Heidi Drahota began to lose interest in her passion for watercolor painting. She rediscovered textiles and now creates detailed fiber art using a variety of fiber-based materials. Her work is inspired by global political events, sharing the stories that need to be told through her pieces.
How did you get started making fiber art? Why did you choose that medium?
After years of being mainly at home in watercolor painting, I lost interest, I found it boring and had the feeling that I couldn’t say anything with it.
With the rediscovery of fabrics and the learning of wet felting, I began to turn more and more to textile materials and techniques. Just like I did before. I was able to perform all the techniques, but at first felting was my focus. I learned this technique in an autodidactic way from 2002 and after 10 years refined my skills with selected felters of the felt world.
It was not until 2008 that I began to work with textiles with these media. At the invitation of the Women’s Museum Fürth for the exhibit “Threads of Destiny”, my career as a ‘textile’ artist began – I don’t like the term.
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I developed the work ‘Cast Lead’ for the exhibition ‘Threads of Fate’. I was finally able to work in large format, which I never managed to do in painting. It was liberating. And my work had a political statement. Now I had arrived.
Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?
Many of my works are inspired by political events. I find my topics in the daily press, in the news, in society, in my personal life. Very often it is about grievances or topics that are important for our society. I often see this information intuitively as an image. For example, Cast Lead: it popped up in my mind’s eye when I heard on the news about the invasion of the Israelis of the same name, it was already completely finished. I knew I would use my technique of incorporating threads and yarns into felt. I knew the colors and I knew I was going to work big.
I knew that a destroyed city would be applied with different types of fabric and I knew it was in blood and fire.
To avoid secure starvation in Somali drought region, a young woman set out on the way on foot with her two children, the one year old girl on the back, the four year old boy on her hand.
When the boy collapsed after a two-week hike, the mother had to make a cruel choice: to save the daughter at least, she let her son back to die.
Based on a true story that I read in the newspaper.
63 x 53 from 2015
What different creative media do you use in your work?
All textile media. From wool fibres to yarns, threads to fabrics, dyed, printed, but also paper, newspaper, postcards, photos, or even found objects, such as ropes, tapes, everyday materials such as tea filters, and dye cloths. I work with almost all textile techniques. I also use classic techniques from painting and graphics.
How does your environment influence your creativity?
Everything and everyone influences me and also my creativity. I am very curious, constantly absorbing new developments, and at the same time alert to what is happening around me.
Do you do series work? How does that affect your approach?
No! Or maybe it is? What does it mean to work in series? I am working in series on the topic of hunger. But I use a wide variety of techniques, formats, materials. Here are 3 examples
I work in series with the Ecoprint technique. But I use different formats or materials. Here are 3 examples:
Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?
This varies greatly, but often an inner image emerges for inspiration. I sketch them and decide on the techniques and materials. It’s always an exciting process. At the same time, playful phases can also occur.
Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
No, I’m certainly not a finisher, only when a competition deadline is looming. There are also works that have to ‘rest’.
Currently I have at least 8 such projects. I come to a point where something doesn’t go so smoothly, the composition is not coherent or a supposedly suitable technique is not feasible. Then this work lies sometimes for years, if necessary.
Describe your creative space.
I have the great luxury of being able to work in different rooms. On the one hand, I have a very large studio not far from my home, the room for felting and quilting, but also for teaching and exhibiting.
At home I still have a large room for sewing and knitting, where my fabrics and wool yarns are stored.
How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?
As already mentioned, I was bored with watercolor painting. I had the feeling that I was painting the same thing for the ’25th time’. When the moths ate up my expensive red sable hair brushes, I saw it as a sign to change artistically. The day had come, I packed away my painting materials and set off in search of new shores – to my new artistic world: large-format, textiles and political.
Where can people see your work?
My homepage is www.heidi-drahota.de
And you can find me on Instagram and Facebook
I am currently involved in various group exhibitions:
Stitch by stitch to the miracle
Embroidery Stories
Textile Museum Helmbrechts, Germany
04 June – 22 September 2024
Threads of Empowerment: Conflict Textiles’ International Journey
Participation in the exhibition with ‘Never Again!’ and ‘Cast Lead’
Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
21st June 2024 – 10th January 2025, a collaboration Conflict Textiles with National Museum of Northern Ireland / Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Bearing Whitness
Participation in the exhibition with ‘Anytime and Anywhere… the universality of Anne Frank’
SAQA Global from 2024 to 2027
Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Branchburg, New Jersey
Aug 28, 2024 – Dec 13, 2024
Wide Horizon IX
Participation in the exhibition with ‘The Green Belt’
SAQA EME from 2024 to 2027
The European Patchwork Meeting,12-15 September 2024
Memory of Childhood
Online exhibition with ‘Stalingrad-Papa, Detail’, online since 31 March 2023 on the OZQN website
This Land is My Land, This Land is Your Land
‘This Land is my Land, this Land is your Land’, is a Benefit Auction piece for SAQA. The Auction is running til Oct 6th. www saqa.com/auction
Interview posted September 2024
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