On January 4th last, I attended the opening of the Salonlatino Artevidriotextil exhibition, in which twenty five 20x20cm 2D selected works by artists from a number of South American countries, including myself, are showing in one of the galleries in the beautiful Casa de la Cultura in the heart of Maldonado, Uruguay. There’s a really nice online catalogue https://qrco.de/begBj6 which I recommend you take time to look through, with some very interesting works and accompanying artist statements. However, those statements were not displayed in the exhibition itself, only the details of the artist, title of the work, techniques and materials used, and their country of origin.  The catalogue’s in spanish of course, but easily translated using google translate.  

Several pieces referenced weaving and basketry, and others added beading or glass shapes to textile and embroidered areas.  I had the opportunity to read all the statements a day or two before it opened, but inevitably there were one or two surprises, as there always are in a juried show.  

The work of Chilean artist, Carolina Oliva Salas, “Semillas del rey Inti” was my favourite in the whole exhibition. (p10 of the catalogue)  Translated, her statement reads “Seeds of King Inti symbolize the spirit of the Sun for the ancestral Latin American peoples, for whom it has great importance, symbolism and veneration.  Ancient cultures considered the Sun as the “God creator of life”, and they worshipped him with all kinds of rituals.  Most pre-Columbian people worshipped the Sun fundamentally because it provided them with abundant crops and was also a symbol of prestige and power.”   The symbolism of the eggs set in felted eggshells, and the connection of all the parts to the sun and Inca gold was well thought out and presented.

I loved Mexican artist Olimpia de la Corona’s piece, “Mexican Flower” (p 23), featuring a plant native to southern Mexico, “Flor de Nochebuena” or Poinsettia. Sometimes writing a blog post is a learning exercise – today I learned that the Aztecs used the plants to provide dyes for fabric and cosmetics. and much more about their history. Elsewhere I read that from the early 1700s the Francisan monks began to decorate nativity and religious displays at Christmas with the red-petalled flowers. The central section of this work is a hand stitched panel in the characteristic style of the state of Hidalgo, (I own, and use, several pieces of embroidery from there myself) in which the stitching is worked so that most of the thread appears on the front of the work – and in the catalogue you’ll find a pic of the reverse side of this work illustrating that. This embroidery is surrounded by a lovely border of finely worked glass in the style of other Mexican textiles, and the antique-finished frame sets it off beautifully.

Argentine artist Patricia Veronica Saporiti’s work “Boston” (p 24) comprised 4 x 10cm panels with appliqued coloured glass pieces connected by chain stitched lines, and it was so much more beautiful on the wall than in the catalogue: 

My own work used fibreglass fabric backed by a layer of nylon organza for stability, to which I added some trapunto areas, hand embroidery and beading, all of which was in effect quilting, so by SAQA’s definition it is ‘a quilt’, although I never use that term for anything so small.

It’s an interesting idea to ask artists to combine two unlikely materials, and this call to present a work combining textile and glass materials and techniques is possibly an international first. I’m hoping the organisers will make it a biennial or triennial, because I’m already thinking about another one …