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The Patchwork Girl

​Hi Smites


I hope you're all well and stitching away! This week I wanted to tell you about an interesting article I read in Look magazine, which is the magazine of the NSW Art Gallery. I'm a member of the gallery, and I always love getting the magazine because its full of interesting articles about art and artists. 


This month there's an article about Raquel Caballero. Raquel is a Sydney artist, who the gallery touts as someone who "celebrates craft as a skilled art". That's what really caught my eye with this article - it hit me right in the feels, because nothing makes me wilder than the commonly held belief that there is somehow a great divide between craft and art. That someone who "crafts" is somehow lesser, more rustic and lacking in refined skill. That something that is a craft, like quilting, can never be an art form. I take some serious offence to that I have to say - I won't elaborate here as I've elaborated before and there's only so many of my earnest sermons you can all be expected to take :D


Raquel's practise is described as sitting somewhere between textile art, sculptural installation and what she calls "hardcore craft". She makes art to please herself, which personally I think is the only way to do it. She works in textiles but also in papier maché, papercraft and found objects. The images below are from a previous exhibition of hers, Carpet Diem. You can see that although the "carpets" all look like quilts, when you zoom they are mainly made from papier maché. If you're interested in reading more there is a review of the show here https://www.memoreview.net/reviews/carpet-diem-by-talia-smith



If you did my 2023 BOM, The Secret Garden, you'll know that I have been on a but of a discovery voyage of the books of my own childhood for some time. I've always wanted to write a children's book, and I've been working towards that for ages (the quilting jobs take up a lot of my time!). I started at the beginning of Covid to re-read many of my childhood favourites and re-experience them as an adult, and that's what led me to make the Secret Garden quilt. It was inspired by (of course) the book The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. If you want to read the book, or read it to your kids/grandkids, I have a few leftover copies from the BOM still available at a reduced price at my website. https://www.sarahfielke.com/product-page/the-secret-garden


Anyway. When I read about Raquel's ​upcoming exhibition at AGNSW, I liked her even more because its based on a book from her childhood! Here is an extract from the article:


The exhibition is inspired by her favourite book from childhood, L Frank Baum's 1939 The Patchwork Girl of Oz. The titular character, Scraps, is sewn from a patchwork quilt, stuffed and brought to life by magic. Intended as a magician's servant, Scraps is given cleverness powder by a munchkin, and rather than being obedient becomes hard to contain; impatient for adventure and bossily proud of her patchwork skin. "The main thing that attracted me to it is her sense of freedom", says Caballero. "It was really a book that helped me escape reality when I was a kid and put me in this fantasy world. And I read it and read it and read it."


Caballero's copy of the book is well worn. Now out of print, it's cover is from the 1980's film Return to Oz, and inside ity biro letters read "Raquel 1991". The map of Oz too has been coloured in by hand. "The show is for kids but I would never make anything that wasn't personal. And I would never make anything that condescends to a kid", she says. Caballero hopes she can bring the story to life for a new generation. A three-metre patchwork girl doll will form the centerpiece of the exhibition, her floppy limbs inspired by a ragdoll that she found in an antique shop in the northern NSW town of Ulmarra. Over six months, Scrap's surface will become the subject of a shared activity, with visitors embellishing patchwork squares to be sewn together into an elaborate dress by the artist.


I think I would like Raquel if I met her. Of course I had to go and order a copy of The Patchwork Girl of Oz immediately - I hadn't ever read it or indeed known that Baum wrote it, but something about the line "bossily proud of her patchwork skin".... I feel like I need a sweatshirt with that on the front! When the book arrives it may well be the start of a new quilt... you never know. It sounds like it right up my alley. Bossily proud of her patchwork skin.



Meantime, if you're in Sydney, the exhibition (which will contain other works as well as the Patchwork Girl) is free and on at the gallery from September 6 to February 8. If you aren't in Sydney, you can find her on Instagram @raquelcab


Happy Wednesday peeps, and don't forget to enter the two giveaways - I will draw them next week!


Sarah x​

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