WOMADelaide 2007
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008I wrote this for an upcoming issue of Fiber Arts Magazine. Most likely this version will not be published, but a much shorter one will.
In the winter of 2007 the Adelaide-based artist, Sandy Elverd, invited me to join the Tjanpi Desert Weavers Project during in preparation for the WOMADelaide Festival. Our goal was to create large sculptures to help decorate the 3-day world music festival held annually in Adelaide, Australia. Six women from the Ngaanyantjarra, Pitjantjarar and Yankunytjatjara lands were to teach a dozen artists from Australia and Tasmania, and one very out of place Santa Fean, their craft.
The Tjanpi women traveled for three days through the outback, slept in inhospitable conditions and had so many truck problems it was a miracle that they arrived at all. But they did, with two helpers and much grass. The grasses were collected from their homelands. The Aboriginal artists proclaimed that we would create a “camp scene” at Womadelaide - full of children, dogs, goannas and a mother goddess - a small replication of their daily life at home. As they taught the students how to make baskets and create sculptures we would learn about their lives in the bush.
What did I learn from this? Traveling, seeing new things, hearing new things and watching a community of women gather to create a scene to share with festival goers? I learned that no matter where you are in the world that if a community of artists gather to create, share and educate, much more will be created, transmitted and passed on than the craft.
Families of Aborigines that live in Adelaide or the surrounding areas joined our group daily for weaving. The weaving workshop would grow from 14 - 25+ people spontaneously; children running everywhere, women gathering to work, the sound of unknown languages and the movement of rapid hands.
I love what I do because the community that is created amongst a group of artists. In Santa Fe I have a studio in a compound with 30 artists working on the site daily. Ceramists, jewelers, painters, and sculptors - artists working in all mediums gather in a small spot in Santa Fe. Some of the artists are very well known and show internationally, others of us are just starting out - but what is constant is a dialogue. From the time you step out of your studio to catch a brief bit of sun in the winter - there is likely a conversation about art, shows, openings – to join, listen or ignore.
In Adelaide, I was blessed to once again be in an artist community. This community spoke, English, Ngaanyantjarra, Pitjantjarar. The artists ranged in age of twenty to sixty and older, ranging from medical doctors to young artists just out of school. But a constant was everyone’s desire to learn, share and create a camp scene that the Tjanpi women would be proud of.
It’s been a year since I returned from Australia. Much has changed in my life since then but those three weeks of floating in the ocean, sitting in the incredible heat outside, and listening to the whispers of the Tjanpi women in their languages still informs me. Sometimes I swear that one of the elders is whispering in my ear.
The techniques I use to create my work have not changed since sitting with these women but I am more aware of all the implications of my work. My sense of being a woman, and an artist is heightened. I am lucky to be able to create whatever I want without having to answer to a culture’s traditions but I am also profoundly aware that I don’t really have an individual culture. Here in the States we move so freely from place to place, school to school that we may only identify as an individual. I myself could claim to be a Jew, a woman, an artist, Southern, educated - but that doesn’t really inform anyone of whom I really am. The community among the Aborigines is so valued that one group may create baskets using only one stitch while another has their own stitch - and the two techniques do not cross over. Imagine sitting in your studio wondering how to create what you wish to say using only your “indigenous way” - just one stitch - one technique - using only materials you can gather.
I traveled half way around the planet to sit with this community of artists to create a scene to share with thousands of spectators. I understood that as we sat as a group we were only a community for a brief time. It would be nearly impossible for me to understand the challenging lives of the NPY women or the Australian/Tasmanian artists. But as artists we spoke a similar language and their movements, their smiles and struggles taught me that we all celebrate, all suffer and all yearn for a more open but grounded life. Family really is the most important community in each of our lives and it was time for me to return to mine.
Sarah Hewitt
