Star in the Firmament

In the last two weeks I have been honored to have met and broken tortillas with a wonderful artist. Wilcke Smith has always been a bright star in my fiber arts universe. Wilcke, like me, never went to school to study art. but she learned on the job as a journalist in advertising layout departments of a couple of eastern newspapers and then in an advertising firm. She worked for five years as a designer in a large interior design firm in Texas. In 1954 her husband's work took them to Albuquerque where she struck out on her own as an artist with already a reputation as a creative designer.

Wilcke didn't always embroider, but like a lot of us learned some stitches as a child. It wasn't until she moved to Albuquerque that she started putting embroidery into her fiber art. In Celebrating the Stitch: Contemporary Embroidery of North America by Barbara Lee Smith (one of my teachers and another star in my pantheon), you can see a short blurb and picture of one of Wilcke's works.

In July I was asked by a friend of an acquaintance (Cheryl Sharp and Carole Dam respectively) of mine to interview Wilcke Smith and take some photographs for an article in Needle Arts. In July I was nose deep in preparing emotionally for 100th birthday parties (not mine!), for weddings, family reunions, and wedding receptions for my only daughter. I was not prepared to do the leg work for someone else's writing. I had never met Wilcke and didn't want to disturb her (or me). But I got through the most emotional period of my life since 2003 and got on with life. I called Wilcke (she is listed in the phone book just as mere mortals are) and I asked to meet her.

I went over one Tuesday morning. I interviewed and photographed. She showed me her smallish studio in her smallish apartment. And we started really talking and laughing. We hit it off. It was great. We talked about her early life, her early career, and we talked about art philosophies. We talked about stitching. I went home, wrote up a short three paragraphs to add to the article and emailed them and the photograph to Needle Arts.

A week and a half later (last Sunday night) she came over for dinner. She met Mike whom she seemed quite taken with. Even Cosmo the cat fell in love with her. We talked about collecting other people's art. We talked about me! She was most generous in her appraisals of my work. She called my work rich and textured with hidden depths. We sent her home with two meals of Mike's white chicken chile and chocolate cake in a doggy bag.

Wilcke is 90 years old (or thereabouts) and looks and acts about 75. She lost her husband of over fifty years two years ago. She lives in a sumptuous apartment in a sumptuous assisted living complex, and she is eager to talk to another artist who understands what she says. Go Wilcke!