Visual Arts, Architecture, and Design

The effect of Subud or SICA on my professional and creative life?

Well, a lot really! A complete change of directions and activity!

I had been trained at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland — with my own studio in my post graduate year. I was doing mural painting, mosaics, and ceramics. Then I took a year in Mexico, studying murals and archaeological ceramics and the local production of paintings by indigenous people of Mexico. I was able to travel throughout Mexico. I was then invited to spend a year as the visiting potter at Scripps College in California working with the graduate students of Paul Soldner, a well-known innovator of Raku firing at that time.

I supported myself by doing mosaic murals, as part of a team, for the Masonic temple in Los Angeles. The temple was designed by architect, Miliard Sheets. And I loved California! We did oversized paintings of the main philosophers honored by the Masons: Thoth, Zarathustra, Confucius, Manu, and many more. Really fascinating. I had worked on mosaic murals in Scotland - which happily still exist — in the late 50s; and I had also studied at the Mosaic workshops in northern Italy and had learned the restoration methods they used in the big Byzantine churches. So of course the work in California was exciting for me.

Back to Britain where I became instructor of ceramics in the art department at Durham University (King's College) which is now part of Newcastle University. I married an American architect I'd met four years before on the Queen Mary on my way to Mexico via New York City. So I again returned to the States and continued to produce ceramics.

I am a driven artist! I've never done any other work and have almost always been self-employed as an artist or teacher — always to support this place of growing and evolving, and to stay very close to this guiding force.

After the births of my sons — three, one after another — I started exploring batik. I taught myself how to do it and felt a great reverence for the Indonesian art form. Originally it developed as a form of meditation for women in the courts of Java. In fact, I used to teach students to "feel the tjanting (wax tool) pulling them along," and longed to visit Indonesia myself. I taught these workshops at Vassar, at Cooper-Hewitt, and at many universities throughout the US.

I stumbled on Subud when I returned to Scotland one year with my sons. They were in their early teens. Ilbert Collingwood was my 'introducer.' Subud was a natural development, an exhalation of breath long-awaited, a sigh of relief. I had found what I was being led to find: my own form of worship. A marvel! And it had developed in Indonesia! And was about the inner development of the human being. Such joy at this discovery. And amazement and gratitude.

I had developed soft sculpture murals — figures floating across walls. People sometimes referred to them as 'angelic presences.' They were quite widely published and included in most of the batik books at that time. And I supported myself now from related exhibition sales and teaching. My last exhibition of the figures was in Edinburgh soon after I was opened. Most of the local Subud group came to the opening of this exhibition and met my art college friends and teachers.

But then I returned again to New York City. My sons needed their father during their late teens, so I rented a loft on 22nd Street. I have lived and worked there ever since — almost continually.

Then things started to move in a very different direction. I started designing on silk and selling the swatches to the garment industry. I met Robert Mertens, another Subud brother in New York, who advised me to develop designs for the home: sheets. Bedding designs could be sold for much more money, so I started designing on silk scarves and then sold them as Robert had advised. I also started selling my scarves at Subud gatherings. Now I sell them through the American Craft Museum Gift Shop in New York.

At the Anugraha Congress in 1983, I met Vivianna Bülow-Hübe. We were part of a group of designers putting on the fashion show together. Of course, I loved her work and loved talking with her about design. She later visited the New York group to talk about SICA. I remember we had the meeting at my loft. She showed us her breath-taking jewelry and also some beautifully made baskets from Kalimantan. The baskets were part of a SICA effort at that time to help the Dyaks as their land was being explored for gold. The basket work continues to this day.

I also showed her some of my scarves, and she asked if she could show them to Ted Nieremburg at Dansk International Designs. She was already scheduled to meet with them the next day. I shall never forget her call back to me. "Are you sitting down?" she asked. I sat down. Ted Nieremburg had very much liked my work and wanted me to sign a contract to begin work on a series of designs for Dansk immediately! If that was all right with me!

This was the beginning of a wonderful working relationship with Dansk which continues to this day. One dinnerware design I did for Dansk — "Eden" — sold well for several years. I later heard from the director of the factory which produced it, in Portugal, that the workers there loved to work on this particular dinnerware. They loved the way it made them feel!

Vivianna's frendship I value highly. Her kindness and generosity of spirit towards everyone she meets, and her extraordinary attention to detail in everything are very special. I have visited her in Indonesia three times. Once to collaborate on a Dansk project. Twice for Ramadan — an extraordinary privilege. Latihan in the great hall at Cilandak and the long awaited visits to batik workshops and textile museums! Ah! Happily Vivianna videos everything! We later did a SICA project at her sister's studio in Canada (four years ago). It was an intense working experience, and the only breaks we took were for latihan. (I wrote an article about that for the Subud Canadian newsletter, SCAN.)

At the same time as I was working for Dansk, I continued to work bedding designs, and Robert Mertens acted as my agent. Robert has an amazing talent for negotiating a very good deal. Negotiating a good price for my work is something I find quite difficult, so feel quite blessed to have had Robert's genius working on my behalf. On contract he negotiated was with Josi Natori. I was to do all her bedding and lingerie designs for three years! Simon Guerrand Hermes had suggested Natori to Robert, and Robert followed up. Presenting "the look" was quite exciting. It took lots of hard work, but it was so satisfying to see the finished product in stores and catalogs everywhere.

My latest SICA related project has been some patterns for Sulfiati Harris's latest 'batik kit" (Ed: A feature on Sulfiati and her work will be in the next issue of Inspire!) While experimenting with cold paste resists for the batik kit, I had a meeting with Block China in New York. I just happened to show them some of these spontaneous experimental borders I was doing for the kit. They loved them! Now they are being sampled in china for casual dinnerware. The designs will be stamped into the moulds, the glazes poured over to pool as they are fired in deeper shades in the pattern. I'll share more on this as it develops.

Love, Sharifa Morag Benepe