The Weaver who became a Stage Designer, a Dramaturge and a Director
It was no coincidence that I applied to Kolding School of Arts and Crafts – it was a coincidence that it was in Kolding, where the school had recently opened and was still located at the Technical College in the centre of town.
Four years later I graduated as a textile designer and owned a loom with 16 heddles.
A new professional theatre, Teatret Møllen (the Mill Theatre), opened in Haderslev, in Southern Jutland, and I was asked to provide the stage design… I knew nothing about theatre. Having been raised on the island of Fanø I had never been to a theatre – I did not even know what stage design was.
The theatre became a revelation for me. Here I could make things and tell stories. We built an ensemble; we had an audience, and together we developed the theatre. I was the stage designer, the dramaturge and the director, and together we created a language that became recognisable, visual and musical. After a couple of years I also became a part-time teacher at the Kolding School of Arts and Crafts. Together with my students I developed a programme that engaged in research into texturality and the artistic process. Needless to say I never started weaving.
My foundation is a plain canvas weaving, the children’s theatre and my teaching – a canvas weaving like the one most children have tried in kindergarten, where the back is as important as the front, where the corners are as important as the centre. In children’s theatre the point is to find the key story – the conflict and the vulnerability. Cutting down and cutting in – having the courage to do with little – and manage to tell everything with hardly anything.
I worked at the theatre for forty years, forty incredible years, where we developed Teatret Møllen into one of the finest small theatres in Denmark. We were internationally recognised and received many awards for unique performances, stage design and posters. I was also in charge of the theatre’s visual profile, programmes and posters. Through the posters Teatret Møllen has become one of most profiled and best branded theatres in Denmark.
Since the 1980s I have exhibited my posters internationally – as a participant at international poster biennials and triennials, as a jury member, as an exhibitor and with workshops in “The Artistic Process.”
My forty years at Teatret Møllen were celebrated with a retrospective exhibition at the Danish Poster Museum in the spring of 2016 and also with a retrospective exhibition at Yeh Art Gallery in New York, ‘40 Years with Theater and Posters’. I am currently on my way to Taiwan, where I am going to exhibit and give lectures. My next retrospective exhibition will be in La Paz, Bienal Del Cartel Bolivia BICeBé 2017.
For twenty years I was a part-time teacher at Kolding School of Arts and Crafts. In collaboration with the students I developed “The Artistic Process.” We worked with cut-outs – pieces of bookbinder cardboard measuring 4”x 4”. The research programmes lasted from two to six weeks. Here we had the opportunity to verbalise what we were doing, and time and time again we had the satisfactory feeling when something succeeded. I am utterly pleased to see that when my students are working on their graduation projects they often have the cut-outs in front of them as a reminder.
It was no coincidence that I applied to Kolding School of Arts and Crafts – it was a coincidence that I ended up working with theatre. My father always said: If you learn a craft it will be a foundation for all you do. For me the “loom” became my foundation. Today I see myself more as a “weaver” than when I left school, without having touched the loom for half a century. It is my foundation and my aspiration.
