Bits and pieces of a couple of years back

It seems my blog has been missing some updates since 2013. Do people still read blogs?
Anyway, some of the events since that time that have been more or less important and have not been mentioned on my blog (but you could have read about it on my Facebook page):
My collaborative workshop in Cyprus in 2013 – which brought new meetings and new experiences.

The most beautiful experience of the workshop in Argentina!

And my Identity workshop again in Cyprus in 2014

And unforgettable Argentina again in 2014:

Every meeting is a gift and enriching experience, so I value it a lot. Though we all move forward in our own ways, you always stay in my heart, dear students.

4 full Moons

4 Full Moons - a skirt with the circumference of 4 circles.
nuno felt: silk, wool, fresh water pearls
natural dyes: weld, indigo, logwood

Little felt lace dress

nuno felt: silk, wool. natural dyes: madder

Bride and her cursed groom

Fairytale world again…

 

 

 

 

collaborative work: natural dye and eco print design by Irit Dulman, felt, natural dyeing, garment design by Vilte Kazlauskaite

Confession

nuno felted dress: eco print and natural dyeing design by Irit Dulman, nuno felt, natural dyeing, garment design by Vilte Kazlauskaite. Fairy tale in Amsterdam

The “school year” has been quite rich with experiences, workshops Irit and I gave in different countries of this world. We just returned recently from our workshops in the Netherlands…

Through all last 4 years of teaching workshop organizers were interested in different things – some just inviting and enjoying the programs we offered and taught many times before, some interested in some modifications, and some sometimes pushing for focusing how to make an advanced program for the same students.

I remember one conversation with one workshop organizer discussing the particular matter when I just had to say that I am not interested in making students dependable on their teachers in their creative growth and just offering new and new programs every year for the same students. I believe a good teacher is the one who stimulates the student, “opens” some kind of section in their brain, and after this revelation for the students, they can do oh so much in their creative felting just from taking that one workshop with the right teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I have students who come to be taught by me or by me and Irit once again or even the third time, but on different subjects or completely different concept, they are not the dependable type. They work on their own a lot and from the time we met they have made very big progress. I had in mind the kind of teaching when organizers make level 1, level 2, level 3 every year or every half year and make the students believe they must take it.

The other thing that amazed me all the time was the fast food attitude towards learning things in felt making workshops…. It really doesn’t matter who taught and what was taught – some people just come and learn the very surface of it, just because it is fashionable, and then they throw it away from their heads the next morning, and jump into something else. Never going deeper, never finding and refining themselves in what new they have just learnt.

I have been teaching fabric manipulation for 4 years now. One may ask when enough is enough? If the thing is really yours and until you haven’t explored all the depths and transformations of it, it is never enough, else it is just sliding the surface.

So we never let us be pushed by demand of workshop organizers about developing commercial workshops just because they needed it. We took the whole circle of changing seasons – we sowed an idea, which was growing slowly, sometimes with hardships, sometimes with impossible lightness, until we reached the time of the harvest! Naturally, by ourselves. And just because we went down into the depths of what we were doing already.

Irit and I developed a new direction, concept that we are now putting into our new work and that we put into our Cyprus workshop program. We were analyzing carefully our own work and botanical printing, natural color in general a lot, trying to answer questions like theoretically it is perfect, but why not in real? We noticed what was lacking and what had to be the concept point actually. We got connected with natural color so much. And fused it with felting, looked for more advanced and sophisticated ways for the eco print color language and felting language to go hand in hand.

Every time the wave of creative joy catches you, you are full of desire not only to use it yourself, but also share with others, who, you hope, will also understand and go deeper and deeper with you to all the explorations – first together in the workshop, and then separately, everyone on their own.

I remember our first time Cyprus workshop participants were feeling so high during the workshop and after and were asking us, please make it happen the next year. We said we will think about it. And after returning home we have been discussing with Irit the subject through millions of letters between us. Something was not going right. And the answer was – there was inner pressure, feeling of obligation to the students to offer something new to them, so they could come. Once we revealed it to ourselves, we could get rid of this idea and say to ourselves, no, we don’t have to. We can offer the same program to new students if we just want it to happen again, but we will not force a new program. That was a moment of lightness. But we didn’t go with a stream, we became a stream. Because the minute we set ourselves free from making something for others, we got much deeper into what we were doing for ourselves. Our work, things that interest us, the directions we want to go next. And that created a stream. It was the moment of Eureka Thus, naturally and without any force the Cyprus program was born too. Not because someone asked (and little of last year participants could really stick to their dream to come again with us to Cyprus..), but because we found our way, we did it our way.

So here we are, offering to give out to others something that is dear to us like our own child  RECONSTRUCTION. I believe in our minds too

Someone asked me once why you are putting so much effort that doesn’t really pay off that well to this Cyprus workshop, when you can go and teach where other organizers invite you, not care about anything and simply work and earn for what you work. And I answered. Because I love it. I love creating the program, surrounding, atmosphere from the beginning with Irit, to put our visions and love of the subject as well as teaching without any regulations of the strangers, to a material world and to give to those who come. And those who come are also special, they are making effort to get there and they come because they want to go deeper and not slide the surface. For sliding the surface it would take too much effort, not worth it And because teaching and learning in some remote environment from your home is so so different and much more enriching than when you bound physically or mentally to your home and people around. Mrs. X from country Y is not the same Mrs. X in Cyprus as she is in her country Y Something in the air opens her up and makes it a much significant learning experience than anywhere near home.

So we do it because our Cyprus workshop is the most honest act of teaching, sharing and giving that we can offer from all the other things. We make it special, like nowhere else, and we and the students feel it like that. At least that’s what we want to believe in…

Lifetime passion

"It's a lifestyle. It's a lifetime passion. An artist needs to be ambitious and passionate. You don't work nine to five. You breathe your art twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." (E.Shafak)

collaboration of Vilte & Irit

Belle Armoire

I think I have forgotten to show this feature on the blog. Lovely memories of the Summer too – a feature in Belle Armoire, Summer 2012, volume 12 issue 2, feat. in pg. 18-23.

Many thanks for Svetlana Batura, who made all photography for this article.

Cochineal+madder+walnut in fiber manipulation

Natural colors in natural textures – fiber manipulation/sculpture technique, developed by me. ©

Weld and madder

 

CYPRUS

Sometimes it just takes a little day dreaming for something to happen. It’s like something or someone sitting in the air and fishing the day dreams of people and if your thought is caught it only takes a blink of the eye for the happenings to acquire velocity.

This was the story of Cyprus. Developing a collaborative workshop with Irit Dulman the way we wanted and where we wanted, without anyone third in between us and the students.

It’s been more than a month since we all came back from Cyprus but I kept silent on my blog. But sure not silent at all inside myself. When some positive event happens in life you get caught my emotions so much that you barely touch the ground with the tips of your toes. And it takes time for the inner peace to settle and go much deeper into all what has happened.

Speaking about that “dream catcher”, I suppose the place for the workshop was already waiting for us, it only took a question to Tatiana and Gabi, two ladies assisting us in Cyprus; as well as the very special people who signed up for our workshops – I think that only the people we really had to meet and learn from each other (I do believe the human factor is most important in all this workshop thing, thus learning not just the techniques and textile, but also something from the human hearts, and that works both ways – from the teachers to students and from the students to teachers) have joined our “sisterhood”, how we called our group after all. In other words – there are no coincidences.

 

 

Even the note on the entrance to the place said: “Welcome Home”.

Plant materials for dyeing – some were picked locally on the way.

Preparing the space in a bit of hush before it all begins.

That’s how the journey began on the stone beach of Aphrodite – the goddess of beauty and creativity.

Two teachers – Vilte & Irit in eco print dresses listening to the story of Aphrodite, followed by prayer, drum music and more.

Famous witch pot.

Exploring plants and eco print.

Let the samples speak their own story.

Bundles with secrets inside. A moment before it all is revealed.

A moment of revelation.

The moment of hush and just the breeze, everyone in soaking in the sea of their own creativity.

Fabric manipulation dresses, the first moments of the dress and the person merging into one and bringing a soft smile on one’s lips.

Yes. The ladies in white.

13 new Aphrodites in white, being reborn on the island of Cyprus.

Happiness of the seduction.

Yes, seduction, and right here I feel I have to tell more as I know not all understood the meaning of the seduction when we called our collaborative work with Irit this word. The poetic explanation of the term seduction in the context of our work was described earlier on my blog. But what does it mean at the end? We took all the natural, pure, white fabrics and materials that we used in creating the dresses. It was something virgin and untouched. What we did with it at the end was seducing all the whiteness and purity with the fruits of the Earth, leaves, flowers, rusty metals, everything so earthy, thus merging the ethereal skies in white with the “bloody”, juicy “fruits” of the Earth. That is seduction.

 

Prints prints prints…leaving traces and telling stories everyone and each of us reads in our own language…

Here they are, all seduced. In the hour of sunset.

Merging with the surrounding of Cyprus.

Playing Goddesses…

And crazy teachers in the waters of Aphrodite, emerging from the sea.

On the rocks in the wild, seduced wild fibers. Happiness with a little taste of nostalgia on a tip on everyone’s tongues as this is the moment to realize it has all taken place and has come to an end. But no matter how we long for whatever has happened, the end is just the beginning of the new stories, actually so merged in one another that you can never feel a distinct difference between each of it.

 

There has been  much more than the pictures and words can reveal – special silks, connection with the materials, talks on the similarities to the characteristics of humans, hours and hours of creativity and exploration, strong warm hearted connections, all of it spiced with the pleasures of Mediterranean Sea – when you just dive into the warm and clear waters after long hours of work, relaxing all the body on the surface of the waves, soaking in the last rays of the sun going down and hiding under the rocks in the West, tastes of Cypriot cuisine and long long dinners together until all the lights are switched off and you find yourself - there’s nothing but night in between you and the stars above, also – the girls’ night out, songs and dances, feminine conversations and laughter, and the smell of jasmine in the air...And the wish tree… And…so much more… Actually I even don’t feel the need to tell the world all of it, or feel that it’s even possible to tell, something should always be left unspoken just for the hearts who have been there, have seen and felt, lived through the same things, and now having the same memories to cherish inside and keep them warm for a long long time ahead of now.

So…at the end, I think I can speak from Irit’s and mine part alike, we can only tell you – we will be back. Time will show if we will be coming back to our cradle – the island of Aphrodite or we will become nomads, wandering around the special places that we hear the call from, but another special workshop with just Irit and me, will be there for you in 2013.