FIBERWORKS - A CELEBRATION OF SOUTH AFRICAN
FIBER AND TEXTILE ARTISTS

Title: Rites of Passage

Description: "Five years ago I moved from being in a full-time paid job into the present stage of exploring my own creative ability – a rite of passage. The old was shed and a new life begun.

I accumulate anything that appeals to me: images from magazines, lines of poetry, tangible objects. I base my drawings and work processes on these. In doing what I do, and having no formal art training, I have had to invent my own rules and am very reluctant to share the work with anybody until it is nearly finished.

Time, space, solitude, concentration and focus have become extremely important.

Presently I am interested in the effect of light and colour – how shadows fall, how inner light can be created. My embroideries are teaching me about these all the time.

When a piece is completed the question, ‘What now?’ arises, but I have learnt that life’s journey will supply the answer: the right/rite to make art."

Multiple-award winning poet Kobus Moolman wrote a poem inspired by this work:

SKEPPERSHANDE O klip! O Klei! Koue eier van stilte Holte in die ou hande van die wind Die wind wag vir jou opoffering Die wind wag op jou offering.

HANDS OF THE POTTER O sand! O stone! Cold shell of silence Hallowed into old hands of the wind The wind awaits your only offering The wind waits upon Your only forfeit.

Title: You and I

Description: Art-making has often been referred to as a mirror of the self.

Since 2000 I have deliberately chosen to create self-portraits using the media of papier-mâché, machine embroidery and bead-weaving. The problem with work of this nature is that these portraits tend to make one very conscious of the self. Through the process of portraying the outer skin one learns about the inner being and it is for this reason that the importance of the self has been reduced to a half-hidden face or merely a single, all-seeing eye.

People seeing themselves reflected in the mirrors will undergo a different and completely unique experience. The pieces can thus only be fully alive while being viewed and reflected upon and the title can only have meaning when the viewer interacts with the works which are continually transforming themselves within the framework of the viewer’s insight, experience and imagination.

The delicious irony of the pieces is that the "I/Eye" captured in time and space is, in effect, observing the observer.

Title: You and Eye

Description: The delicious irony of the pieces is that the 'I/Eye' captured in time and space is, in effect, observing the observer.

Title: The Amusing Game of Innocence Abroad

Description: "The game was published in 1889 and takes its title from Mark Twain's humourous travelogue "The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim's Progress" (1869).

Taken from "Great Board Games", compiled by Brian Love, Ebury Press and Michael Joseph, 1979.

I often go for walks with my dogs in the green belt behind our house and was appalled to see some of the items below dumped there. On a whim I decided to see if I could utilise this litter in some manner and the result is the doll statuette.

I have created seven dolls, as seven is a number often seen to be mystical and they are arranged in a circle, as this is the symbol of eternity."

Annette McMaster
69 Bradshaw Rd
Pietermaritzburg
3201

Phone: 27(0)333461260

Email: annmar@satweb.co.za