Dolls and puppets
Before settling on her current style and mediums, Lizel experimented with a lot of art forms, including dolls and puppetry. ”It started with doll making,” she says, “Or maybe making paper dolls. You draw the dresses, and then you cut them out and then you put them on your model doll and then you stick bits of fabric to it. Puppetry I came to in high school. I went to art school in Pretoria, and there wasn't really a subject like puppetry, it was sculpture, so I was thrown in with the sculpture kids. And sometimes they gave some quite profound topics of form and line. I had to incorporate this with toilet paper and tampons! So that started as a teenager.”
Discovering textiles
Lizel first started work in a chicken factory before finding her way to textiles, “I actually wanted to go and work on a kibbutz, but my grandmother refused, so I got work in Norfolk,” she explains. “And then it was a weird route to textiles really. I tried little odd jobs and things, always had my sewing kit, always had my drawing things with me and always collected. Charity shops were a great thing for me in the UK. I got into a nursing course, but you can't really get too creative in nursing, I always say, because you might end up killing somebody. I had all that creative energy, so I joined an evening class in textile techniques at Skelmersdale College. These ladies all had purple hair. I kind of see them a bit like the crones in Macbeth, all huddling around.
It was just so amazing as I never really looked at fibre in this way. And then (the teacher) started talking about what happens if you take this apart and you twist it, or you set it on fire, or you mix it with glue, and I think that started it all and I never stopped.”
The Karoo and creating from memory
Lizel found inspiration in a desert region of South Africa called The Karoo. “I think when I got to the Karoo,” Lizel says, “it was a very difficult time of my life. And it was exactly the right thing at the right time. This place bowled me over. I'm still in love. I still have butterflies in my tummy. I get so excited because you can step 20 steps left, and it will be completely different from 20 steps to your right. And with the little succulents there, it's like an undersea garden, and I remain fascinated. I think the healing came in the quietness and being able to then just sit and reflect. Nothing is as freaky as nature. You don't really need much. Taking little walks, just looking. It reminded me again about visual memory because we often get taught to draw from life or draw from a photo, but you should go away and try to think what you can remember and then put it down, and you'll be quite surprised.”
This connection to nature is vitally important for Lizel, “I think you're born with certain concepts and certain things you've just always been attracted to. And you can't even remember why. So when you're very small, it might be a smell, that might be something that makes you feel safe. Having had the luxury or the privilege to grow up in a rural setting is so important. And I never forget this because I've lived in cities and I would find this very stressful and very stifling. But even in cities, you see nature and I like to notice those kinds of things as well. Nature always creeps in.”
Lizel's dream
Lizel has a dream to cover the Voortrekker Monument in South Africa, “That's a dream I've got, and it's gonna be a tough one to live up to,” she says, “but I'm throwing this out to the universe. So, ladies out there, my big dream is to cover the Voortrekker Monument. If you know South Africa's old monuments, it's an amazing building. In South Africa, things get quite political, so we're gonna have to look at a good spiel. But I'd love to make a Dutch Delft, and denim toasted teak cosy for this. If we cover this monument, we may be focusing attention on this and heritage and maybe working together, all the women and men. There are so many guys sewing as well, just getting together with the fibre stuff would be pretty amazing. And that scale and that size. That would be quite out of my comfort zone.”
About Lizel von Wielligh