“Slavic mushroom pickers”
05.2023size: 79x118cm
techniques: cotton, polyester threads, cotton filling, raw edge appliqué, free-hand quilting and embroidery, acrylic paints, fabric inks
based on photo (National Digital Archive) from 1930s, author of photo unknown.
Every year, Carrefour Européen du Patchwork organizes an international competition for the best artistic fabric. This year the theme was tribes.
The portrayed three Slavic women - grandmother, mother and daughter - symbolize extraordinary female resourcefulness, community and taking from nature. Seemingly barefoot but with baskets full of forest mushrooms. At different ages but working together. Able to find tasty and nutritious food in the forest, which permanently found a place on the Slavic holiday table. (There is no Christmas dinner or bigos without dried mushroom soup.) They also embody the need to enjoy nature freely but with total respect for it. This is something that we, as a society, have recently begun to lack.
