Remembering
JUTTA FAULDS
28 December 1933 – 12 December 2021

Jutta Hulverscheidt was born in Germany on 28 December 1933. She was an only child. Her creative journey began at a young age as she watched her mother and grandmother stitching and knitting. This became part of her daily life as she joined them in the habit of sewing and knitting whenever they could.

After attending school for ten years (in the 1950s girls in Germany were not encouraged to finish school and consider an academic future), Jutta wanted to attend Art School. Her father did not support this wish, and being an authoritarian, what he said went, and so Jutta took on an apprenticeship at Shell Oil and became an Industrial Chemist. She never resented her Father’s thoughts about Art School and in retrospect felt that it was probably the best thing that could have happened to her career, as a ‘box’ would surely have been waiting for her to be put into. She often said that her scientific training and knowledge was in fact extremely useful in many aspects of her creative life.

After a four year apprenticeship and qualifying as an Industrial Chemist, Jutta went to the United States of America where her Godfather had arranged a job for her in Princeton. It was here that she met Bruce Faulds who was studying towards a PHD. In 1959 they were married in the United States. They returned to Bruce’s home country, South Africa, where Bruce took up a teaching post in Durban. Jutta started working at Darville Waste Water Works, where she remained until 1969, when she joined her husband on a year’s sabbatical in Thunder Bay, in Ontario, Canada. This was followed by a year in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where she joined the Campus Women’s group which was run by lecturers in Architecture. They were all doing creative embroidery. Jutta had been unaware that stitching could be anything more than functional, and so began her trial and error journey of exploring stitching as an art form.

In mid-1970, on her return to Pietermaritzburg, Jutta began to explore Machine embroidery. She returned briefly to Darville, but it was after her first exhibition at Art in the Park in 1970 that she began creating as a full time occupation. She met fibre artist Celia de Villiers, amongst others, at Art in the Park where Celia’s husband was exhibiting his sculpture.

Exhibiting her pressed flower collages at Art in the Park was followed by two further exhibitions of her work at St. Saviours Church and at a craft exhibition at architect Robert Brusse’s home in Bellaire, Durban. At this stage, Jutta was making small, hand stitched landscapes.

Jutta had a yearning to learn how to draw, and joined local art teacher Jane Heath for the following three years where she attended drawing classes. Jutta made ‘Hippy clothes’ to finance her Art Classes and continued with making small hand stitched ‘paintings’. She maintained that it was Jane Heath who taught her everything, including attitude. She taught Jutta that anyone can do anything but it should be taken seriously, as success is all to do with approach and attitude. Jane Heath taught Jutta to think ‘out of the box’ and to ‘just do it’. This became Jutta’s mantra.

During the early 1980s Jutta felt the need to make bigger art works. She started creating more fabric works and joined the Spinners and Weavers and Quilters Guilds. She was also a founding member of the Midlands Art and Craft Society (MACS), which was established in 1984. This was an organisation set up to assist crafters and artists who had no formal training. She made a quilted jacket for the launching exhibition in Hilton, which resulted in a comment by sculptor Henry Davies, who encouraged her to explore and push the conventional boundaries of traditional quilting.

Jutta took up the challenge and began to make ‘Wearable Art’, collars and ceremonial stoles that could be worn or exhibited as wall quilts. These works were more than just functional objects, as viewers could engage with them as artworks on a visual level.

A further push to explore her creative abilities came from a fellow quilter at the first National Quilt exhibition in Durban, who asked Jutta when she was going to make a ‘real quilt’. She exhibited Izithunzi and The Spirit of the Oil covered Seabird (which was influenced by the Gulf War) on the Quilting and Beyond Exhibition at the Tatham Art Gallery in 1993. Both of these works furthered her exploration of the possibilities of ‘quilting’. Jutta stopped formally ‘quilting’ in 2004 when her husband Bruce was killed. She allowed her subscription to the Guild to lapse as her mind was otherwise occupied, and she never re-joined as a member of the Quilters Guild.

In 1998 Jutta went on the first of a number of trips to India with Joan Hoole. They met up with some British women who were involved in textiles, although in retrospect even though Jutta felt that this trip gave them a sanitised view of India, she admitted that it was the beginning of a new creative journey. India blew Jutta away. She returned five times subsequently, each time taking two new friends along. The creative energy and the humanity of India embraced her and made her feel like she ‘belonged’. Her teutonic roots were challenged by the serenity, the unpredictable repetition, the rhythm and the spirit of endeavour that is found on every turn as a visitor to India. Jutta felt that going back to India was more like returning home than going back to visit Germany. The Hindu philosophies of sharing and letting go and moving on became central in Jutta’s life. She used and reused, and she found potential in everything and beauty in the discarded. India crept under Jutta’s skin and its influence was visible in all aspects of her life.

In 2002 Jutta broke her leg. This was another turning point in her creative life as she suddenly found that not only was her mobility challenged, but her arms were busy with crutches. It was then that she discovered stitch resist dyeing. It was a slow process that could be done mostly whilst sitting down. Her exhibition Homage to Garuda was a result of this period of incapacity. Garuda is the Eagle God and in Hindu mythology, is a taxi for Vishnu. In Bali, Garuda is the God of creativity and he dives in and rips things apart when it is thought that someone is not working to their full potential. Jutta often suggested that her broken leg and resultant creativity was possibly Garuda’s doing.

Jutta attended a workshop run by Kobie Venter in 2005. This workshop introduced her to Mandalas. Circles have always featured strongly in her work, but this workshop sent her in a new direction. She began by making ‘art mandalas’, but they subsequently developed into her own private ponderings which she pursued on a daily basis until shortly before her death. A Mandala a day became Jutta’s chronic medicine.

Apart from spending hours on a daily basis working in her studio, Jutta generously devoted a considerable amount of her life to the development of the Midlands Art and Craft Society (MACS). She saw it as an environment where skills could be handed on to others - an environment that encouraged interdisciplinary creativity. She willingly taught others on a regular basis, imparting skills that she had had the good fortune of learning during her creative journey. The MACS environment allowed people who were looking for an outlet for their creativity to explore and find a way of creating – a place where they could ‘just do it’.

Since the early 1970s, Jutta was well-known in Pietermaritzburg as an artist and crafter. She made a name both nationally and internationally as a Fibre artist, and continued to exhibit regularly as an individual or on group shows. One of her fibre artist colleagues referred to her as a National Treasure. Jutta Faulds was a driving force in the development of Fibre Art in South Africa, and the Tatham Art Gallery is proud of an association with her that spanned more than four decades. We pay tribute to one of Pietermaritzburg’s most interesting citizens and strongest creative forces, and an exceptional artist, mentor and friend.

Bryony Clark
Acting Manager Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg