For the final Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse exhibition of the year, we asked the 117 participating artists (more than ever before!) to reflect on some Absurdist works by Beckett, Kafka, Camus, Saramago, and de Beauvoir. Titled Don't Be Absurd, we asked all of our artists to elucidate how they connected, interpreted, and presented the texts, as well as the added constraints of a circular shape and fiber art.

Our third Q&A roundup, and the last one for this week, features CAMP artists Hou Guan Ting, Joan Wheeler, and Natalia Schonowski, alongside artists Eva Petrič, and Annie Lindberg.

Is this your first time being in The Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse exhibition series? If yes, what drew you in? If not, how many have you been in - and what are your thoughts over the different editions?

Hou Guan Ting: This is my third time participating in this exhibition. What makes this open call special is that it always has a clear theme each year, which is very different from other shows I’ve joined. What touches me the most is seeing the exhibition photos each year. All the works are fiber-based, and I can really feel a unique kind of power in this material. I’m very excited to see this year’s results.

Joan Wheeler:  No, this is not the first exhibition. I’ve exhibited every year since Westport MOCA. I’ve enjoyed responding to each different prompt. I like the variety of ideas.

Natalia Schonowski: It's not, I believe I have participated in 3 so far. I have enjoyed the different themes that center on women and their place in the world.

Eva Petrič: This is the first time that I’ve participated in Women Pulling at The Threads of Social discourse exhibition series.  I was drawn in by the focus on fiber and its connection to literary works of great intellectualism. Being also a writer, I truly appreciated the initiative to look at both literature and visual arts, searching for ways in which one inspires the other, and the upgraded conclusions and dialogs that result from the interaction of these two.

Annie Lindberg: This is my first time being in The Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse exhibition series. I have been following Camp Gallery on instagram for about a year and have been really impressed with the exhibitions they present. I also love their gallery space. I saw the Call for Artists for the Don’t Be Absurd exhibition and was immediately intrigued after reading the proposal. I liked the idea of reading a literary classic and then responding to that work within the context of a chosen contemporary topic. 

Each edition of this fiber series asks artists to respond to particular literary classics, who did you select for this year and why?

HGT: I chose The Metamorphosis by Kafka and The Stranger by Camus. Both stories deal with the tension between the self and society’s expectations.Something that creators often face throughout life. Reading them again at this point in my life gave me new insights, and I really wanted to turn those feelings into artwork.

JW:  I chose Kafka because The Metamorphosis has been a favorite of mine for many years. I  enjoy the surreal aspect of the main character’s transformation and the depiction of his anxious thoughts and feelings of impotence.

NS: I chose Metamorphosis. I think I chose this classic because a lot of women feel like the main character [in the story], who was only of use when he was able to provide something for his family. Once he was deemed broken, he was more or less discarded.

EP: I selected Albert Camus’s The Stranger. I selected particularly this book because I remember having read it in high school in my philosophy class and being annoyed with its seemingly apathetic attitude. I also found it the most challenging of all three literary options, but precisely because of this, also the most inspiring.

AL: When I chose Simone de Beauvoir’s All Men are Mortal, I didn’t have any idea of what I wanted my project proposal to be about or what contemporary issue I wanted to explore. I was just curious about what an immortal life would be like from de Beauvoir’s perspective and the journey that reading the book would take me on.

What do you feel about the shape constraint?

HGT: Last year and this year had shape and size limits. I actually find it interesting, because in most of my work I try to break the frame. Now I’m thinking the opposite : how can I break through within the frame? That’s the challenge for me this time.

JW: I’m interested to see how that looks in the gallery.

NS: Most of my work uses this type of shape constraint, so it felt familiar.

EP: I found it inspiring! This also helped me, less obviously I think, find a connection to Albert Camus’s The Stranger because of my association of the predetermined circular shape being analogous to the Sun. I perceived it as a gentle guide. 

AL: The prospect of creating a circular fiber arts piece was both intriguing and challenging. I love the idea of circular pieces hung in the Camp Gallery. I think the hum of continuity and the fluid nature of circles will make a beautiful statement and atmosphere in the gallery. I have never made a circular piece or a piece in a quilt/embroidery hoop beyond a stitched bunny I made when I was about 7. I tend to like the challenge of constructing and building when I am creating a piece and the more 2-dimensional aspect of a piece in an embroidery hoop has been an opportunity to work differently. I wanted to create a sense of depth without building outward and I hope I am achieving that.

At the gallery, we are always interested in knowing how the actual process of making the work affects you - please explain, if you can, what is on your mind while making your piece?

HGT: [My first] work uses a stop-motion animation concept, which was my first idea after seeing the shape restriction. While making it, I kept imagining the finished work spinning endlessly, never stopping, just repeating over and over.

JW: These are my thoughts and inspiration -- Does consciousness reside solely in humans? Do not plants and animals possess sentience? Does individual consciousness transcend the barrier of death? I am surrounded by the consciousness of beings great and small, here and beyond, seen and unseen.

NS: Since the exhibit usually happens in the fall, I end up making most of my work during the summer holidays, when I have my girls full time at home. So I end up embroidering in all sorts of places and at all times. Even thought there is a time constraint, stitching feels meditative and calming.

EP: For me working entails a kind of meditation, is a meditative process in which I observe the interaction of materials that I am placing together and appreciating their detailed bodies and fragile like skin, trying to both honor them but at the same time, bring them to new levels of contemporary appreciation, to be viewed from a different angel. It intrigues me and challenges me. But mostly, it provides me with great satisfaction when I can see the materialization of a before only mental, self-imagined idea.

AL: There are rivers that meander and burble quietly and reflect light in dappled splendor, and there are rivers that crash and thunder and tumble in a raging rush through chasms and over boulders all the while roaring and frothing with abandon. My mind is very much like the latter river, so the question of what is on your mind while making the piece is like asking a black hole, what’s inside? I will try to speak to it. Nature and interconnections are always on my mind. While stitching the bristlecone pine tree, I was thinking about trees I have known, including a bristlecone pine I cared for in a garden in Santa Fe. I was thinking about how trees are like fountains, bringing water up through their roots and out to their branches where the water evaporates into the atmosphere and creates clouds and rain. I decided early on that I wanted to create a background design so that the piece would have more layers than my original drawing. I divided the circle into four quadrants and wondered what each quadrant should reveal. I wanted each to be about something in the natural world that connects to all the other quadrants and to the bristlecone pine tree. While pondering the lower right quadrant of the background, I was thinking about an article I read about how Antarctic krill store millions of tonnes of carbon in the deep ocean annually, so I knew I wanted that quadrant to be moving water and shell-like shapes. The top left quadrant is about wind and leaves moving through the air and was inspired by an article about how trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and single-celled organisms travel the globe high in the atmosphere. This made me think that the atmosphere is like any other organism - a sort of living body in a way. I wanted the lower left quadrant to represent insects and the microscopic world of soil and mycorrhizae fungi that help trees to communicate and transfer nutrients to the tree. And finally, for the upper right quadrant, I stitched the clouds and birds and distant mountains that are part of my everyday life in northern New Mexico. Ultimately, I hope to create a piece that moves from background to foreground and foreground to background within the continuum of the circular shape, revealing the layers of nature’s interconnections.

What inspires you?

HGT: I’m inspired by things that happen around me, and how they affect me. I often ask myself: “What made me who I am now?” While thinking about that, ideas and sketches for my work naturally come to me.

JW: Same as for the question above; does consciousness reside solely in humans? Do not plants and animals possess sentience? Does individual consciousness transcend the barrier of death? I am surrounded by the consciousness of beings great and small, here and beyond, seen and unseen.

NS: Right now, it's my kids. Just how they approach the world and how they do art making, very different than
adults.

EP: I am mostly inspired by facts and rules -- how to question them, understand their reasons for being. Also, problems inspire me -- how to domesticate and solve them. But mostly, it is traumas which capture and hold me captive till I succumb to their need to be transformed, beautified, asking me to make them such that not just I, but also others can love them.

AL: Nature, birds, kindness, animals, flowers, trees, rocks, rivers, art, raspberries, honesty, mountains, deserts, reading, the sky, courage, friends, dogs, art supplies, and yellow Ticonderoga pencils.

Can you let us know about three fiber artists who have helped shape your work?

HGT: Louise Bourgeois, Tina Marais, Ping-Yu PAN.

JW: I like the work of many of the fiber artists who exhibit in CAMP’s shows but my inspiration comes from within.

NS: Louise Bourgeois, Bisa Butler, Do Ho Suh.

EP: Eva Hesse and her exploration of materials and especially her exploration of combination of materials. Ana Mendieta, who was not per se a fiber artist, but I am fascinated by her exploration of fiber in performance and its transformation as well as the transformation of meaning granted to them through her unique and unexpected use of them. And finally traditional Indian crafts which utilize embroidery and dialog of various materials and colors into a multilayered dialog of esthetics and emotion which helps to sustain the craft’s heritage across time and space. I am inspired to see how to give justice to these beautiful and meaningful works but nevertheless bring them into the contemporary context and make them globally accessible, in this way ensuring their existence also in future contexts and time. 

AL: How to choose just 3? I remind myself there are no wrong answers, there’s just an answer in this moment. My mom, Betty. She was an every sort of artist, a genuine creator, but especially a fiber artist. She was a quilter, a clothes maker, a knitter, a toy maker, an experimenter. When, as a child, I asked if she would make me a toy kangaroo mouse or a Norwegian sweater for my doll, the next thing I knew, it was handed to me in completed splendor and wonder. This speaks to her tenacious spirit at problem solving, her artistic skill, and her huge capacity of generosity, Louise Bourgeois is another artist who shapes my work. I guess she isn’t known specifically for fiber arts though she did amazing human form soft sculptures. She did so many art forms - sculpture, painting, soft sculpture, installation… I love that willingness and determination to explore. I saw an exhibit of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s work in Paris a few years back. She had me at her marionettes and collages, and then I saw her amazing, colorful, quietly dignified and yet so expressive tapestry weavings. Like Bourgeois and Betty, she tried her hand at many art forms. . . I’m seeing a pattern here - I am greatly inspired by artists who explore and express themselves in many ways and in different media. In addition, I also follow hundreds of fiber artists all over the world on Instagram. I’d like to include them here too.