- Martha Rosenfeld's artistic endeavors have spanned decades and many different mediums.

Let's learn about her and her creations.

Well, today I'm talking with Martha Rosenfeld, who's the president of Signature Artists in Kalamazoo.

They've been an active part of the Kalamazoo visual arts landscape for over 40 years, and Martha is a visual artist.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- So you have a solo exhibit.

It's gonna be happening at the Carnegie Center for Arts in Three Rivers, I mean, wow.

It's entitled "Three: Decades/Places/Media."

Tell me a little bit about this.

- It's a partial retrospective, but showcasing a bunch of my current work, which hasn't been exhibited yet.

So I'm currently a fiber artist.

I design and make hooked rugs, which is kind of an old 19th century craft technique, but I'm doing contemporary things with it.

But before that, I was a potter and sculptor for a really long time, and that was the main part of my career.

And I also did some mixed media work on paper.

- And tell me about the history of rug hooking.

- The history is a little obscure, but I don't think it dates back very far.

It's mainly from the 19th century and it was a thrifty craft using burlap feed sacks as a foundation and basically mill ends and scraps and clothing.

So kind of like quilting.

It was a way to do a lot with a little, and for people who couldn't afford Persian carpets, it was a way to create warm floor coverings for their homes with the materials they had on hand.

- You know, yours are beautiful.

I mean, I've never seen rugs like yours or they're really, I mean, wall hangings.

I could never imagine stepping on them, but like, do you dye your own yarn?

- I have some props here.

Here are some examples of some of the wool that I use.

So you can see this has sort of a light plaid to it.

This is a boulder plaid.

So yeah, so what happens is you cut them up.

So this is a pale yellow that's been cut up into little quarter inch strips.

And so what happens with a plaid when you cut it up, it breaks up the plaid and you get a more random assortment of the colors that are within the fabric.

And then we have a tool, this is my favorite hook.

They come with different gauges of hook and different shapes and sizes of handles, but I like this one.

And we're basically pulling up loops of the fabric through a foundation cloth.

Made with 100% wool and a linen foundation, these rugs can actually stand up to foot traffic for decades.

They'll outlast me for sure.

- What does creating, like, what does art do for you?

- I love doing things with my hands.

I love making something.

And I think so many of us live in our heads so much of the time, we're reading, we're thinking, we're working with our brains.

Making something, creating something with my hands gives me a way to connect my head to my body, to my heart in a way, it sort of integrates everything where you're not just working with your head, you're not just doing something mindless, it's a way to pull everything together.

I don't know what my life would be like without thinking around with some little creative project at all times.

- And you teach, you say, at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

What do those classes look like?

Like what does the student walk away with?

- So those are fun.

So for beginning students, we basically provide all the materials with the course fee.

So we have loaner equipment, we have beginner patterns.

They're about 12 or 14 inches square, and it may take them 10 whole weeks to finish that pattern.

We learn some color theory along with the actual hooking technique.

And then for returning students, the focus is on helping them to design their own rug.

So it's kind of like a one room classroom with people working at different levels.

But it's great because the beginners can learn from watching the returning students work on their projects.

And the best classes are the ones where everybody's talking to each other and I can walk out of the room and they don't even notice I'm gone.

I think art, it's an essential part of being human.

I mean, if you look at cave art from 40,000 years ago, our ancestors way back then were making marks with stuff.

They were drawing pictures.

Drawing pictures is kind of, it's hardwired into us and kids love to draw and somehow somewhere along the line they learn that they're not good at it and then they get interested in other stuff and then they become the many adults I meet who sheepishly confess that they only know how to draw stick figures and they're embarrassed that they can't draw.

But I think it's something that's available to us.

And I think it's just a darn shame so many people are afraid of it.

- Yeah, it's the learning curve, right?

It's the learning curve that scares people.

Like they wanna be like an expert and you start at it, it's not, it's oh rip it apart again.

How many rugs have you had to, do you take things apart once you put 'em together?

- Oh yeah, actually that's one of the nice things about rug hooking, it's very forgiving.

Basically, if you find that the choice you made about to put this color here and you thought it was gonna look good, and then you realize it's not looking so good, you can tear stuff out and make substitutions.

It's very forgiving.

You're gonna make some mistakes with your first hooked rug.

I tell my beginning students, this is the one you're gonna make all your mistakes on.

You know, you're supposed to, how else are you gonna learn?

So you have to let yourself be incompetent for a while.

- And just do art for art's sake, not for any purpose, just to express, right.

whatever's inside of you to come out.

Martha Rosenfeld, thank you so much for talking with me here today.

It was so much fun learning all about you and your art and your exhibit coming up, so I appreciate your time.

- Thank you very much for inviting me.

It's been a pleasure to be on the show.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.