Quilt Diplomacy

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Tribal and Mennonite Quilt Diplomacy

ne je’stekjde Dakj

     Mennonites and Amish have long been known for their excellent quilting skills.  In the North American West, they have found themselves to be in good company – especially on the Fort Peck Reservation, home also to several Mennonite communities and nearby Hutterite Colonies.

    I have been in a special position to appreciate this as the grandson of the perpetual head of the EMB Ladies’ AID quilt committee and the son of a mother who herself learned to quilt from Native American quilters at the school in which she taught.  I deeply treasure both my Schmekfest Quilt and my two star quilts – one made by my mother and one given to me upon graduation by her best friend. 

Japanese Pottery, Goshen Ind

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Collected Meanings: Japanese Pottery (repost)

en Leem Tap (?)

Collected Meanings:   

Japanese Pottery and Travel Stories

Dick Lehman

Goshen College Visual Arts Gallery

Goshen, Indiana

12 July, 2010

     My first reaction to this exhibit was one of curious pleasure mixed with acute apprehension.  Asian ceramics always tweak my interest.  My aunt Ruby FitzGerald (FitzRu) studied pottery under a Japanese Master (one of the first Western women to do so), and I have always freely lost myself in the Asian ceramics collections of the Art Institute Chicago and the Minneapolis Art Institute.  On the other hand -- of what real use is an Asian ceramics collection? 

    I need not have worried.  Dick Lehman is both an expert in the field of ceramics and an accomplished collector.  Collected Meanings explores decades of collecting and travel experiences in Japan as both a record of an on-going cultural exchange between the United States and Japan, and as an educational introduction to the variety of methods, textures, finishes, and shapes historically common to Japanese ceramics. 

    One might begin Lehman’s tour in one of two ways.  One might rush right into the cases of ceramics and begin exploring, or one might choose to engage the well placed magazine articles and travel memoirs posted along the wall.

National Museum Bahrain

Winged Victory of the Gulf (c) Agassiz

Outdoor Sculpture Garden

National Museum of Bahrain

Manama, Bahrain

 

    The Gulf States exhibit a brilliant almost gardenlike culture (oasis would be too predictable) notable for the graceful lines and the natural hues that seem to pervade all aspects of life from the music to the clothing to the buildings to the artwork.  The seas of unending sand, giant dunes and dust-storms unify their curves and dominate the landscape as the wind from the Arabian Desert merges the slowly creeping dunes and the lazy, if persistent, repetitive action of the slow Gulf waves. 

    The Outdoor Sculpture Garden at the National Museum of Bahrain in Manama, most effectively demonstrates this principle. 

    The second quiet strength of this art collection is that it is entirely indigenous -- these are not the works of Matisse and Rembrandt purchased at foreign auctions with unlimited oil revenues, but rather the quiet, assertive voice of an emerging art culture.

The Python (c) Agassiz

    I need to confess that I have two pieces that are by far my favourites which I have nicknamed Victory of the Gulf and the Python which to me represents the giant serpent Python that was once thought to encircle the globe of the ancient Greeks -- the snake that Hercules amazed the world by lifting so many negligible feet off the ground.  The resemblence of this Python to an oil pipeline is probably not a coincidence to be dismissed.

Mennonite Cinema

Devil's Playground (DVD, 2002) ****
Lucy Walker, Director, Stick Figure Productions, USA

    On the ten year anniversary of Devil’s Playground, aka Rumspringa, I endeavoured to see this Amish-oriented documentary for the first time.  As a Mennonite, I had formerly avoided this film and its marketing imagery as probably catering to the larger American media appetite for scandal, questionable morality and iconoclastism.  I was greatly surprised to find a film that was straightforward, respectful without being overly romantic and that one that dealt with very real issues while allowing the characters to speak for themselves.  Part of the strength of the film comes from the self-confessions of the directors and production team that they had experienced difficulty finding an angle or even an “in” for the making of what had begun as a rather undefined documentary project on Amish teens.  Rather, the team comprised of Lucy Walker, Steven Cantor, Pax Wassermann and Daniel Kern was forced to discover the topic while filming and to allow the characters to emerge of their own accord.  No agenda, positive or negative – was possible in that the team had little control over the subject matter.  According to the production commentary, the project evolved more like a news story than a scripted documentary.

    Devil’s Playground offers two strengths to Anabaptists.  First, it is a greatly informative look into the very real lives of Amish teens and the concept of rumspringa.  Though the Conservative Amish are often careful to separate themselves from their Mennonite and Mennonite-Amish cousins, there is much in this story that is shared between the more liberal and more conservative branches of this culture – even more so as you go back one and two generations for the Mennonites.  Secondly, for those who are able to read the “bonnet code,” an informed Anabaptist will see Mennonite and Amish film footage juxtaposed against each other to form a seamless celebration of a common ethnic and religious heritage.

Greta Garbo

Queen Christina (1933) 

USA, Rouben Moulian, Director
Starring:  Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone

One of histories most enigmatic ruling monarchs, and subjected to intense speculation as to her interior motives, psyche, and love life already in the 17th Century, Sweden's Queen Kristina, daughter of Reformation-era warrior, King Gustavus Adolphus, and sponsor to Descartes, broke almost every cultural and religious taboo her contemporaries could throw at her.  Garbo manages to capture both Kristina's sexual ambiguity (she was raised as a "boy", crowned as a "king", trained as a warrior, and rumoured to be bisexual) and her independence of character.  Rarely noted, Elizabeth Young manages to keep up with Garba in Young's portrayal of Kristina as a child, effectively delivering the lines that set the course for the entire film.
     I would recommend the film itself solely on the strength of the cinematography.  One cannot but help falling in love with the country Kristina leads.  Equally impressive are the costumes -- in line with such great epics as Eisenstein's Ivan IV (1944), and Kapur's Elizabeth (1998).  While reviewers often criticize Queen Christina's lack of historicity, the story line seems comfortably in line with the many varied alternative histories the real Kristina left behind her.
    That Garbo could portray such a strong woman who could and would fall in love with lesser men, while preserving her dignity and Kristina's focus on her kingdom, is one of the film's greatest strengths.  Garbo plays off her real-time once-love interest, Gilbert, to generate one of film's great love stories.  Unlike so many female portrayals in such passionate romances, Garbo ends Queen Christina as a single woman who dares to chart her own way in life. 

(from Prairie Swede 01 Oct 2010)