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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 2018)
4 Wednesday, September 5, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Rosaloe Dace – an artost an/ a teacher By Helen Schmidling Correspondent How does one piece together a career and a reputa- tion as one of the world’s fin- est art quilters? Rosalie Dace, frequent instructor and guest lecturer at The Stitchin’ Post, loves both teaching and shar- ing her creative process as the culmination of a lifetime of curiosity. Rosalie is an artist whose medium is the quilt. She is passionate about her own work, but even more so about sharing that passion with oth- ers. In her 70s, she maintains a rigorous schedule that might cow a person half her age. Rosalie lives in Durban, South Africa. She has been visiting and teaching in Sisters for more than eight years, ever since Stitchin’ Post owner Jean Wells tracked her down. “I was curious about her approach to ideas and subject matter,” Wells said last week. “She dives in and studies, and the intellect she brings to the classroom is priceless.” The occasion last week was the first in a series of “Thread Talks,” assembled by Terry Hunter, the new education facilitator for The Stitchin’ Post. Twenty or more women gathered after dinner in the classroom in back of Sisters’ iconic quilting store one PHOTO BY HELEN SCHMIDLING Detail of a quilt by Rosalie Dace. evening to pay close attention to Rosalie, in an informal ses- sion apart from the daytime class. “I’m a little daunted by being the first person in the Talking Threads program,” Rosalie said, “but I want to talk about how to encourage and develop people’s indi- vidual capabilities. I just love meeting with creative people whose eyes light up when you talk about a subject. “I’ve always been an art- ist,” Rosalie said. “My first memory is of a red wax crayon, when I was little. I would crawl behind the refrig- erator, and hold the crayon up to the motor, where it melted – and then I could make won- derful marks on the wall. I had many pencils, pens, sticks, and I drew on every wall, every book, and the back of my parents’ cigarette box. One year, my brother got a wood carving set, and I used it to carve the back end of a cow on the edge of an ebonite coffee table. My mother said ‘Rosalie must draw! Don’t ever discourage her!’ It never occurred to me that I might get into trouble for drawing on walls.” Dace studied art and English, and taught both in a black technical high school at the height of South African apartheid (Dace says it’s pro- nounced apart-hate,) which described what it was). “One day, the education department librarian asked me if I would like to learn embroi- dery. I had to have a project, but I wanted to make a quilt. That’s how I came to start sewing, changing my medium from painting to fabric. I think how I work is thanks to my mother,” Dace said. “My father lived in West Africa, and he came back home with pieces of fabric, which we hung on the walls.” One of the pieces of fab- ric was decorated with a hand — a hand that had coins in it. “‘Look at that hand,’ my father said. ‘It’s got coins in it. That’s the mark of a crafts- man — coins in the hand.’ And I make my living out of the work of my hands,” Dace said. The color and texture of those rich African fabrics motivated Rosalie. “We didn’t have quilt bat- ting, so I talked my mother into giving me a blanket for the quilt,” she recalled. Dace collects ideas, experi- ences, stories, and fabric. Her modern quilts tell stories in an abstract but carefully planned congregation of shape, color, and three dimensions. They are paintings done in cloth. They are sewn by machine, by hand, fused, and appliqued, and may include embroidery, beads, buttons, and words. They are metaphors for life’s experiences and may depict rivers, cities, gardens, sea- sons, feelings of fear or joy, or vast topics like the journey of the human race out of Africa. For every quilt, there is a script — not a pattern. The script is just an idea, and the idea may carry a good deal of anxiety, which is a normal part of the quilting process. “Anxiety is part of the creative process,” Rosalie told the crowd. “It’s OK not to know what the end prod- uct will be. 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It (the quilt) should look interest- ing from a distance, but there should be a reward for coming close. I think in layers from the start. I am working in a medium that’s based on layer- ing, and I can create the look by changing how and when I stitch the layers together,” she said. Dace works steadily, daily. She rises early, before the sun, gets dressed, and goes to work in her studio. She works on just one project at a time, completing it before mov- ing on to the next. She works alone, in silence, listening to the birds, and thinking. She takes a break every hour, eats lunch with her husband, and sometimes naps. She ends her workday around 4 or 5 p.m. The next day might be the same. Eventually, each quilt, like a painting in multi- dimensions, gets finished. “I try to do some sort of artistic practice every day,” she said. “Inspiration comes when you work.”
