Solo exhibition at ArtiJuli, Nord-Føsker in Nord-Odal in Norway
81 Embroidered Evening Sketches are made over a period from 2022, 2023 to 2024, each embroidery measures 15×21 cm and is embroidered with different types of embroidery thread on wool, photo by Jonathan Bjerstedt.
Udstillingen er støttet af Statens Kunstfond , L.F.Foghts Fond, Nationalbankens Jubilæumsfond, Beckett-Fonden og ArtIjuli.
When the world shut down during the pandemic, it was time for memories. The threads that were left were used for embroidery. The Danish textile artist Dorte Østergaard Jakobsen brought out 81 samples in A5 size from furniture fabric. They were left behind by her husband, the furniture designer Jakob Berg, who passed away far too soon. She still had something left of the rich collection of embroidery thread that her mother left behind. The 81 Embroidered Evening Sketches project took shape. These were the frameworks she set for the project:
1. Improvisation! The motif must not be drawn
2. No way back. No corrections allowed
3. Only yarn from mother’s embroidery basket
4. She could only embroider in the evening
The result was 81 brightly colored embroideries – evening sketches – which were exhibited for the first time in the dark rooms of a Stabbur, a traditional farm storehouse at Nord-Føsker in Nord-Odal. That this happened in Norway was no accident. That it happened on a farm was no accident.
“I cried on the boat when Norway disappeared in the wake. I loved being in Norway,” says Jakobsen. As a child, she spent every summer at Vestby down by the Oslofjord. She is a product of Norway! Her parents are both Danish, but met each other in Norway. They met on the dance floor, in the village hall, in 1953, when they were working on a farm in Norway. An aunt married a Norwegian and Dorte has five cousins in Norway. “They lived in a Pippi Longstocking house,” says Jakobsen. The youngsters had a lot of freedom and spent the day wildly and adventurously out in the woods and mountains: “The love and longing for Norway was such that we sang – Se Norges blomsterdal- at all occasions when we were together. Both the festive ones and the sad ones”. This summer, Odal is Jakobsen’s Norwegian valley of flowers.
Jakobsen grew up surrounded by handicrafts. Handiwork was a valued occupation. Almost every Sunday she sat in her grandmother’s small living room with her mother, sister and two aunts. They embroidered, crocheted and knitted. The best gift when she left home came from her grandmother; a cardboard box, filled with crocheted napkins, knitted socks and a duvet cover with embroidered decorations. No wonder then that she became a textile artist. She has had a prominent presence in Danish art since the 1980s, where she helped found the legendary Værkstedet Værst, which was a hotbed for a number of young artists who later became “big names”. She has moved in the borderland between art and handicraft, using textiles as her material. She has a long record of solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and interior decor tasks behind her.
While Jakobsen has let the needle fly, so have her thoughts moved down “memory lane”. The threads she has used are linked to memories of places, people, events. But the embroideries are in no way illustrations. Jakobsen has let the threads be guided by the dim current of the subconscious. But those of us who look at the Evening Sketches can still wonder what memories have trickled into this particular embroidery. The English composer Nigel Goulding, with whom Jakobsen has worked since 2006 – has composed a soundtrack for the exhibition inspired by the embroideries and the song Se Norges blomsterdal. www.nigelgoulding.com
