Stories
The long story
For the curious - snippets from my personal story. Short story found here. Clues to why I continue to do what I do: As a young child I wanted to adorn myself, extensively. We lived in Switzerland, but my young Norwegian mother was into chic Scandinavian simplicity with clean lines and interesting colours. Swirling skirts and frilly stuff was not her style. Most of the time, I did quite like the clean-cut way she dressed us children; we stood out in Switzerland in the 60's. However, had it been entirely up to me (at the age of six) I would have dressed in pretty lace and embroidery. I imagined myself in white lace and silk studded with tiny pink rosebuds. I could see it in my head: Fflower shaped earrings would twinkle and bounce as I moved, on my tiny ring-finger, a golden braided band and for my feet, pink-red sandals, finely pointed with small wooden heels. The shoes did exist; I had seen them in a shoeshop-heaven in my hometown Bern - and I pined for them. For a short summer period I worked hard to achieve this look. My adaption was a white embroidered cotton slip with three layered skirt, flamenco style, only very short. For rosebuds I coiled up pink and green silk ribbons. I had about ten tiny buds ready to be stitched onto the white dress when my mother discovered the plan. She objected to the coloured decor, arguing discoloured washing. Quite determined that without rosebuds, life was not what it should be, I resolved this by painstakingly sewing tiny snap buttons onto both dress and roses. Viola! Detachable adornments. - Something we both could live with.
Nearly there. The ring and earrings were also in my possession, but the shoes caused havoc and tears. My doctor father would not let his six year old ruin her feet with pointy toes and heels. End of story. The compromise were some low open-toe clogs, with cross laced over-leather in two colours. Now, it sounds cute enough, but oh, was I disturbed by this obvious style clash. Without the right shoes I could no longer hold onto the image of myself, not walking, but gliding,
slowly, dignified and delightfully adorned. |
Consequently, I quite soon gave up this royal style. In hindsight, I think the look was more gypsy than dignified princess.
Then followed a longer period with American Indian outfits. My modern mother was more supportive of this (less romantic) style and made me a quite elaborate cappuccino-coloured outfit with frills and all - it almost looked like leather. Now, the closest I came to childhood jewellery making, was stringing plastelina beads, stones, and interesting bits of wood on leather. The final touch - a beautiful feather crown. Next I imagined myself as some reincarnated Hiawatha and pestered my mother about family history, hoping to find a sioux chief back there somewhere. At night I would even tape down my nose, hoping to achieve a beautiful authentic look. All in vain - I was still the same pale and bland little nordic girl. Somewhere between these stages, when visiting my grandparents, I imagined living the life of a lonely archeologist out in the desert, discovering treasures and jewels only dreamed of. I would ‘borrow’ silver teaspoons and trinkets, bury them in the vegetable garden, only to ‘discover’ and excavate them again the next day. Or sometimes not. Because decades later a silver teaspoon mysteriously turned up in the same vegetable patch.
A little older, at about ten, I fantasized about the hard life of the artist.
Stone carving had caught my attention this time. At the grandparent's again, I found one of these manufactured porous building stones of fairly soft material. At which I chiseled away., imagining I was in ancient Egypt. In clueless optimism, I intended to finish a nice sphinx within the next few weeks. - It came along nicely,! I thought.,then. When years later I saw the stone again, it was still a block, though slightly rounded at the top. Imagination is a wonderful thing! |
Apart from sharing childhood memories - what is my point?
My point is the power of imagination! What I want, is to remind you and myself that there’s no escaping, no stopping a strong imagination. It may lead us in unexpected directions well worth walking. And to remind myself, that in life there are cycles well worth exploring again and again. Imagination paired with intuition may easily be the most powerful guide we can have.
Of course I ended up doing work based on imagination. Design work, and I suspect I chose textile design because colours were my primary driving force. Printing and dying wonderful fibers like linen, silk, cotton and wool opened a world of tactile and visual possibilities; the same batch of colour would come out differently when printed on different fibers. Thrilling surprises!
Later I had the great opportunity to learn about paper and resin, designing wall panel collections for the resin panel industry. A collaboration with interior architects was another nice side effect of the interior-textiles design work.
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Anything to do with colour was my arena. So when sent off to Carrara, Italy, to choose marble blocs for interior projects my childhood excitement at finding special stones was brought to the surface again. The marble agents would present sample boxes with beautifully polished stones, often round, like huge beads. Tempting then, to dream up necklaces, stringing marble samples in my mind, completely sidetracking from wall panels, floor tiles and whatnot.
At the time, while I was still in interior design, my favourite daydream was to do portraits. Portraits of the people around me, or anybody, just people. Later I did it - I painted these portraits. Probably not as a painter, but more as a designer. I do paint, but tend to think like a designer and make design influenced by art. I like that a lot, but it doesn't really sparkle. Right now, I’m into sparkle - into fun - and more make-believe.
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If you were patient enough to read all this,
here's more re-making and make-believe:
Some years ago I played around with portraits and identity, related to icons. To trigger the process I merged my own face with iconic figures and personalities.
Of course my face got somewhat distorted and is out of proportion here and there. Still, this is the digital and adult version of my childhood's make-believe.
Of course my face got somewhat distorted and is out of proportion here and there. Still, this is the digital and adult version of my childhood's make-believe.
Trying out two more outfits. Left, a Lacroix wedding dress and right, one of many pearl embroidered dresses of queen Elisabeth the first. I never had a wedding dress; big wedding was not on my mind, but this Lacroix dress made me change my view. In fact, it is the perfect adult version of my childhood dress fantasy so I merged my head onto it - to have my own "wedding dress photo"- fake but fab. |
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