News
“Jongstra’s work enables us to acknowledge holistic, ethical, political, even religious aspects, that do not intrinsically belong to materials, but that material affordances draw out in the humans that work them into something.” - prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann (University of Groningen)
In 2001, Claudy Jongstra and Claudia Busson established their studio in Friesland, a rural northern province of The Netherlands, maintaining a flock of rare, indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep. Studio Claudy Jongstra combines traditional knowledge and craft with modern approaches.They also cultivate historical dyer crops in collaboration with biodynamic farmers in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. Jongstra and Busson have a soil-to-soil philosophy, no-waste approach and inclusive way of collaborating and creating a community based sustainable chain.
Studio Claudy Jongstra itself is a community with artists in residence, interns, fellow artists, farmers, researchers, and students from all over the world and from the immediate surroundings.
Biodynamic farming is the healthy core of earth-based values that forms the starting point for high quality plant material which produces the iconic vibrant colours for Claudy Jongstra’s charismatic woolfelted artworks.
Transfer of knowledge to new generations by teaching in a workshop setting, while at thesame time archiving and safeguarding ancient recipes offers a sustainable educational model with opportunities to build a better and more inclusive society. In a region where large scale farming is dominant and the land exploited intensively, LOADS (founded in September 2022) is a self-sufficient place of creativity and constantly developing new approaches to sustainable, conservation-based livelihood generation for rural and urban communities.
Woad - European indigo - the color of water, the sea, and the sky are a starting point for our adventure. Indigo is probably the dye that captures the imagination more than any other. The alchemy of the oxidiation process, when the cloth emerges from the dye bath and changes from yellow, through green, to blue, is magical.
Program
Dates : April 21 2023 or September 22, 2023
Group : 20 p maximum
Time:
10.30-11.00am: Introduction, tea, coffee and homemade sweets
11-13pm: discovery and experimentation through various workshops: wool felting, spinning, weaving, plantbased dyeing and watercolor painting
13-13.45: organic lunch with the holistic chef Katrien van der Eerden
13.45-15.30: continue development and creation
15.30-16: debate, discussion and call to action
Address :
LOADS
Lytse Buorren 23, Spannum
Price :
350 € per person
including organic lunch, coffee, tea and all materials
Subscription :
Claudy Jongstra is opening her archive exclusively for a sales exhibition in collaboration with art magazine See All This. This Archive Sale is your chance to purchase a unique work from the artist's archive. There are, for example, two works from 2002, the very first artworks Claudy Jongstra produced. Violet Field (250 x 215 cm) is about material and landscape and Ornament Blue (210 x 210 cm) represents the start of a phase of research into the effect of gloss versus matt and the tension between a controlled ornamental form language and organic use of material. This sales exhibition will help make LOADS possible. This new extension of Studio Claudy Jongstra is an indispensable and dynamic location for masterclasses, lectures and experiments on educational (like a new MBO master Sustainability) and agricultural projects, encouraging biodiversity and bringing back historical dye plants, crafts, making processes and recipes.
Buy a ticket here that gives access to the exclusive preview of the Archive Sale on 2 March 2023 at Droog, Staalstraat 7b Amsterdam, from 16:30-19pm.
https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tickets-see-all-this-x-claudy-jongstra-archive-sale-preview-530489427157
A parceled patchwork of golden-yellow grain fields consisting of 195 blocks of gold. The monumental wool felted artwork entitled '18 Carat' shines like a warm sun. The work is part of the exhibition ‘Ode aan het landschap’, in which various artists and photographers express their fascination for the landscape, the effect of light, the colors, the vastness and the dynamics. But they also provide critical comments on the rising water in lower polders (Rem van de Bosch), the peat meadows that are in danger of disappearing (Ketter & Co), or intensive agriculture that is disastrous for biodiversity, as in Jongstra's 18 Carat.
The works are on show till March 31, 2023 in Provinciehuis Paviljoen Welgelegen in Haarlem.
Photo: Kenneth Stamp
@Claudy Jongstra, '18 Carat', 2022, 2.60 X 2.70 m, wool from Drenthe heath sheep, silk, onion skins, walnut, madder
For sale through gallery Fontana, Amsterdam
Studio Claudy Jongstra feels very honored. On December 7, the internationally renowned Interior Design Hall of Fame Awards 2022 were presented in the Glasshouse in New York to four creatives from the interior and architecture world. Claudy Jongstra received the 'special award' because of her impressive international oeuvre, the sustainable, inclusive, circular and no-waste way of working, and her activism. The other laureate who have also made significant contributions to the interior design and architecture world are: Yves Béhar, founder and designer of Fuseproject, Mavis Wiggins, creative director of TPG Architecture and Will Meyer and Gray Davis, founders of studio Meyer Davis.
The documentary on Claudy Jongstra will soon be shown at DesignTV by SANDOW.
The interview of Giovanna Dunmall with Claudy Jongstra for Interior Design magazine online can be read here:
https://interiordesign.net/designwire/claudy-jongstra-2022-interior-design-hall-of-fame/
The textile tapestry resembles a patchwork of golden yellow wheat fields or a shining sun consisting of 195 blocks of gold. During art and design fair PAN Amsterdam 2022, gallery Fontana puts a number of works by Studio Claudy Jongstra in the spotlight, including this large work of art entitled '18 Carat'. The hand-felted work of wool from Drenthe heath sheep is colored with natural dyes that produce these warm sunny colours. Fontana also shows 'Northern Bloom III', in which flowers seem to bud in all kinds of colors. The golden brown of walnut, the orange-pink of the madder root, the carmine red of cochineal and the indigo blue of woad, give the wool-felted work of art the vibrant shades of color that are so characteristic of Studio Claudy Jongstra. For example, the artist is a forerunner in the field of the regeneration of rare woad cultivation in the Netherlands, together with farmers from the Beersche Hoeve in Brabant. Until the 17th century, woad was the most important supplier of the blue pigment for dyeing wool in Western Europe, but almost completely disappeared from the Netherlands after the arrival of indigo in the textile industry. Jongstra brings this 'blue gold' back into our landscape and into her artworks.
Studio Claudy Jongstra at Galerie Fontana, PAN Amsterdam, November 20-27, 2022.
@ Claudy Jongstra, Northern Bloom III (2022): Drenthe heath sheep, merino and mohair wool, silk, woad, walnut, cochineal, madder root, 1.70 X 1.05 m.
@ Claudy Jongstra, 18 Carat (2022): wool from Drenthe heath sheep, onion skins, walnut, madder, 2.60 X 2.70 m.