Crafts in Residence is an initiative developed by artist Pernille Lonstrup in collaboration with textile artist Isfrid Angard Siljehaug. The project consists of a artist-to-artist residency in Dovre, Norway.
In her artistic practice, Lonstrup explores the fragility of language and communication. From her own experience with dyslexia, she shows how language can lapse into abstraction or nonsense. Lonstrup explores alternative forms of communication beyond writing and speech, revealing that access to language cannot be taken for granted by everyone. Her work manifests in paper and textile collages, performances with text and music, and participatory art through workshops and curation. Lonstrup received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Gerrit Rietveld Academy 2010) and her Master of Artistic Research (KABK, 2012). Her work has been exhibited internationally.
At Siljehaug's weaving studio in Hjerleid, Lonstrup worked for six weeks. There she had access to specialized knowledge, equipment and guidance, as well as the time and space to develop new work and deepen her understanding of weaving as a language. The project was organized in cooperation with the Hjerleid Cultural Center for Traditional Crafts and was funded in part by a grant from the Norwegian province of Innlandet fylkeskommune.
The work period
From early May to mid-June 2025, I worked with Isfrid Angard Siljehaug in her studio in Hjerleid (Dovre, Norway). This work period served as a pilot for the ‘Crafts in Residence’ program organized by Isfrid, in cooperation with Hjerleid Cultural Center.
The last time I did a residency was ten years ago in China. There I began by interweaving English and Chinese newspapers to highlight the differences between the two writing systems - Chinese as images (ideograms) and the Latin alphabet as sounds. This was the starting point of what in recent years has become my series Newspaper Weavings. This is also why I went on residency in Norway: to weave with Isfrid Angard Siljehaug and learn new techniques to further develop my paper collages.
Dovre is located in the middle of the mountains of the Gudbrandsdal valley in central Norway. Isfrid's studio is attached to the Hjerleid, is a school and cultural center for Norwegian handicrafts. Here artisans are trained in various disciplines, such as blacksmithing, woodcarving, painting, traditional wood construction, tailoring and weaving. Like Isfrid's weaving workshop, several small entrepreneurs are located in the cultural center's premises. So there are many different traditional Norwegian crafts under one roof. During the daily lunch at the center, you will meet different artisans and professional discussions will arise.
I went on residency in Norway to weave together and learn new techniques for my paper collages.
The first few days were devoted to observation and a tour of the school and the area. The studio, school and my quarters were on the shady side of the mountains so I had a beautiful view of the overlying sun side. It is incredibly beautiful here.
The studio where I worked for the next six weeks is spacious compared to my 37-square-meter studio in Amsterdam, which I share with a studio mate. Here there is room for four large looms and one small one. The small one was for me; Isfrid had already prepared the loom, so I could start weaving right away. We started with tea towels to learn the craft and the loom. I had to make sure that the sides of the cloth stayed nice and straight and that the tension was neither too slack nor too tight. The first 10 to 20 inches looked terrible, but after a day or two I began to master the technique.
It is a very practical study: learning how the thread and tension feel on the loom. In the studio, Isfrid has a small but excellent library. Together we chose books about weaving, but also books that are interesting for artistic research on lines, such as a book about Paul Klee and Tim Ingolds: Lines. I started weaving with paper thread. Paper thread is produced only in Japan and Europe; Isfrid had bought it especially for me.
Weaving is actually about making decisions before you start. This is because tensioning a loom takes a lot of time. So you do a lot of testing before you can actually start. The tryout with paper thread caused frustration at first because I had started without a real plan. After a long walk in the woods next to the wild river, I regained an overview.
It went much better and in week three I was able to take a completed work of art off the loom.
For the next weave, I did have a plan and weaved based on sketches I had brought back from Amsterdam. It went much better and in week three I was able to take a completed work of art off the loom. Isfrid was enthusiastic, but did say she was a bit startled when I started cutting into the warp with scissors while I was still weaving. Under no circumstances do weavers do that. For me, that was an essential part of the experiment.
Traveling around Norway without a car can be tricky, but with good planning and patience, you can do it. In Dovre, a train goes to Oslo once a day. This allowed me to celebrate Norwegian Independence Day, a national holiday important to Norwegians, with a friend in Oslo. It was a welcome break for me from work in the studio.
Isfrid and I also went on excursions together, like baking traditional Norwegian flatbread at her grandfather's house, or having lunch in the mountains at 1,200 meters at Isfrid's family's cabin in Grimsdalen. The landscape is almost impossible to describe, it is a place where myth and nature mingle and the Scandinavian fairy tales of my youth seem to become reality.
The last two weeks of the working period we prepared for the final exhibition during the Hjerleid craft festival. This is a festival weekend where students and the cultural center convey their enthusiasm and knowledge of traditional crafts to a larger audience. We were given the opportunity to set up an exhibition about our research, in which craft and art came together. For that exhibition, I wanted to create another new work on a larger scale. I wanted to play with words and explore a method where I put marks on the warp and then started weaving. This new plan required a lot of planning: what materials and colors do I want to use, how am I going to put the marks on the warp and with what paint? I started by making samples, for this I used the small loom that I was allowed to stretch myself under Isfrid's guidance. Isfrid prepared the larger loom on which the final work was made.
I wanted to play with words and explore a method where I put marks on the warp and then started weaving.
Rigging a loom was an experience that brought me down to earth. I began to understand why textile art requires a lot of planning and preparation and why it is often about material, texture and fiber. Despite the time that went into trials and preparation, the work was ready in time for the construction of the exhibition. Isfrid and I created the exhibition with individual works and results of our research. During the festival weekend, there were many opportunities to have conversations with the public. The visitors were enthusiastic about traditional Norwegian craft and curious about the exchange between craft and art. The weekend ended with coffee, cake and lectures in the forest next to a waterfall at the workshop-lab for traditional Norwegian architecture.
I am aware that this work period caused a tilt in my practice. It was not just an expansion of methods for my paper weaving. As I sit in my studio three-quarters of a year later to write this piece, I have a loom behind me.
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