Layers and Light, Exhibition
Venue: Hand Made Coffee Cafe Old Gaol
By Ndalo Mbombo
Five years of boiling leaves, storing pots of rusty metals and experimenting has led to the Ingrid Schudel’s very first exhibition titled Layers and Light. The medium of Layers and Light is eco-printing, a process full of surprises, mistakes and accidents that leads to textured, layered and autumn-themed, multicoloured prints made through a natural dyeing process.
For Schudel, who works in science and environmental education, eco-printing has been a hobby up until now and it’s something she first got involved in while living in Greece in the village of Zagora in the 1990s. Thirty years later it is now the fun part of her day which has enabled her to explore what’s possible when one gets creative in the sciences.
Incorporating her interest in the ecology of plants as a science and environmental researcher with her knack for experimenting, she says: “I am trying to give a different perspective on science because many people see science as something that’s either right or wrong. Real science is experimental, it’s creative, it’s kind-of-learning-as-you-go-along,” she said describing the process of her work and artwork.
The very first print (which has already been sold) is made of leaves from the Eucalyptus tree that happens to be invasive in South Africa. These trees greedily drink up water which affects the rest of the flora and fauna around it. It was during a trip to Australia that she discovered the possibility of using gum leaves for printing, when her cousin invited her to try eco-printing.
After walking in the Blue Mountains, gathering leaves and rusty metal and wrapping everything together with string they got cooking. “We looked like two witches, in the kitchen with paper, leaves and bubbling stuff. I got completely hooked,” she said.
Now she is showcasing and selling the artwork she has been cooking up for the past five years from her experimentation with dyeing from the local Eastern Cape plants. Each art work is unique because it is the unexpected result of experimental dyeing with leaves, bark, roots, berries and lichens which are transformed by adding different found metals to the process.
See the work at the Hand Made Coffee Cafe at 40 Somerset St and meet the artist this morning who’ll be present there from 11:00 to 13:00.
