Why is fiber your medium of choice?
Margaret Roleke: I create cloth cyanotypes and sow.
Delaney Conner: The art of crafting and the intentionality of stitching has provided me with a meditative and satisfying way for me to express myself. The flexibility of the medium allows mistakes to happen without the permanence of other mediums.
Isabel Infante: Fiber is my medium because I’m truly obsessed with weaving.
Fruma Markowitz: Actually I am quite new to fiber. I've been sewing and embroidering my paper cyanotype prints for several years now, and the more I did this, then added textile trimmings, and made photographic prints of lacey and crocheted heirloom pieces, the more it became a logical step to make everything with fiber elements.
I like to sometimes be challenged to create in a different way because it opens up a new door.
— Margaret Roleke
What was your introduction to fiber art?
MR: I have always enjoyed viewing fiber arts done by other artists. It is only in the last few years that I have begun to create my own pieces.
DC: I've always liked to knit and create things with my hands. I discovered punch needle embroidery in 2019, which felt like a natural transition from knitting as a quick swap between types of needles and yarns, while still maintaining the vigilance of the stitching process. I have been expanding my skill in that particular facet of fiber art ever since.
II: I’ve always been drawn to Andean textiles. What fascinates me most is how intricate shapes and patterns are embedded within the very structure of the fabric. Studying textiles in Paris helped me realize that weaving is a universal language, much like reading music.That realization was incredibly beautiful to me.
FM: When I was about seven, my mother embroidered the name of everyone belonging to our religious community on a special tablecloth that would be used for special life-cycle celebrations. I watched as she did this, and asked if she would teach me to embroider. I loved making things with my hands and still do.
Who inspires you?
MR: Kamala Harris
DC: There are many contemporary fiber artists that inspire me. More well known artists like Benjamin Shine who does amazing work with tulle and Kandy Lopez who creates amazing yarn-based portraits, to slightly lesser known artists like Marion Weymes who creates abstract woven portraits and Deniz Sagdic who creates a multitude of ready-made portraits cleverly using a variety of different materials. I also am drawn to abstract painters, specifically Paul Kremer, who compartmentalizes landscapes into very limited geometric layouts and palettes, something that I am constantly trying to refine in my own work.
II: Nature, with its endless ability to create life, shapes, and patterns, adapted to diverse environments, is my greatest source of inspiration.
FM: My two grandmothers passed away before I was 10 years old. As an adult, knowing only part of their stories, I wish that I could talk to them now. They fled from very harsh and difficult situations, such as pogroms and severe poverty. They were super intelligent, yet were delegated to childrearing and housekeeping. My paternal grandmother had many artistic talents and a head for business. They inspire me because even the little I know about them and their lives, gives me the courage to overcome obstacles in my own life, and be the best woman I can be. And pass their values and strength on to my own daughter in turn.
Women are the lifeblood of society and, when united in a common goal, can achieve anything.
— Delaney Conner
What was your reaction to this year’s call for submissions? Can you elaborate on why?
DC: The notion of the collective female voice as illustrated in Lysistrata really resonates with my body of work. My goal when creating my portrait pieces is always to strip back specific recognizable characteristics in order to provide an element of relatability to each of my portraits. My work is not meant to be individual portraits of specific women, but of Women as a Whole and as a facet of the collective Female Experience. In Lysistrata, the female chorus, who ultimately yield power over then men through the use of their bodies (and voices) really parallels my own work and inspired me to submit work to this show.
II: I found the call incredibly thought-provoking. After reading the play, watching the movie, and reflecting on the current world, I believe the theme is both universal and deeply human.
FM: After October 7 of last year, as a Jewish woman, the story of Jewish-Muslim-Berber co-existence and friendship that is fundamental in my creative work, became only more emotionally poignant for me, as it has for the world at-large. My instinct says to me that if women were running the show, things could look very different in the Middle East. That is why the heart and soul of the sixth edition of Women Pulling the Strings of Social Discourse, with its theme based on Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, felt totally aligned with the messages I've aimed to communicate through my current art projects.
Tell us about your piece for We Got the Power, and what it means to you.
DC: Elaborating on my response above, I wanted to really lean into the idea of female agency and the power that the female voice can have when united together. For me, there is no better contemporary exemplification of this than the Me Too Movement, spear headed by Tarana Burke. Although this piece does specifically depict Tarana, I doubled her visage to suggest that she represents more than herself, and oriented the duplicate imagery in a back-to-back composition which I felt represented the support network and a powerful stance against oppression.
II: I created this piece to represent balance and to express how life is never just black or white, but a complex weave of ideas, emotions, and perspectives. Through my woven art, I wanted to reflect how interconnected we are as a society, and how much we depend on one another to create a harmonious balance in our shared existence.
FM: During a long-awaited trip to Morocco in 2020, I learned that Jewish, Muslim, and Amazigh (Berber) women have shared friendship plus a confluence of stories and myths, religious beliefs and practice, personal adornment, and handcraft design that goes back for centuries - and became intrigued. Since that trip I have built an ongoing personal photographic project around this concept, using the cyanotype process, collage embellishments, and incorporating imagery from a vast archive of photos of these women, made by men at the turn of the 20th century to sell as tourist postcards. The images were, consciously or not, also meant to “other” these women/cultures as “exotic” and “barbarian,” as the women depicted were often sexualized and labeled with a photographic nod to the Orientalist movement in painting that was still in vogue at that time.
Through my woven art, I wanted to reflect how interconnected we are as a society, and how much we depend on one another to create a harmonious balance in our shared existence.
— Isabel Infante
What does your piece respond to, both in the context of the play and in society?
MR: Yes to both.
DC: My pieces responds to the "chorus of women" in the play and provides a contextualized example of a contemporary parallel in our own society via the Me Too Movement and the traction and success that the female voice had (and still has) in those efforts to put an end to the systemic acceptance of inappropriate and aggressive male behavior that has a tendency to perpetuate our daily lives, centuries after this play was written.
II: This piece reflects on the power of dialogue. In weaving, the warp and weft represent two opposing forces, yet they rely on each other to exist. Similarly, after a discussion, argument, or even war, each side inevitably absorbs a piece of its opposite.
FM: The work I've contributed to this exhibit is almost a direct replica in fiber of one of my cyanotype collage pieces on paper from a series about the cooperation and friendship between Muslim and Jewish women in North Africa. “Hilloulah to the West and to the East - A Prayer for Peace,” is a new, unique fiber/textile work. This piece depicts a line of female dancers facing to the West/Left (the Strophe, if you will), while the other half of this long diptych depicts more women dancing to the East/Right (the Antistrophe), as they might do in the chorus of a Greek play. According to shared Jewish and Muslim tradition, they are on a pilgrimage, a celebration known by both as a “Hilloulah,” to the tombs of deceased saints (male and/or female), where they seek to have their prayers answered, to change and influence the heavens in their favor – for fertility, for marriage, for health and healing, for the safe return of their men from war, for peace.
Fruma Markowitz. Hilloulah to the West and to the East - A Prayer for Peace, 2024.Cotton fabric (figures) and cotton interfacing (background substrate) colored with cyanotype - a historical photographic process, treated with table salt and select toning in black tea and coffee, embellished with gold embroidery and machine stitching, with gold ribbon and rope textile trimming, brass bells. 12 x 24 inches. Available via Artsy.
How do you hope viewers will respond to your piece?
MR: I hope they will spend time contemplating the image.
DC: I hope viewers will first resonate with the structured composition and mirrored imagery of "a woman", but upon further viewing will perhaps draw conclusions as to the subject of the piece and start to think about how their own lives and experiences weave into or intersect the notion of the collective female voice.
II: The abstract nature of this piece allows for personal interpretation. I hope viewers reflect on it through the lens of their own experiences.
FM: I hope viewers will see beauty and aesthetic value in my piece at the same time that they are prompted to ask some crucial questions: What is a Hilloulah, and what is its significance for women, especially women from different backgrounds and belief systems? How can this action that different women are undertaking together in a fictionalized, visual space be an inspiration or even a catalyst for women to realize mutual respect, cooperation and friendship in even the most problematic spaces and situations in our modern world? If my piece succeeds to give viewers some pause, along with a feeling of joy and hope for the future, I will be happy.
In this piece and my work in general, I’m offering a point of view where the aim is to return the gaze that has so often been male – with one displaying women’s solidarity, power, and focus on change for a better world.
— Fruma Markowitz
Do you believe that women do have the power to effect change? How?
MR: Of course by standing up for justice , educating others, and teaching our children to always do the right thing.
DC: Goes without saying. Women are the lifeblood of society and, when united in a common goal, can achieve anything. While the fight for basic rights (such as the right to vote, the right to education, the right for equal pay) has always been an uphill battle, the moments of the most inspiring progress are the moments when we stand resolutely together.
II: Absolutely! Women have a powerful ability to create change. We first raise our voices, and I’m particularly inspired by how women build communities. Through unity and collective action, we are able to initiate meaningful transformation.
FM: Yes I do. By using that power to sustain life, not to destroy it.
