Svan is Icelandic for swan. Perhaps to honor her namesake bird, Hildur Bjarnadóttir's grandmother Svanhildur used to crochet little doilies, each with five swans -- with long necks and red beaks -- surrounding it. Today her granddaughter's 6 1/2 foot version, entitled Swanhildur, resides in the permanent collection of the Reykjavik Art Museum, "which is kind of nice, the museum being located right next to where my grandmother lived."
Family and tradition are heavy influences in Hildur's work -- which ranges from sweater-sized knitted wall-hung works to enormous crocheted doilies like Swanhildur and Shooting Circle. Her 2002 piece entitled Yarn Twirler consisted of a video loop of Will Rogers constantly twirling his rope around his horse. "The loop is very meditative, echoing the feeling I get when doing crocheting or other repetitious work," says Hildur, and adds "Will Rogers, by the way, was a real cowboy who taught his children the dying art of lassoing, just like my mother taught me how to do handcrafts."
The artist remembers knitting on her front lawn in Scotland at the age of five. She soon took off into creating her own patterns and sculptural objects. "For as long I can remember I have worked with this medium, long before going to art school. It was a very natural, effortless decision; nothing else was really an option."
Even when she explores the world of drawing and painting, she does so with textiles, "drawing" with graphite-colored yarn or unraveling a painter's canvas and reworking it in detailed crochet. In Wool Star, the yoke of an Icelandic sweater is flattened to become a bullseye painting. "I simply wanted to make an un-functional image based on that pattern -- easily recognizable, but focused on the formal or abstract elements."
Untitled (drawing) is inspired by traditional Icelandic woolen hats, knitted from the top-down. "The hat begins with a little tip and then you add loops from there gradually forming the hat. I started out like I was making a traditional hat but added more loops than usual to make it stay flat. Where I added a loop it makes a line, and makes the whole into an intense drawing. I chose a yarn which looks like graphite, it has a little shine like when you draw intensely with a pencil on a piece of paper."
Making craft works because she loves to, and has to, Hildur has found a ready and willing "fine art" audience. Untitled (drawing) won a juror award at the 2001 Oregon Biennial of the Portland Art Museum. With paintings making up a heavy 2/3 of the exhibit, understated Hildur says, "I thought it was enjoyable to get a prize for a knitted piece."
Hildur is currently working on weaving and tatting -- more decorative work, which she has steered away from in the past. "It is very important for me to keep a good relationship with Iceland," she says. "Most of my inspiration comes from my roots there and my upbringing, and a lot of my work relates to Icelandic and Scandinavian textile tradition. I think it suits me best to be able spend half my time in America and half in Iceland." Soon the Pacific Northwest will be treated to her newest work, when their turn at her affections comes around this summer.
Thanks, Gius!
especially when it's not about making a statement like these contemporary artists are doing, when it's something serious--for example, the black people in America that were trying to get out of slavery, they say they would hide things like maps in the quilts they made, and also embroider codes on to the fabric, i think..also a tool for communication. So this way, it's also a subversive textile...
I like it!