RADAR Review

RADAR 10 - Fashion
Publication Date: April 14, 2004
I want them to feel like they have the language... An Interview with Annet Couwenberg

Dutch born fiber artist Annet Couwenberg is Chairperson of the Fiber Department at Maryland Institute College of Art. She spoke with Radar's Miriam DesHarnais about Fiber Arts and fashion on March 9, 2004.

How would you define Fiber Arts? In terms of materials? What makes a material "fiber" rather than not fiber.

We define the word fiber in the sense of materiality. We extend it to all materials which come out of the craft traditions, but beyond that, any flexible, pliable plane or line is a material we feel we are connected with and can manipulate. Do we sculpt? Maybe we fabricate more than anything else. In the beginning it is really yarn and cloth, also a vocabulary for extending critical inquiry into contemporary art-making. Students need to know the discipline to become interdisciplinary. We give them an underlayer of the techniques and concepts, and then it goes to interdisciplinary ways of working.

What other branches of art do Fiber Arts most often intersect with?

It intersects with a lot actually. Here at Maryland Institute we are part of the Sculptural Studies Department. Our own work as artists, which we see as really important to integrate within the classroom, is mostly three-dimensionally oriented. So we felt that the strength was there. But we also overlap with painting, printmaking, design. I still believe that fiber has its own language. It is so deeply connected with tradition.

I just saw knitting, crocheting, dying, weaving and printmaking happening in the studio. What other technical skills are covered?

We do draping, flat-pattern drafting, so many things. But with all our technical offerings we try to keep the practice and the theory going at the same time. Concept and technique need to be in balance.

What are some of the big names in the Fiber Arts discipline?

In our own field, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Polly Apfelbaum, Ann Hamilton, Rebecca Horn. There are people who are more connected to sculpture, like Kiki Smith. We also study a variety of criticism from anthropological ways to looking at things to more philosophical inquiries.

Your work explores the effects of fashion and traditional women’s work on women’s bodes and women’s history. Are those preoccupations common ones in the field?

Definitely. I think labor, and especially the trades most connected with women, is an issue we really work with a lot.[Sometimes through] performance the way Janine Antoni has done, or sometimes through hand-making–embroidery, labor intensive, traditional, repetitive techniques like sewing and tucking.

Could you describe some student work that has stood out to you?

One of the students who cames to mind is Rachel Beth Egenhoefer–she has an interest in the Fisher-Price loom she had as a child, with the architectonic building, the weaving line by line, and the abstract analytical thinking that came with that, and also with her first computer, a Commodore. She has done some video pieces and some installation pieces where the weaving repetition and binary code were combined. There was an installation about 24 feet long and 5 feet wide with chocolates being picked up by people and eaten, then replaced. The pattern was then translated into binary code. Her daily writings were also translated into binary code and embroidered on fabrics in an installation. Technology has always been part of our medium but we have really embraced it again by looking at what’s going on in digital technology in and out of our own field. From computer generated imagery to computer looms and embroidery machines.

But then we have to keep in mind that we still have people who have an interest in creating extremely beautiful cloth. What we see is that our seniors are so diverse–we have people who make objects and people who do installations with videos.

The word "repetition" comes up a lot. I know earlier when we were discussing [DC artist] Abby Freeman’s work with the hundreds of cocktail umbrellas glued as tapestries, the dresses and big swirling lumpy carpets made of materials like matches or corks, you said you were pleased to hear she was still doing repetitive work, which was something one wouldn’t necessarily expect an art instructor to say.

The serialization of imagery or movement comes up not only in weaving but in printmaking and knitting. [Practices that involve] the repetition of a movement. We do believe that it helps the body to take that information in. It’s like biking. When you do something over and over again the body takes that knowledge in and recognizes it. After a while the mind can wander off and take in other information, go to its unconscious or become very analytical. We do believe in the knowledge of the body through the hands–that it has an intelligence and that repetition can help with that.

People from outside the Fiber Arts, textile and fashion design communities often perceive these disciplines to be somehow at odds with "high art". Is that still an issue for your students?

Fiber majors have a really tough job because they still sometimes have to defend themselves to be accepted in the high arts. We all go back and forth between saying, "Oh, it’s great to be on the fringe because it gives us more freedom" and the other side. Which is why I want the students to have a lot of knowledge, about theory, contemporary painting, sculpture. I want them to know about the history too and try to...place themselves within the art world. What is their place? I want them to feel like they have the language.

The new issue of Fiber Arts magazine is about "wearables"

Yes. When [critic] David Hickey was here in class, I asked him to tell my students what he thought was the biggest issue they would face in the art world. He said they will have to look at fashion because that’s a reflection of popular culture. I think we finally in the critical writing are at the point where people are clearing the air and placing fashion in art-making. A book I’m really excited about is Couture Culture by Nancy Troy. She’s the chair of the Art History department at the University of Southern California and she really makes the connections between existing spheres of high art and haute couture. The idea that haute couture went to ready-wear, that original went to commodity. She gives an understanding of what the place of fashion was in twentieth-century visual culture.

What is most exciting right now is that the department is expanding to a really important part of Fiber, and that is fashion. We’re at the beginning of the planning process. I want to do it very deliberately, very slowly so we are doing it the right way. We will introduce one more course next semester then in the spring another one...

Do you have a special interest in fashion?

I worked in the fashion industry for two years. During my first graduate degree I was invited by a fashion designer in New York to work with him. I am now embracing it again, really sharing the knowledge that I have. But we are also looking on the outside to bring in visiting artists who are working with these concepts.

My understanding is that Fiber Arts had its first modern renaissance in the seventies, corresponding with second-wave feminism. With the current popularity of crafting circles, do you see ties to third-wave feminism?

Is it a feminist boom? It could be. There is a lot of interest now in Fiber because contemporary artists are using materials and techniques the way we use them. It’s kind of amazing to see. I’ve been teaching for twenty-five years and ten years ago if I’d have said "macramé" or "knitting" to them, they would have run out of the room in horror. Twenty years ago I was allowed to say it and now I’m allowed to say it again. It cycles, the periods when things are in vogue. Now people are asking me how to bobbin lace.

Also in the seventies, found objects, natural materials, integrating with the landscape, were all in.

[Now we are talking] more about the body. We are talking more about the body because of AIDS, because of genetics discoveries. This explains a lot of the rejuvenation of issues tied to feminism and deconstruction. Issues of identity are also in Fiber... We always have a group that is interested in issues of the environment.

Materials really do reflect a time period and we have to be very careful with that–not using certain materials just because they are a reflection of the time. I don’t want to say too much because I’m still working through the theory, but it is something I ask my students to question. I think that’s what is exciting in Fiber is that we haven’t decided everything yet. We do keep that discussion going.