NEW THINGS ARE CREATED FROM OLD KNOWLEDGE
Felt artist Claudy Jongstra creates culture from nature, with wool, dyed by using flowers and the work of bees. “People have great careers, but they have lost their connection with nature.”
Claudy Jongstra talks like an artist does. And that is what she is. She says: “I am on a quest for deep inner knowledge.” Marleen Engbersen is her … yeah what exactly? Her manager, coach, soundboard? There is no word for it. Still they have been working together, without any label or job description, already for fifteen years. Engbersen masters the language of strategy and doing business. She says: “Building, building, building.” And: “Focus, focus, focus!”
Jongstra uses an unused small church in Peins as gallery. She welcomes commissioners and visitors there by appointment. Photograph Jeroen Musch Apart from being an artist Claudy Jongstra (1963) is a brand – a strong brand in the meantime. These last ten years she has evolved into one of the major names of the ‘Dutch design’ school, applied arts, which has become an established international name thanks to work of inter alia Rem Koolhaas, Hella Jongerius, Marcel Wanders and Victor & Rolf. Jongstra makes wall tapestries, often in sizes of several tens of meters. Felt, made from sheep wool, is her basic material.
The work and working method of Claudy Jongstra brings visions from a post-modern world in which soft art coincides with a hard agricultural existence, philosophical thinking with craft, artistic wandering with practical action. Is this what this era demands? Would this explain the international success of Jongstra who has made major works for the government building in The Hague and the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts in New York and is presently working on commissions for the new Fries Museum in Leeuwarden and the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, one of the most wealthy particular paintings collections in the world?
There is a line in the work of Jongstra. Her own herd of two hundred Drenth Heath sheep is at the beginning of said line. In the meantime the line has lengthened up to the Head Quarters of the United Nations in New York, where she had an exhibition last March. A meeting with UN Executive Director Amir Dossal in 2009 resulted into her being able to access this world stage. Dossal is the one who lobbied and succeeded in obtaining about 1.6 billion dollar for the private UN funds which finances about five hundred projects for sustainable development thanks to gifts of media giant Ted Turner and companies like Coca-Cola and Vodafone. Next winter Jongstra’s work can be seen at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The prestigious Bennington College for liberal arts in Vermont (US) has purchased work from her for a newly opened study center last month. It provides “education in the liberal arts” and “invites students to pursue and shape their own intellectual inquiries, and in doing so to discover the interconnection of things” with a focus on the most urgent world problems. The president of Bennington Elizabeth Coleman, is friends with Al Gore and Bill Gates, who will be a guest lecturer in this centre.
Jongstra, last spring when setting up her exhibition at UN headquarters in New York. Photograph Allard Detiger
The work of Jongstra is created in a small village in the North-West of Friesland, Spannum, counting not even 300 inhabitants. A small church on a terp, a main street, several side streets – that is all there is. One small street could be called Claudy Jongstra street, having a house which is used as office and wool dyes-works, here living place, a wooden design studio and a shed for the production of the wall tapestries.
“I have the feeling of being halfway my development as an artist”, Jongstra says. “We have arrived at a point which we have been working towards step-by-step”, Marleen Engbersen says. Jongstra and Engbersen intertwine the words connections continuously through their story. Jongstra: “My work is never an isolated thing. It connects to buildings which I design it for and intends to call up emotions in the persons in such buildings. Next year I will work on a ballet performance together with dancers at an American university, Dartmouth in New Hampshire. With performing arts, architecture, - in all kinds of ways I look for connections.” A romantic artist lives for art and hopes to be able to live of it. Jongstra and Engbersen followed a different strategy. Their cooperation is a permanent search for a market. Who do they wish to work for? Where should the work finds its place? Engbersen: “We focus on educational institutions like schools and universities, on health care institutions, innovative companies and political buildings”.
Why? Jongstra: “I connect natural history and cultural history and this requires a permanent study. I want to learn from the persons I work with and work for. Reversely I hope that they also want to learn together with me. Then the strongest impact can be made in education, science, culture, healthcare and politics”. No art pour l’art, no, but art with a mission. What mission? Jongstra talks about a summer class she has been given for several years on an estate in Umbria, Italy, in a Franciscan stern environment of bare rooms with a light-bulb hanging from the ceiling. With twenty persons from all over the worlds she works there: Americans, Argentinians, Japanese, musicians, physicians, psychiatrics, entrepreneurs. “The entire week we are working with natural materials. With flowers we picked ourselves we dye wool and linen, in big pots on open fire of wood we gathered ourselves. During the week we really get to talk. People have lost a direct connection with nature and they miss social structures. They are astounded to see how culture is created from nature. They have busy lifes, great careers, but they feel a huge emptiness around them: caused by superficiality, of agitated consumption”.
So, let’s all go back to nature? Engbersen: “No! we are not a retro movement. The trick precisely is to create new things from old knowledge and craft. In architecture a fascinating school has come up, called ‘healing architecture’. Both natural and built environment have an impact on the behavior of mankind. We strive for inspiration and truthfulness in our work and get this across to people.” Jongstra runs a company in Spannum with seven employees and about fifteen freelancers. They make felt from wool and spin the threads which Jongstra makes here art with. The material is colored with dye of the flowers grown by order of Jongstra. Bee colonies and beekeepers must ensure that the flowers are cross-fertilized.
Jongstra: “I experience the development of my work as a constant unwrapping of gifts. The past comprises an amazing amount of knowledge: botanical knowledge, craft knowledge. This opens a world for me behind the visible world. And I am convinced that this dive in the past also generates knowledge in its turn to develop sustainable production methods.” More specifically? Engbersen: “Feike Sijbesma, the headman of chemical group DSM is one of the greatest admirers of Jongstra’s work: of her art, the production process and our strategy. He says: a company like DSM can learn from your working method. We really will have to go deep into the essence and opportunities of natural sources which must be safeguarded to save the future of this planet.”
