Spotlight: Mirjam Pet-Jacobs, Mixed Media Artist

Mirjam Pet-Jacobs creates mixed-media art, including fiber, inspired by things she notices in society or things happening around her. Working in a series, you’ll find Mirjam creating wall hangings, but also objects, soft sculptures, and installations.

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

As long as I can remember I’ve been creative with all kinds of techniques and materials.

In 2002 I had the opportunity to follow a two-year course for quilt teachers and makers to enlarge our knowledge and our work. We worked with different artists and materials.

During a visit of the Aboriginal Art Museum Utrecht, NL (no longer existent) I was totally struck by a special exhibition of aboriginal Mimi sculptures of tall, wooden, arm-less spirit figures covered with striped patterns.

I suddenly ‘felt’ how to make art coming from my personal vision and thought and that I could stretch the traditional definition of a quilt: layers could be of any material – the middle one even air – whilst the connecting element could be even be light, as long as the whole would remain flexible.

This realization has stimulated me to experiment. But whatever I am doing, a fiber element will always be present.

Why fiber? How did you get started?

In 1989, I saw a large log cabin quilt during a talk. I had never seen something like that and definitely wanted to make one. With a basic quilt book, I constructed a similar quilt for my baby girl, making all of the mistakes imaginable.

From that moment on I was hooked to this medium. I was able to combine all creative activities in this way. Working with my hands on something soft and flexible with repetitive movements felt so good.

What education, classes, workshops, and books have influenced your work?

Already during my studies of English at university I started following art classes at freeacademies. After my ‘discovery’ of quilting I followed a few workshops from well-known quilt artists, from traditional to contemporary techniques in the beginning years.

Next to this I always bought books, slowly replacing the ones with techniques by more theoretical ones, about art history and art philosophy. I have also bought art books and catalogues at museum to study. All these books and visits help me reflect on what is happening and what I am doing.

Some years ago I felt a little stuck, discovering that I liked to develop my drawing (drawing makes you look and see better). So I enrolled in a 5-year drawing class including art history at Academy Arendonk, Belgium, followed by 2 years of specialization. I graduated each time with drawing and painting on textiles. These studies were quite hard to do, not the drawing techniques themselves, but rather the letting go of habits and work more freely, and of being a ‘student’ again and getting critiques. The last years were during the pandemic lockdowns with just a few live classes.

Quilting was born of resourcefulness. How are you mindful about your fabric footprint?

Making do with what you have is always very important for me. It’s not only about throwing away; it’s also about only buying what you need, giving away what you don’t need and trying not to use too many polluting materials. I try to keep my footprint as small as I can in all aspects. Next generations need a future.

I have done a big project about this concept, ‘What a Waste’. One of the works in this series was ‘US – THEM’, a pile of scraps saved for 5 years and divided into white and coloured ones, symbolising polarisation in society.

For years now my work is made from all kinds of materials I have in the house. In my last work I even used (clean) left over sew able floor protection from house renovation projects.

It is a matter of course that I’ve always loved working with scraps; I save most of them. Their unexpected shapes, tints, tones and textures give a wonderful liveliness to my work.

Describe your creative space.

At the moment I’m still creating this space. We have moved houses a couple of times recently and each time my studio space became smaller which didn’t work very well. So I recently took possession of part of the living room to set up a workspace with my large studio table, a small design wall, good lighting, and some crates with fabrics and all sewing attributes. The rest of my stuff is elsewhere in the house. It’s not ideal, but I do have a very large floor space now.

My way of storing fits the way I work. I have small cardboard boxes for scraps, for white/sand, black/gray and coloured. Then there are crates with larger pieces each sorted out by colour and divided by plain, printed and surface designed. For the rest I have boxes for mixed media and for paper. I often combine fabrics with scraps of old charcoal or graphite drawings.

How do you store your body of work?

My stash of work is organized in two dry and dark attics, one for rolls, the other for boxes. All bearing labels with photos and titles. Moving houses was a good moment to get things orderly and get rid of many pieces. I have kept several key works of my development.

After 35 years a stash gets quite large. The number of sales is small (practically all my work is for sale). I’ve discussed this several times with colleagues. Some are ruthless and throw away. Some give away or try to sell with a discount. Others decide to change old work into new. And it’s not only the artwork or the textiles you will probable never want to use: it’s also the amount of good re-usable boxes for shipping, including wrapping paper, bubble wrap and protection bags.

Sometimes I create new artworks from old work; this does trigger my creativity.

The past years I have made a few installations for one-time only exhibitions. These works are often for outdoor exhibitions, and can be as time consuming to make as indoor works. The weather will always affect materials. Not worth saving.

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

Although I sometimes start playing around with some stuff, new work usually starts with an idea.

I start to collect information, from newspapers and the Internet. I write down thoughts, make sketches and sometimes mind maps, anything that comes up in my mind about the idea. I decide on the size of a work and make a very rough plan to have something to hold on to.

If it’s the first work of a series I make samples to try out materials and/or techniques. I work in a collage style on a design wall, so it’s easy to change the layout or materials.

All the time I keep an open mind, ready to improvise. So often things work out differently or you get a kind of bright idea that you need to adapt.

There are periods, when I have lots of distraction, when there seems to be no development. Development comes in waves.

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

My inspiration comes from things I notice in society or things happening around me. I usually work on one large project in a year or longer.

Next to this there are a few mini-art pieces that are nice for experiments. When I work out a concept I almost always make a series as there is so much interesting info. Sometimes the works follow one by one; sometimes, I work on them at the same time.

I never work on two different projects at the same time, as my mind needs to stay concentrated on just one concept. Sometimes a work is so time-consuming that it takes a year to get finished, when there is lots of hand stitching or complicated technical stuff.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

The favourite part of the process is when a new project starts, ideas come up and I start to work them out. I become very concentrated and get into a flow during which I forget about time and daily worries.

The most challenging part is when my sewing machine gets hiccups. I really loved my old machine, knowing exactly how to change everything manually, but it had worn out a couple of years ago. The new machine can be so frustrating. I don’t have a mainstream way of working.

How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?

Besides getting more depth of meaning in my work, the two-year course I mentioned before was a true trigger, from then on I use more non-textile materials and techniques.

It started simply. One of the assignments was to attach two non-textile materials to each other. I decided to add a flattened tin can to a piece of wooden board. I drilled holes in both and ‘sewed’ one on the other with a thick thread of self spun wool from my stash.

This made me realise that a flat metal tin can could be stitched on a quilt too. So I did.

In the first Mimi quilts (with my self-designed Mimis, long arm-less patchwork figures with ears), I stitched tin cans on the ‘head’. They were meant to be metaphors for mirrors, asking the viewer: ‘do you recognize this situation?’ about the theme of the work.

During the years my work has become visually more simple, getting more and more to the core of what I want to say with just some basic techniques I feel most comfortable with. It has become more conceptual or philosophical which might make it more difficult to grasp. It is what it is, I go with the flow of my journey.

What other materials and techniques other than textile related do you use?

I mostly make wall hangings, but also objects, soft sculptures and installations. Large and miniature work. I love to combine textiles with paper as both can be stitched and have different aspects. Other materials I have used are metal wire and mesh, tin cans, charcoal dust, very thin steel wool (not so good for my sewing machine), photo negatives, plastics, dried grasses and leaves, sugar lumps, LED lights, acrylic medium, all kind of paints, inks, charcoal and graphite pencils and crayons, rope, string, wood, pebbles, rubber bands.

I stitch by hand and machine, knot, crochet, but also glue, draw, paint, photograph, video, sound and music. All when needed for an envisioned concept, the latter always being the starting point.

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

In 2009 I took a huge interest in the concept ‘time’: what time actually is and how ‘long’ we perceive time. I started a long series dealing with several aspects.

For the video installation ‘Timeless in Time’ I was triggered by the fact that so many visitors of exhibitions asked me how long it took me to make a work. I always answered from 2 months to 2 years. I never had thought about it and was curious to find out more about this.

So I set up a plan: what was I going to make and how would I take track of the time needed?

I had decided to make a simple white silk whole-cloth quilt (110 x 110 cm), stitched in three different ways (traditionally with the needle on the top of my thimble, with large running stitches without frame and machine stitching in my style.

All the time I would keep track of the time it would take to fill one 15 x 15 cm square. (8” x 8”) with each kind of stitching. At the same time I would make a video of my stitching. Footage of 3 hours was brought back to some 5 min – as that would be the maximum span of interest for a viewer – and would be projected through two layers of silk organza on the finished quilt.

Sound was added too: I found an intriguing French chant that would reflect the meditative effect of the stitching itself and the humming of the sewing machine. At the end of the video a scroll would show a text I had written about this project.

The outcome was that machine quilting was 23x faster than traditional hand quilting.

I entered it into the 4^th European Quilt Triennial in Heidelberg, Germany, where it won 1^st prize and was acquired by the museum. They had never seen this combination of techniques in the quilt world.

The idea to using video – light – to connect layers was inspired by an artwork that I had seen in a museum (but in a totally different way – silent moving portraits of faces projected on different layers of screens).

To come back to the how long question of the visitors, I now would answer 1.5 years, most of which for thinking out the concept.

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?

Like most of us, I have these dark periods with lack of ideas and self-confidence. Taking it easy, gardening, walking in the woods and having patience get me through them.

What also helps is visiting museums and exhibitions. Art in real life feeds me, it triggers my creativity, and the energy I feel there motivates me. It’s also important to observe what is happening in society. I find it a great source of inspiration.

What keeps me interested in my own work is allowing myself the freedom to experiment and try out things. Therefore my works tends to change from time to time. Yet there will always be elements that link everything, like ways of constructing, choice of colours. It all comes from the same person. I just want to express myself and hope to be surprised.

And I do like to show my work into exhibitions; that motivates me too.

Do you enter juried shows? Do you approach your work differently for these venues?

In the past my work could be seen all over the world. Nowadays I enter just a few European juried shows, because of the expenses of shipping oversees. It’s mainly the international textile art triennials and miniature textile art exhibitions I’m interested in. It has become quite hard to get selected as the textile field of interest is growing. It’s a good challenge to make the best you can and experimental work is no problem. Apart from miniature textile exhibitions, I never make work especially for a themed show. I always work in my own theme.

Mostly my work is exhibited in the traveling shows of QuiltArt, a selected group of international textile artists of which I am a member. I have tried out some things that made installation a bit complicated, a good learning curve for me to keep things simple. Work for these exhibitions must be easy to pack and ship. Also installing must be clear.

I’m also a member of the local professional artists organisation. Once in a while it is possible to exhibit through them. If I want to sell anything I need to present smaller and affordable work, preferably framed. Textiles are not easy to sell.

Very occasionally I get an invitation from an organizer, a gallery or a museum, which is always very exciting.

In all cases, it’s important to have a cohesive body of fairly recent work available.

Do you keep track of your work? Shows that you’ve entered? Tell us what works for you.

I keep track of my work in running exhibitions in a folder of running exhibitions and in thick folders with past exhibitions. I add every show to my CV (on my computer). All my work has been photographed and is kept in files on my computer, as all info, including emails, from all exhibitions.

Everything is organized both old school and digitalized. It’s not perfect. What helps is to put the year of creation or exhibition (like 24_) in front of every file name. Searching for something from the past can be time-consuming, as I tend to forget the names of older works. But I always manage to dig it up.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

One of my art teachers at school said to me once: “Never copy others; make your own drawings.”

Now I can add: If you copy others you deny yourself something unique.

Where can people see your work?

I keep my website up to date with exhibitions (mirjampetjacobs.nl). I also post on my Instagram account. (@mirjampetjacobs)

For the rest on the QuiltArt website (quiltart.eu), on the Internet in general, and in numerous textile/mixed media/art related books and catalogues.

Interview posted September 2024