Spotlight: Paola Machetta, Improv Quilter

For Paola Machetta, engineering and art go hand-in-hand. The connection is activating the creative part of our brain in problem solving. She is a full-time engineer. In her free time she draws, engages in photography and creates detailed improv quilts.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

When I was at primary school, in a short essay about my wish for my profession as a grown up, I wrote: “I would like to be an artist”. At that time, it was fascination for a bohémienne lifestyle.

At high school, I enrolled to specialisation on maths and drawing, both with pleasure. When the moment came to select university faculty, I had in mind options of architecture and engineering.

I chose engineering. I am a full-time engineer, since more than 20 years: I am a microscopist, and I have a professional relationship with images. I see the connection between STEM and art in problem solving: both activate the creative part of our brain.

Somebody may think that I am divided in two parts, but they are capable to cooperate.

The artistic part is like a playful baby inside me, alive and kicking, who continuously tries to pour out and, when it reaches the outside, it floods everything.

The engineer is the grown up and socially acceptable part of me, who luckily manages well to keep things in order and under control. Sometimes life is too much even for the engineer: in that moment, I may allow the instinct of the baby to take the driver’s seat. I must admit that there are situations when the baby does it better, such as when it’s reached the point that you must take care of primary needs.

When these two parts of me join forces, the most powerful situation arrives: I have an aerial view of reality, and a control of the situation, such that I feel as if I were the pilot of a plane.

You work across many media. Do you have a favorite? When you decide to create, how do you decide what you want to work on?

I have been drawing since I was a child. My first photography solo show was in the year 2000. I started quilting in the year 2017.

With drawings I made galleries in my hometown, with photography I made scientific communication galleries (microscopy-and-art exhibits, included a real microscope to look into) travelling all my country. With quilting I had the great pleasure of recognition abroad, thanks to the well organised quilting community, which provides a fertile path for connection with talented quilters and exhibition opportunities.

Despite the different starting date and different levels of recognition in the three media, I love them all the same.

I am aware that, with different media, I can express different feelings and achieve different results. With quilting I privilege themes of sense of place, effects of light, and colour-based emotions. With drawing I can have a direct connection with the mind, I can collect story-telling details, and I can use shape and line with the highest freedom. Photography is a place to play with composition and with reality. I recently restarted a photography habit (which I had 20 years ago) with natural found objects: in a few days, I immediately expanded my creative supplies for photography purpose, such as flowers, seeds and berries.

I feel that there is a strong connection between the three media. What I practice in one medium influences my way of working with another one. For example, I now incorporate fabric from my quilting table into my photo compositions.

How long have you been quilting and designing? How did you get started?

I have been quilting since the day a quilt shop opened in my hometown, near my home. I soon became a friend of the quilt shop owner, and we have shared some initiatives since then. I purchase mainly solids but also graphic texturized prints.

I have started to dig deeply into quilting during the pandemic, because it was a way to keep the mind free to wander, while being closed at home; it was perfect, because it could be practiced in-house.

At the same time, in that period, I got connected with the quilting community: it was an expansion of my network throughout all the world, it’s been a great experience, that transformed my initial baby steps with quilting into a profound relationship with this medium: I think that you learn more when you have many occasions for sharing, for comparison and feedback.

Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?

With all the three media I often represent, more or less directly, my experience from being outdoors and in connection with the natural world.

My favourite inspiration places are rivers, the seaside, a walk in the woods. But also, the historical buildings in the pedestrian area of my hometown, the migrating birds, the reflections of sunset on the windows.

I distill feelings, light play, observed shapes, exploration paths. One of my favourite graphic languages is the use of textures: I think, also thanks to my professional practice, that I’m an expert of textures, if I may say so.

Texture, in my creative work, becomes a nonverbal language, open for many possibilities of manipulation.

When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?

I am much in love with improvisation. I started quilting as an improv quilter, and I’ve always continued with improvisational composition approach. I contributed to co-create Quilt Improv Studio with my quilting friends Carla Beretta and Giovanna Nicolai, with the aim to play and to learn how to use this approach at best, and to connect with people sharing the same passion. 

Describe your creative space.

My creative space is the studio in my home: an extra room, that I share with my husband. There are two desks, one for me and one for him.

His half of the room is filled with instruments: his creative playtime is spent on music. It’s fun to mention this dual presence, because his musical compositions may become inspirational for me.

My half of the room has a library filled with transparent plastic boxes, which contain my fabric stash of solids, but also other material for different creative media, such as paper sketchbooks of many sizes, pencils and pens of all colour and thickness, mini boxes with found objects from the walks in the wood. There is a library section with many books on art, such as books dedicated to design principles or to abstract expressionism. 

Scraps. Saver? Or be done with them?

I am a saver of scraps, and I like small shapes and tiny pieces to become part of my compositions, influencing the final result, thanks to their size type.

Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies? 

I like to keep all things in order. My solid fabric stash is organised by value. It’s been a difficult change, initially, to switch from organising fabric by hue, towards organising fabric by value; but, at the end, it helped me a lot. There was an “a-ha” moment, when I learnt to make compositions based on value, instead of being based on colour. It became clear to me how true is the saying: “value makes all the work and colour takes all the merit”.

How do you manage your creative time? Do you schedule start and stop times? Or work only when inspired?

My creative time is my free time, among my office work hours and time with people of my life. I expand my creative time to all-day-mode during holidays. 

I don’t need to wait for a moment to be inspired, before starting a creative work, because I have so many projects in my mind… that I may keep myself busy until retirement age, to complete only part of them.

When time is well available and the mind is clear, I see a free landscape ahead of me. I explore. My ideas grow up to exploding: I envision not only new starts, but full projects from beginning to end (which, if made for real, would occupy several months each). I don’t take note of any of the projects that pop up in my mind, because they easily become too many, and writing them would look like making pressure and queue. So, only the creative ideas that, from the inner world, push stronger for their time, become the existing ones.

Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?

I am a finisher. When I was at the university, I did one exam at a time. Since when I engaged with quilting, I started and ended one quilt at a time.

For the first time, this year I have three quilt UFOs and one drawing UFO, due to the more complex work-life balance I am experiencing now. This drives me a bit crazy, because I don’t want to have any UFOs! I feel attached with all my works in progress on the design wall, and I long for them. I know that, with a bit of patience, I will finish all those beloved projects. 

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

Usually, I don’t allow myself to start a new project before I complete the old one. I get so deeply engaged with the current project, that there is not any more room in my routine (and on my studio desk) for others to receive follow-up.

I am surprised of how much closely I can cultivate a relationship with objects, like the relationships one keeps with people. If I observe my practice, I notice that I keep alive the relationship with my creative work at least on daily basis. I am even returning to it more than one time at a day, when possible, with small adjustments made by hand, or with after thoughts in my mind.

If you think that you water plants every day, and you walk in your routine streets every day, you realize that you have a map in your mind that reminds you where you shall soon return. Noted that, you may not be much surprised anymore, that relationships are possible with physical things. We are probably wired to be capable to keep tight relationships with the people we embrace, and with the spatial and material resources that the natural world and workmanship give us. 

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?

A quilt typically starts from random piecing of solids, embedding some simple shape. I repeat shapes (until I get a bit of a texture) and I try a starting point on the design wall. I later include more elements and shuffle. I keep possibilities open for long time and I change setup many times.

On some occasions, I’m near to finishing a large area, with hundreds of pieces positioned with pins, but, if I’m not satisfied, I unpin and tear it all down, to start again from blank wall. During these phases, many weeks pass by.

My personal experience of the same period influences the final result. Something that I have seen outside, or felt inside, can resonate with a zone of the work. I may choose to reinforce the parts that express this resonance.

This is the moment when I infuse meaning in the composition. I decide the title. The work is still in progress and is allowed to host more transformation. If it is a work open for months, it may contain many stories or even change the meaning, even if the old steps remain embedded some way.

Then, I conclude: empty parts need to be completed. I use the sewing machine in a way that tries to keep the exact position for each piece. Even if I work improvisationally (I don’t match corners, direction of seams seems random), in the last steps I use a high accuracy level, even if viewers may notice the floating randomness more.  

You are a full-time engineer and have a variety of interests outside of work. How do you keep all the balls in the air? Is there one you wish you could drop? Which one will you never give up?

When there is “too much”, I de-escalate project effort size from quilting to drawing and, if it’s not enough, from drawing to photography. This allows me to still have the finish of the day: I can stay creative even with reduced time or energy level, and I place artwork to the moment when it gives you energy back. Because a finish is a moment of satisfaction. Whatever effort you put in, art is capable to give you energy back.

What I would not give up is trying to make a positive use of creations. Independently from project size (a quilt for shows or juried calls is more complex to be made), I look for a purpose in the social realm.

My preferred scope for art and craft is for sensibilization, or together with public initiatives. I admire Lorraine Woodruff-Long, interviewed on Create Whimsy too, for her capability to successfully combine art and activism.

One example in that direction, was the quilt plus photography show I made, dedicated to the Tagliamento river (I didn’t feel any boundary between different techniques: the subject topic was the same for all displayed works) to support a petition asking that Tagliamento, the last wild river of Europe, be enrolled as UNESCO heritage; related craft was a photographic e-book I made, for free download.

Where can people see your work?

My work is visible on my website https://paola.gallery/ .

You can find a blog with quilt stories. In the gallery section dedicated to the solo shows I made in my life, using different media, it may be gained an impression of what was recurrent or changing in more than 20 years of creative practice.

The images from my first photo gallery, dated year 2000, were products of an analogic reflex camera. Photos taken at the microscope are shown at this link.

The most recent period was widely dedicated to quilting: my work had the opportunity to be part of juried shows. You can see some of my works now travelling in USA, Europe and more, with the SAQA exhibits: Camouflage, Abstraction: Textural Elements, WIDE HORIZONS IX, Color in context: Red, HAVEN.

I have an Instagram profile @thecultofquilt that, in the latest period, has been place for an instant diary of feelings, expressed with photo shots.

I also contribute to the website https://quiltimprov.art/ that collects storytelling and results of improv quilting games arranged with friends and connections from all around the world. We are proud that many works, initially made by participants to the Quilt Improv Studio games, were later selected for quilt shows.

Maybe the reason for my bigger interest in quilting in the recent period stems from the opportunity to strengthen relationship and mutual learning within the quilting community. I would like to say, to the welcoming quilting community: “Thanks”! This is why my website, even if it includes results from all the media that I use, is titled to cultivating quilts.

Interview posted October 2024