textile represented her identity and where she came from. Knowing where you came from and your connections to the past are often taken for granted. When you don’t have this piece of your identity, it leaves an open place in our understanding. There are many ways to fill emptiness.