LE PROGRES ET LES DEPECHES DU JURA / May 18th 2003

Claudie Maigrot,The Good Fairy of Fabric.

Art Festival at the cultural center of Bersaillin: Works by Claudie Maigrot will be on exhibit until the 29th of May. Not to be missed by any lover of tapestries, even though the technique that is brought to these works is not traditional.

Once upon a delightful time, in the days of magic spells, flowers spoke to men in enchanted gardens and stones of madness were extracted with long pincers from demented souls. The fairy, Mélusine, intoxicating and venomous, conversed with her psyche, while into other stones, in these days of Black Plague, we struggle to cut the phrase “ Here Lies “ .

Near the hearth, chess games, imported by the Crusaders, occupied The evenings of noble knights and gentle damsels, while in Somme the English archers of Edward III crushed the French army of Phillip VI. Disastrous Crécy! In shadowy cloisters, monks embroidered goodly numbers of manuscripts for the hungry demon that would nibble on the illuminated pages at night. The monumental ship of stone cleaved a sea of wheat on the immense plain of Chartres.

Everywhere everyone lived the medieval life, sometimes merry often destitute. At last - hear ye this tale - Lady Godiva, the Countess of Chester, having implored her husband Léofric time after time to lessen the heavy taxes burdening Coventry, at last gained his consent, on condition that she rode horseback through the streets of the town - completely nude. And so she did, daring and magnificent.

These histories and legends, these charms of days long past, these monsters of evil and these goodly fools, Claudie Maigrot summons them through her Ornamental Tapestries. The exhibition, which began a few days ago at Bersaillin, is a collection of twenty pieces of respectable size (she could not convey the largest ones) which bring the Middle Ages back to life - its sweetness, its brutality, its fables and its lively parables.

But don’t expect warp and weft, a shuttle, or a loom. Claudie Maigrot creates her tapestries by applying pieces of fabric, cut from her hand-drawn patterns, onto a heavy canvas background. Patchwork then ? Not at all ! The stitching is on the outside of the fabric, not only visible, but an important element of the design. Thus a dense zigzag stitch recalls the veins of pewter and lead of the great stained glass windows of a cathedral.

An original technique, achieving effects of surpassing beauty ! The artist unburdens herself- “This reconciles my love of ancient stained glass visions and fine cloth of great beauty. I draw, I stitch, I embroider and inlay”. And her tales are sung by the entwined voices of silk, lace, satin, cashmere, leather, pearls, and a brocade of gold and silver threads.

She adds that this passion, which seized her thirteen years ago like the touch of an angel’s wing, burns within her every hour of the day, every work requiring weeks, or even months to complete, in the manner of the copyists of the illuminated manuscripts, the mosaists and the master glass workers of the Middle Ages who did not count the hours. «When I am with a rare manuscript or at Chartres, I feel myself at home ». She speaks without nostalgia, conscious that these medieval symbols still have the power to speak to us of the horror and the beauty of today’s world. It would not do to reveal too much about this woman who was already collecting fabrics at the age of ten, who learned to experience the emotive power of objects through her father’s antiques, who sampled sociology, teaching English and travelling, in short, one who embraced tapestry as one might embrace religion: who, only after having experimented with life felt that she had matured sufficiently to choose between the absolute and nothingness.

Her artistic composition would inspire a set designer; we are captivated by the boldness of her motifs and her devotion to detail; her use of colours calls to mind a Japanese garden. What else can be said? Our gaze, most certainly, will fall upon innumerable treasures as we journey through this artist’s magic creations.

An exhibition one should approach like a tightrope walker; it is subtle and glitters like the threads of a cobweb.

Bernard Cabiron