Paint drips, splashes and a burst of colour darned together with threads which dart in between like spiders dancing across the canvas and weaving webs in purpose designed spaces. Textile artist Nava Lubelski creates wonderfully vibrant pieces. I am fascinated in how she bridges the gap between a once throwaway and often damaged piece of textile and to transform it into a work of art. Nava talks about her art: "My work explores the contradictions between the impulse to destroy and the compulsion to mend. I juxtapose rapid acts of destruction, such as spilling and cutting, with painstaking, restorative labor. Embroideries are hand-stitched over stains and rips, contrasting the accidental with the meticulous." In our current age, where resources are becoming ever scarcer, innovative restoration techniques such as Nava's are extremely relevant. To take a seemingly damaged piece of fabric and convert the fault into a feature shows real ingenuity and the results are beautiful.
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Are we There Yet? South African quilter Rosalie Dace is a studio artist who has been working in the fibre art, quilt and embroidery world since the '70's. With a background in art and education, she finds exhibiting, teaching, and judging combine her interests admirably. Her work, which reflects her passion for colour, design and texture, is characterized by its wild mix of fabrics. She has had a lifelong interest in textiles and embroidery and has a degree in Art and English. While she values the traditions from which quilt making has come, she believes that a quilt should say something about its time and place in history. This and her awareness of being a South African artist give her work its particular character. Almost Forgotten, Never Told Baghdad Rosalie has been described as a cultural anthropologist whose work defines the collective human experience. Her work is emotional and highly subjective, reflecting feelings of place and referring to memories and personal experiences, telling stories with which we can all identify. One quilt, a homage to her deceased father, a gardener, evokes the colours and shapes of his favourite environment, another of a local market. Another yet, recalling her excitement in returning home to South Africa, depicts an aerial view of the ocean over which she flew. She uses a variety of fabrics upon which to work, such as silk, African cloth and burlap. At times she decorates her quilts with beads, buttons, string, safety pins and other embellishments traditional to South African clothing and textiles. Night Flight Her work has been widely exhibited, and she has won several awards including Best of Show at the South African National Quilt Festival in 1988 and 1998, her quilts are to be found in private collections and in the Durban Art Gallery, and has appeared in national and international publications. Phoenix Apart from her native South Africa, she has taught and exhibited internationally in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada and the US, and was nominated for the Professional Quilter magazine’s “Teacher of the Year” Award in 2007. Apart from her normal art and teaching commitments she has been involved in programs aimed at training Zulu women embroidery skills for the Durban Manufacturing Advisory Centre and for a trust operating in rural KwaZulu-Natal. She is also involved in teaching patchwork and quilting to a group at an old age home in Durban. Word for Word Dace lives in Durban, South Africa but she also spends time each year working in the United States and is a much sought after teacher and speaker. She has been included in exhibitions in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Africa including the Houston International Quilt Festival; the Fresno Art Museum in Fresno, California; Galerie im Stadhaus in Bad Homburg, Germany; Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, United Kingdom; and the Jabulisa Exhibition, which toured South Africa from 2001 to 2003. She also co-developed the South African Quilters' Guild training program for judges and has judged art quilts all over the world. Durban Dreams Gypsy Summer Awake my Soul Spice Route Finding the Way Watching and Waiting
Very insightful and inspirational video made by Chuck Smith & Sono Kuwayama about how we've moved away from working with our hands and minds and have instead let modern toys, products and objects do it all for us. We've stripped something from our lives by not engaging in the crafts and activities we've outmoded. Adults and children alike need to be more hands on and involved in the art and tasks of life and not let it all be removed by labour saving devices and other luxury. We need contact. As Jacob Bronowski says: “We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye… The hand is the cutting edge of the brain”. Renate Hiller is Co-Director of the Fiber Craft Studio in Chestnut Ridge, New York. She co-founded the Sunbridge College Applied Arts Program in 1996 and at present co-directs the fifth cycle. This woman speaks so eloquently about the necessity of doing handwork that I will not interfere with my own commentary.
Nest II Sue Benner - born in 1955 in Iron River in the upper peninsula of Michigan and raised in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is a full time studio artist creating art quilts and other dyed and painted fabric constructions since 1980 when she became one of the first studio artist, before even the word “Art Quilt” was made popular. Sue is an innovator in her field, creating original dyed and painted fabrics, which she combines with recycled textiles to form fields of structured pattern, vivid beauty, and riotous variation. There is always an underlying structure in her work, a set of rules. She thinks of each piece as a small world where she can declare the laws of nature. Walking Through Time I Her love affair with fabric began with her first memories of the clothes her mother made her, recalling exact hue, fibre content, and weave. In the following years, her mother taught her to sew, carefully and creatively. Her father always had a pencil in his hand or behind his ear, drawing on napkins in restaurants and painting on the weekends. He inspired and encouraged her in art. Her education in molecular biology and medical illustration still figures in her work with an underlying sense structure and organizing principles. She sees a direct connection with the concept of quilt and the assembly of units to make a larger whole. She works on 5-10 quilts at a time, often in two different series. This way of working suits the nature of her mind. Series and ideas overlap, playing off of one another. She uses her visual vocabulary to weave her work together, creating patterns and layers of meaning. She revels in the simple act of placing one fabric next to another. Nests with Blue Walking Through Time II Red Leaves Sue Benner is best known locally for her hand-painted bandanas, shirts, T-shirts and quilts with geometric or Texana imagery. In the last few years, however, this talented Dallas artist has garnered a growing, national reputation for creating giant, site-specific, three-dimensional color fabric constructions for large architectural spaces. Benner carefully extrapolates the ambient colors, textures and shapes of an existing decor into lush, liquid flowing waterfalls of eye-catching color. Up close, her Spills, Falls and Currents reveal lush complexities of assembled soft forms and multi-layered abstract color paint and drawings. Studio History Although she variously combines dye, batik, stitching, quilting, appliqué, draping and other forms, the watchword for Benner's work is "paint." Her installations and constructions are paintings on fabric. They are never submerged in a vat of dye. Always they involve direct paint techniques. Indeed, it is this action painting on selected fabrics-and the fact that she is essentially self-taught-that makes her art unique. Dusk New Day The major breakthrough in her style came during a traumatic time after a breakup. "I was pouring my heart on this white piece of fabric" while "making use of the quality of the dyes," she said. The hue-saturated designs became Xed-out hearts. But it wasn't just serendipity. Benner was learning to use "the essential qualities of the dyes and the way they interact"-to make dye do what it does best. Already she knew, she needn't stay within the little wax lines. She discovered "I could just slop that stuff in very much the same way 20th Century American artists have been slopping paint on canvas." Cellular Structure I Cellular Structure II The Xs are gone, but hearts have become an important element of her design repertory through her six-year professional career. This is odd because the Valentine hearts are anatomically incorrect. Benner's own art history began during the last year of a B.S. in Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin -eighty miles from her home in Oshkosh and continued through a short but colorful career in medical illustration. The summer before Sue graduated, a friend taught her to batik. She'd worked with fabric since she was five and loved working with her hands to make pretty things. But it was an elective course in Fabric Design that tied it all together. She barely got into the class but took to fabric art immediately. Nest I Dark Center Gradually, Benner combined her sewing and quilting with batik. Then she added biology, and that unusual mix led to her honors thesis, Experiments in Illustrating the Human Reproductive System. She created 20 vivid organic forms on batiked and quilted fabric, watercolors and drawings. After that very successful thesis, Sue added summer studio classes, then two more semesters of art to meet requirements for Medical Illustration School at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas, where she's lived ever since. Sink or Swim #23, #24 Although her Biomedical Scientific Technical Illustrations were superb, her medical art career was short-circuited two years later when someone saw The Life Story of Seminiferous Tubules, silk quilts for her Masters Thesis. If she could illustrate complex biology in such controlled detail, they reasoned, she could easily do fabrics for clothing. Soon, Benner was working with another Dallas designer, and when the fad for hand-painted fabric started, she was already in the thick of it. In spring 1981, she convinced Richard Brooks Fabrics to sponsor a show of her scarves, paintings and quilts on his silk crepe de chine, silk broadcloth and other fine fabrics. Cellular Structure III Nine Times Nine The show sold well, but more importantly, Dallas art rep Michael Thomas saw her paintings and told her she could make a lot more selling them as art. After that, things started clicking for Benner's art career, and she put her thesis on hold for four years. She got her first major installation job by lucky accident. A decorator firm where a friend worked had forgotten a hotel atrium, and they were desperate for a major installation. They needed a young, energetic no-name artist they could get away with paying what, for Benner, was a dream price. But it had to be completed in two months. Sue had five hours to conceive it and make a presentation. In that flurry of design and color, she had the idea for the drawstring-like balloon drapes that gave it and others since a rippling three-dimensionality. Benner was confident she could make the giant piece; she just didn't know how. But she poured herself into the task, and the assembled 70' x 10' cascade of reds and greens, Silk Falls, at Atlanta's Ramada Renaissance Hotel established her installations career. Display II Major commissions-like her recent Silk Spills at the Texas American Bank in Fort Worth, now take six months to a year. They must be previsualized and color-coordinated; pictures need to be drawn, models made, and the whole project presented, budgeted and each step approved. "I'm very good about thinking what I want the end product to look like and then figuring out the steps to achieve that," she explained. Between the big jobs, she experiments with littler ones. Among her inventory are vibrant paintings on silk, richly patterned art quilts, subtly stitched collages, draped and gathered fabric constructions and fashion items like bandannas, scarves, T- and Hawaiian shirts, and yardage for clothing and upholstery to be constructed by friends. Nest III Nest IV "My work may not seem normal to anybody else, but when you do it every day, you have to get outside of that." The smaller paintings' quick turnaround from concept to product lets her work an idea, color, shape or texture many different ways. Or "I may just sit down with absolutely no thought in my mind and start painting, and let one thought or action dictate the next choice." The results are "not so precious people are afraid to wear, wash, abuse and make them part of their life. Lately, however, more and more of her works are bought, framed and hung as art. These fabric paintings are still her cheapest item, but they've grown much more complex. Prairie Wall She paints her giant commissions on the floor of her Deep Elm studio, on rolls of white paper that both soak dye and document color and design. Sometimes she brushes. Often, she uses squeeze tubes, catsup and spray bottles and sponges to pattern layers of dye drawings and painting. "The way I paint, I need a surface that is hard. I'm interacting with that surface I'm working on that surface, spraying on it, then coming back in to rub it into the fabric. The dyes soak in and bind into the fiber, and it becomes a part of the fabric." Unlike acrylic paint, which stays where you put it, Benner wants her "paint" to pool and mix-but only rarely drip. She prefers silk taffeta and jacquard, cotton sateen and pima cotton broadcloth for their smooth surfaces. To set the dyes, "I steam bake them in the oven at home. I don't have to worry if I drip dye because it becomes a part of the picture." Walking Through Time XII Body Parts Dance It's not all happy accidents though. Each installation must fit the specific color, space, texture, decor and acoustic givens of the site. Someone with a fine arts background might balk at this precision of parameters. But after her experience with medical illustrations, which had to be absolutely accurate and lucid in black and white with maybe one color, Benner has found it easy and fascinating. "I love color; that's obvious in my work," she said. "Working with color is infinitely interesting because there are so many possibilities." Nest V "I love fabric, the touch, the feel," she said. "It's a great passion of mine." But she recognizes its limitations. It ages, gets dirty; insects infest it. And, unless protected, it eventually disintegrates. If it is protected, however, it loses "its essential, supple quality." Sue’s artwork appears in many private, corporate, and institutional collections. She also lectures and teaches workshops nationally and internationally in the fields of surface design, textile collage, fused quilt construction, and artistic inspiration. Her work has been juried into Visions, Quilt Nihon and in Quilt National seven times, where she served as a juror in 2009. Living in Dallas, Texas with her husband, Craig Jett, and their two sons, Sue works in her studio built in the backyard of their family home. However, a part of her heart resides still in her home state of Wisconsin. Nest VIII Nest VII Sue Benner
Are we There Yet? South African quilter Rosalie Dace is a studio artist who has been working in the fibre art, quilt and embroidery world since the '70's. With a background in art and education, she finds exhibiting, teaching, and judging combine her interests admirably. Her work, which reflects her passion for colour, design and texture, is characterized by its wild mix of fabrics. She has had a lifelong interest in textiles and embroidery and has a degree in Art and English. While she values the traditions from which quilt making has come, she believes that a quilt should say something about its time and place in history. This and her awareness of being a South African artist give her work its particular character. Almost Forgotten, Never Told Baghdad Rosalie has been described as a cultural anthropologist whose work defines the collective human experience. Her work is emotional and highly subjective, reflecting feelings of place and referring to memories and personal experiences, telling stories with which we can all identify. One quilt, a homage to her deceased father, a gardener, evokes the colours and shapes of his favourite environment, another of a local market. Another yet, recalling her excitement in returning home to South Africa, depicts an aerial view of the ocean over which she flew. She uses a variety of fabrics upon which to work, such as silk, African cloth and burlap. At times she decorates her quilts with beads, buttons, string, safety pins and other embellishments traditional to South African clothing and textiles. Night Flight Her work has been widely exhibited, and she has won several awards including Best of Show at the South African National Quilt Festival in 1988 and 1998, her quilts are to be found in private collections and in the Durban Art Gallery, and has appeared in national and international publications. Phoenix Apart from her native South Africa, she has taught and exhibited internationally in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada and the US, and was nominated for the Professional Quilter magazine’s “Teacher of the Year” Award in 2007. Apart from her normal art and teaching commitments she has been involved in programs aimed at training Zulu women embroidery skills for the Durban Manufacturing Advisory Centre and for a trust operating in rural KwaZulu-Natal. She is also involved in teaching patchwork and quilting to a group at an old age home in Durban. Word for Word Dace lives in Durban, South Africa but she also spends time each year working in the United States and is a much sought after teacher and speaker. She has been included in exhibitions in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Africa including the Houston International Quilt Festival; the Fresno Art Museum in Fresno, California; Galerie im Stadhaus in Bad Homburg, Germany; Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, United Kingdom; and the Jabulisa Exhibition, which toured South Africa from 2001 to 2003. She also co-developed the South African Quilters' Guild training program for judges and has judged art quilts all over the world. Durban Dreams Gypsy Summer Awake my Soul Spice Route Finding the Way Watching and Waiting
La isla de La Palma, también conocida como “la Isla Bonita”, se encuentra en la parte más noroccidental del Archipiélago Canario ...
Spread the loveSunday, December 20, 2020Iceland is best known as the land of ice and fire, It was the only country in the world that has a sharp contrast. This is a unique island state that’s been lost somewhere in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, which is far away from America and Europe....
To mark Disney's remake of The Jungle Book, Lonely Planet travels to the forested heart of India that inspired Rudyard Kipling’s original Mowgli stories.
Przed Tobą kolejna porcja ciekawych zdjęć wraz z opisami.
Last year, there was a wonderful exhibition at The Textile Museum of Canada which showed an array of mola blouses and their striking panels constructed from multiple layers of brilliantly-colored cloth, cut and appliquéd by Kuna women in a complex technique that actually uses the simplest technology: just needles, thread and scissors. Molas are the colorful, multi-layered appliqué panels of blouses worn by Kuna women of Panama. The Kuna live in a region called Kuna Yala, which means “Kuna Land.” This area, more formally known as the San Blas Archipelago, lies off the eastern coast of Panama. Molas developed after Spanish colonization, in particular within the past 100 years when cotton yard cloth became commonly available to the Kuna. The intricately designed and sewn molas are attached to the front and/or back of women’s blouses and are considered a major form of artistic expression and ethnic identity. Together with the blue print cotton skirts, the red and orange headscarves, the nose ring and earrings and the characteristic glass bead strings on wrists and ankles they represent the traditional dress of the Kuna women. Becoming famous in the last couple of decades, Molas are now shown in museums and private collections of textile art all around the world. Those molas, whose completion, take more than hundred hours have higher collectors value. Only those Mola blouses, which are intended for daily use are machine-made. Due to the intensive sunlight they are exposed to, the colours will fade quickly and look dull. Those Molas fashioned for special ceremonies and to the pride of their owners are always hand-made. Molas have their origin in body painting. Only after the colonization by the Spanish and contact with missionaries the Kuna started to transfer their traditional geometric designs onto fabric, first by painting directly on the fabric and later by using the technique of reverse application. It is not known for certain, when this technique was first being used. It is assumed that the oldest Molas are between 150 and 170 years old. As an inspiration for their designs the Kuna first used the geometrical patterns, which had previously been used for body painting before. In the past 50 years they also started to depict realistic and abstract designs of flowers, sea animals and birds. Depending on the tradition of each island, Kuna women begin the crafting of Molas either after they reach puberty, or even at a much younger age. Women who prefer to dress in western style are in the minority on the islands, as well as in the Kuna communities in Panama City. For many decades Panamanian government officials and missionaries tried to “civilize these Indians” by encouraging – or forcing them to give up their beliefs and customs. Then in 1925 the Kuna fought back. Police, teachers, missionaries and the Panamanian governor fled from the islands. The American ambassador was asked to intervene. A temporary settlement that amounted to partial autonomy for the Kuna was signed. Further negotiations were difficult, but there was no genocide and no civil war. In 1938 a self-governing province called Kuna Yala was established as a part of Panama. It included all the 365 Kuna islands and a strip of adjacent territory along the shore. Today the Kuna are recognized as one of the world’s most politically sophisticated indigenous groups. Shortly before the 1925 revolution, Panamanian authorities issued an order that Kuna women could no longer wear their traditional mola blouses, patterned with cultural and religious symbols. The Kuna found this absolutely unacceptable. The edict was resisted and today the mola blouses continue to be proudly worn as the embodiment of Kuna culture. The tools and supplies needed to design and make a Mola are simple and basic: cotton fabric, thread, a pencil, scissors, a thimble and a needle. In the 1970s, the Peace Corp arrived in the San Blas Islands with treadle sewing machines. Their purpose was to help the Kuna Women in their Mola making by teaching them how to use these machines. The artists quickly rejected the automation and returned to the simple needle and thread process to accomplish their intricate work. A sewing machine is sometimes used to secure Molas to garments, purses and other commercial items. Molas are usually done in reverse appliqué technique, using two or more layers of cloth and cutting through to reveal the color underneath. The designs and patterns used are particular to the maker and incorporate both traditional and modern elements. Early mola designs were related to pre-Hispanic body painting; today, mola designs may include abstract geometric designs, motifs from the natural world, or themes related to politics, popular culture, or Kuna legends. Nature unquestionably dominates the Mola theme: birds, animals, sea-life, plants and flowers are the subject of many pieces. Tribal teachings, superstitions and village life are also recorded in the fabric panels. The influx of North Americans after the construction of the Panama Canal gave the Kuna women even more subjects to sew into their blouses. The wealth of graphic images from magazines, comic books, trademarks, labels and advertisements offer endless ideas for Mola design. Of course, traditional geometric cut-outs remain popular. Geometric molas are the most traditional, having developed from ancient body painting designs. Many hours of careful sewing are required to create a fine mola. The ability to make an outstanding mola is a source of status among Kuna women. A Mola panel can have two to seven layers of cloth. The layers of fabric, cut in rectangles from a variety of colors, are basted together one layer at a time, and a design is sketched with pencil on the top layer of cloth. The largest pattern is typically cut from the top layer, and progressively smaller patterns from each subsequent layer, thus revealing the colors beneath in successive layers. This basic scheme can be varied by cutting through multiple layers at once, hence varying the sequence of colors; some molas also incorporate patches of contrasting colors, included in the design at certain points to introduce additional variations of color. The more traditional Mola is pure appliqué, however, some artists of late are using embroidery stitches to enhance their work. Most of the Mola is sewn with a blind stitch or hem stitch. With each layer, the artist cuts away another part of the design, turns the edges and stitches to the lower layers. This continues until the final image is achieved. When a color is chosen for a small section of the Mola, the artist often inserts a small piece of fabric in only the area where it will be used. Some of the more experienced Kuna women can even work without sketches. The fabric most often selected for use is cotton. Red, black and orange are the dominant colors used, however, every color imaginable can be found in the accent fabrics used. Molas vary greatly in quality, and the pricing to buyers varies accordingly. A greater number of layers is generally a sign of higher quality; two-layer molas are common, but examples with four or more layers will demand a better price. The quality of stitching is also a factor, with the stitching on the best molas being close to invisible. Although some molas rely on embroidery to some degree to enhance the design, those which are made using only the pure reverse-appliqué technique (or nearly so) are considered better. The quality of a mola is determined by such factors as - the number of layers - fineness of the stitching - evenness and width of cutouts - addition of details such as zigzag borders, lattice-work or embroidery - general artistic merit of the design and color combination. Molas are made in pairs, one for the front and one for the back of a blouse. The front and back molas are never identical (because they are hand made), but they are always related, either as two versions of the same design, or as complimentary designs on the same theme. The Kuna word for this is “akala-emala” – the same only different. When Kuna women tire of a particular blouse, they disassemble it and sell the molas to collectors. Since mola panels have been worn as part of the traditional dress of a Kuna woman they often show signs of wear such as fading and stitch marks along the edges of the panels. These "imperfections" indicate that the mola is authentic and not made solely to be sold to tourists. They are very sturdy and well sewn. Authentic molas have already been washed many times and can be safely hand washed in warm water. Mola panels have many uses. They can be framed as art or made into pillows, place mats or wall hangings. Some people even make them into bedspreads or incorporate them into quilting projects. What are the criteria in judging a mola? I will say that is all about your personal sensitivity and taste, however many molas are bound to captivate your eyes and your heart at a very first glimpse. This is a unique Art of great beauty and mysterious origin. A mola should be enjoyed as a piece of magnificent artwork, which allows the viewer to experience a cultural awakening. And finally, what could be the future of the Kunas? We don’t know… It’s only the Kuna people, who can choose their own way, preserve their traditions, art and magnificent culture, meanwhile they become part of the world that surrounds them.
Iceland is a pretty magical place. If you ever chance to visit....go! I am happy to share my top must see waterfalls in Iceland that I visited on my last trip.
Mieux vaut être préparée à la saison hivernale qui s’annonce que d’être prise au dépourvu. Voici ce que le célèbre «Almanach du vieux fermier» prédit pour les différentes régions canadiennes.
Milena Radeva, Fiber Art, Textiles, Costume, Sewing, Draping, Corsetry, Millinery, Embroidery, Quilting, Weaving, Knitting, Crochet, Macramé, Tassels,Tambour, Beading, Trapunto, Fabric Dyeing, Shibori, Batic, Painting, Dolls, Crafts, Fashion, Mola,Theater de la Mode, Illustration, Fine Art, Photography, Paper Dresses
New Zealand's South Island is so beautiful that you could easily spend months exploring and never get bored. Read on for 8 must-sees on the South Island.
I’m a huge yellow fan, especially in the context of cold, wet and gray days.…
Lean-tos are traditional open faced camping shelters. They are mostly found on State Forest Preserve Land in the Catskills and Adirondacks.
12 septembre 1940 : découverte de la grotte à peintures préhistoriques de Lascaux (près de Montignac, en Dordogne). Dès la fin septembre 1940, les journaux ne tarissaient pas de commentaires sur les merveilleuses découvertes faites par de jeunes garçons dans les grottes de Montignac et suscitant l'intérêt de plusieurs préhistoriens français de renommée internationale, parmi lesquels l'abbé Breuil et le chanoine Bouyssonie. Almanach, événements 12 septembre, éphéméride du 12 septembre, événement du jour. L'éphéméride pittoresque et insolite, les événements historiques du jour. Histoire, faits historiques liés à cette date
Last year, there was a wonderful exhibition at The Textile Museum of Canada which showed an array of mola blouses and their striking panels constructed from multiple layers of brilliantly-colored cloth, cut and appliquéd by Kuna women in a complex technique that actually uses the simplest technology: just needles, thread and scissors. Molas are the colorful, multi-layered appliqué panels of blouses worn by Kuna women of Panama. The Kuna live in a region called Kuna Yala, which means “Kuna Land.” This area, more formally known as the San Blas Archipelago, lies off the eastern coast of Panama. Molas developed after Spanish colonization, in particular within the past 100 years when cotton yard cloth became commonly available to the Kuna. The intricately designed and sewn molas are attached to the front and/or back of women’s blouses and are considered a major form of artistic expression and ethnic identity. Together with the blue print cotton skirts, the red and orange headscarves, the nose ring and earrings and the characteristic glass bead strings on wrists and ankles they represent the traditional dress of the Kuna women. Becoming famous in the last couple of decades, Molas are now shown in museums and private collections of textile art all around the world. Those molas, whose completion, take more than hundred hours have higher collectors value. Only those Mola blouses, which are intended for daily use are machine-made. Due to the intensive sunlight they are exposed to, the colours will fade quickly and look dull. Those Molas fashioned for special ceremonies and to the pride of their owners are always hand-made. Molas have their origin in body painting. Only after the colonization by the Spanish and contact with missionaries the Kuna started to transfer their traditional geometric designs onto fabric, first by painting directly on the fabric and later by using the technique of reverse application. It is not known for certain, when this technique was first being used. It is assumed that the oldest Molas are between 150 and 170 years old. As an inspiration for their designs the Kuna first used the geometrical patterns, which had previously been used for body painting before. In the past 50 years they also started to depict realistic and abstract designs of flowers, sea animals and birds. Depending on the tradition of each island, Kuna women begin the crafting of Molas either after they reach puberty, or even at a much younger age. Women who prefer to dress in western style are in the minority on the islands, as well as in the Kuna communities in Panama City. For many decades Panamanian government officials and missionaries tried to “civilize these Indians” by encouraging – or forcing them to give up their beliefs and customs. Then in 1925 the Kuna fought back. Police, teachers, missionaries and the Panamanian governor fled from the islands. The American ambassador was asked to intervene. A temporary settlement that amounted to partial autonomy for the Kuna was signed. Further negotiations were difficult, but there was no genocide and no civil war. In 1938 a self-governing province called Kuna Yala was established as a part of Panama. It included all the 365 Kuna islands and a strip of adjacent territory along the shore. Today the Kuna are recognized as one of the world’s most politically sophisticated indigenous groups. Shortly before the 1925 revolution, Panamanian authorities issued an order that Kuna women could no longer wear their traditional mola blouses, patterned with cultural and religious symbols. The Kuna found this absolutely unacceptable. The edict was resisted and today the mola blouses continue to be proudly worn as the embodiment of Kuna culture. The tools and supplies needed to design and make a Mola are simple and basic: cotton fabric, thread, a pencil, scissors, a thimble and a needle. In the 1970s, the Peace Corp arrived in the San Blas Islands with treadle sewing machines. Their purpose was to help the Kuna Women in their Mola making by teaching them how to use these machines. The artists quickly rejected the automation and returned to the simple needle and thread process to accomplish their intricate work. A sewing machine is sometimes used to secure Molas to garments, purses and other commercial items. Molas are usually done in reverse appliqué technique, using two or more layers of cloth and cutting through to reveal the color underneath. The designs and patterns used are particular to the maker and incorporate both traditional and modern elements. Early mola designs were related to pre-Hispanic body painting; today, mola designs may include abstract geometric designs, motifs from the natural world, or themes related to politics, popular culture, or Kuna legends. Nature unquestionably dominates the Mola theme: birds, animals, sea-life, plants and flowers are the subject of many pieces. Tribal teachings, superstitions and village life are also recorded in the fabric panels. The influx of North Americans after the construction of the Panama Canal gave the Kuna women even more subjects to sew into their blouses. The wealth of graphic images from magazines, comic books, trademarks, labels and advertisements offer endless ideas for Mola design. Of course, traditional geometric cut-outs remain popular. Geometric molas are the most traditional, having developed from ancient body painting designs. Many hours of careful sewing are required to create a fine mola. The ability to make an outstanding mola is a source of status among Kuna women. A Mola panel can have two to seven layers of cloth. The layers of fabric, cut in rectangles from a variety of colors, are basted together one layer at a time, and a design is sketched with pencil on the top layer of cloth. The largest pattern is typically cut from the top layer, and progressively smaller patterns from each subsequent layer, thus revealing the colors beneath in successive layers. This basic scheme can be varied by cutting through multiple layers at once, hence varying the sequence of colors; some molas also incorporate patches of contrasting colors, included in the design at certain points to introduce additional variations of color. The more traditional Mola is pure appliqué, however, some artists of late are using embroidery stitches to enhance their work. Most of the Mola is sewn with a blind stitch or hem stitch. With each layer, the artist cuts away another part of the design, turns the edges and stitches to the lower layers. This continues until the final image is achieved. When a color is chosen for a small section of the Mola, the artist often inserts a small piece of fabric in only the area where it will be used. Some of the more experienced Kuna women can even work without sketches. The fabric most often selected for use is cotton. Red, black and orange are the dominant colors used, however, every color imaginable can be found in the accent fabrics used. Molas vary greatly in quality, and the pricing to buyers varies accordingly. A greater number of layers is generally a sign of higher quality; two-layer molas are common, but examples with four or more layers will demand a better price. The quality of stitching is also a factor, with the stitching on the best molas being close to invisible. Although some molas rely on embroidery to some degree to enhance the design, those which are made using only the pure reverse-appliqué technique (or nearly so) are considered better. The quality of a mola is determined by such factors as - the number of layers - fineness of the stitching - evenness and width of cutouts - addition of details such as zigzag borders, lattice-work or embroidery - general artistic merit of the design and color combination. Molas are made in pairs, one for the front and one for the back of a blouse. The front and back molas are never identical (because they are hand made), but they are always related, either as two versions of the same design, or as complimentary designs on the same theme. The Kuna word for this is “akala-emala” – the same only different. When Kuna women tire of a particular blouse, they disassemble it and sell the molas to collectors. Since mola panels have been worn as part of the traditional dress of a Kuna woman they often show signs of wear such as fading and stitch marks along the edges of the panels. These "imperfections" indicate that the mola is authentic and not made solely to be sold to tourists. They are very sturdy and well sewn. Authentic molas have already been washed many times and can be safely hand washed in warm water. Mola panels have many uses. They can be framed as art or made into pillows, place mats or wall hangings. Some people even make them into bedspreads or incorporate them into quilting projects. What are the criteria in judging a mola? I will say that is all about your personal sensitivity and taste, however many molas are bound to captivate your eyes and your heart at a very first glimpse. This is a unique Art of great beauty and mysterious origin. A mola should be enjoyed as a piece of magnificent artwork, which allows the viewer to experience a cultural awakening. And finally, what could be the future of the Kunas? We don’t know… It’s only the Kuna people, who can choose their own way, preserve their traditions, art and magnificent culture, meanwhile they become part of the world that surrounds them.
