Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/ Director Scott Knudson.

In this Season 15 premiere, Erika Hagberg shows us her antique sewing machine collection.

Then Karen Goulet takes us on a tour of her collaborative art exhibit at Watermark Arts Center.

Hi.

My name's Erika Hagberg.

We are now here at my place at the Maroco, which happens to be an old mine pit.

I happen to be a small collector of vintage sewing machines.

There are people out there who collect way more than I do, but I've tried to collect the full history of Singer and the sewing machine.

I started out with one and I now have seven.

The family won't let me have another one unless I get rid of one.

This is an 1871 Singer.

This was the first Singer that was created by Mr. Isaac Singer.

This one was created just after the Civil War.

He accumulated many patents that belonged to other men who designed sewing machines, and instead of him being sued constantly, he gathered them all together and they created a group where they were suing other people for the patents so he could continue on creating the Singer sewing machine under his label.

Prior to these Singer treadle sewing machines, they were hand powered with a hand crank and so that you had one hand that was cranking the machine and the other hand was pushing the fabric through.

So when he developed the treadle pedal and you used your feet, you no longer had to have one hand occupied.

You had two hands free to be able to guide the fabric through.

My fascination for Singer sewing machines started with acquiring one from a garage sale, thinking as an artist that I'm going to create a table.

Get it home, set it up, it worked like a dream and the family said you know you're not turning that into a table, and they were right.

I started looking online.

I started finding manuals.

I started researching, and I learned how to fix, maintain, oil, and upkeep my own machine, and then it started where I had to have another one and another one.

And in some cases I know people that have 63 and still building their collection.

This one was found in a metal container in the Aiken area, and she had no embellishment, she had no decals, so I had a gentleman create the coffin top and create the drawer.

And then I hand painted and decaled the machine so that it had 13 ravens.

So this one is Raven.

In this one there is a shuttle that's called a boat shuttle, and this is when Mr. Singer started making, well he acquired the patents to be able to make this boat shuttle with the bobbin that would insert in the middle to make this machine work.

So the bobbin would go inside the boat and then it would go back and forth to be able to stitch.

This was the beginning of no longer taking a threaded needle and a piece of fabric and having to diligently hand stitch every little stitch to make a seam.

Before there were sewing machines, they were like my artwork right now where everything was hand-stitched, hand embroidered.

Young women were sold to their husbands by their ability to hand-stitch and hand embroider, so when Singer decided that he wanted to develop sewing machines that any woman could have in her home to successfully create her own garments.

He was a very good marketer and he marketed his machines and became well-known and very wealthy.

So then after the Civil War Mr. Singer created the next machine, the next treadle sewing machine, for ladies households.

Now this one was created in 1892.

I believe it's a 27, but I found out through the Singer corporation that many, many documents were lost in fires and not available from 1871 to the 1900s.

So this one I believe is a 27.

It was the first one that had a coffin top and was not immersed into the table and had lots of gold decals and embellishments so that it would look appropriate in a lady's home.

And it also went from a friction wheel to widen the bobbin, to one that has a mechanical means of being able to move the thread back and forth on the bobbin to fill it nice and evenly.

This is the vibrating shuttle, which is also called a bullet.

So this one has the bobbin that inserts into the bullet, and then the thread laces through.

And then it would go into the machine and go back and forth and as it would move back and forth the machine from underside would collect the thread to be able to make the stitches.

So next as time went by, in the 1918s, was this machine.

Now this was the beginning of a new era going from travel sewing machine to electric motor.

So this one was created in warehouse, making it from a treadle sewing machine to electric, so that Mr. Singer's very fine electricians were able to embed the regulator inside the bottom of the leg connected to the treadle pedal then bring the wiring up through the leg and across the back and into the motor.

So the pattern of this decal is called a Tiffany, and it is a 15 Dressmaker and they only made 5,000 of these machines.

So if you ever see one of these machines snatch them up because they're worth a lot these days.

The difference between the 15 and the 15K was all in the bobbin area.

Where this one has a continuous rotating bobbin so it collects the thread in a rotation way, the 15K would rock back and forth.

So this one is highly sought after and not easy to find.

Also what goes with it is the table itself.

The table itself is a No.

40 Library Table and down below you have the pitman and wheel and the shelf goes down and covers the treadle pedal and it completely closes up and becomes a table.

It goes all the way from the beginnings of being a treadle sewing machine all the way to electricity using a motor, and it's one of seven that I know of and it's the only one that still has its pitman and wheel still attached.

In some cases when they electrified them they took the pitman and wheel out.

These are the puzzle boxes that are tool kits.

I even have the patent because the neat thing between the two puzzle boxes is the one closest to us is for the vibrating shuttle and the one away from us is for the round bobbin, and that's the way they designed it.

It did give some women the ability to have their own cottage business, to be able to make their own money, that not just their husbands did.

In the big cities there were a lot of, especially in England, there were a lot of families who would acquire one machine and then they would start their own garment business and then they would be able to buy a second machine and then as that progressed then they were able to hire immigrants and hire other people to make them have a full manufacturing company on making fast garments to be able to sell.

So we're going to go backwards a little bit, because we're going to go back to 1891, and this one is a Wilcox and Gibbs.

It's not done by Singer, but it was around the same time as Singer.

Now this machine, originally done by Mr. Wilcox, was carved out of wood because he wanted a different, new way to have a sewing machine.

This one makes a chain stitch, which in layman's terms is really nice for working with polyester and stretchy materials.

You know we don't have zigzag so chain stitch was the next step.

This machine has a lovely story because this one was carried back and forth from Crosby, Minnesota to Minneapolis by a dear lady who was a seamstress.

She would carry it on the Greyhound bus every time she would come up to Crosby to visit.

Working with a living piece of history, knowing that it's hundreds of years old, knowing that it's not going to be a throwaway, knowing that it's not going to break down.

The only way that these machines are unusable is if it is run over by a Mack truck and has the cast iron broken.

Otherwise as long as the cast iron is whole, all the gears are there, you just oil it up and it'll keep going.

Next, we have our featherweight.

She was created in 1952.

She was a lightweight and yet made of cast iron.

Easy and portable, having her own box, the featherweight was the next really highly sought after machine.

Right now a lot of people really want her.

The motor that she has is so strong that my daughter created feather cloaks using cloque feathers, that it would stitch right through the quills of each feather to make a cloak.

So it's a very powerful and yet very small machine.

And the last one is my 1960s Singer sewing machine.

This was the one right before they did the tooth belt.

So we've got three that are belted.

This is the last one before they went to the tooth belt series.

This one I used all the way through Covid, creating the majority of my masks at the beginning.

So this one has been very reliable.

It only has a straight stitch and a zigzag stitch and one decorative stitch.

This one's nice and basic.

The neat thing is that the basic machines will give you what you want without having extra problems.

The more advanced machines you have more computer problems.

In most cases you don't use all the hundreds of decorative stitches that you have available unless you're a very avid quilter.

So any of these machines are basic and lovely to use and will live for hundreds of years past you.

So if you find them in the ditch, you find them in the barn, you find them in the corner, pull them out, oil them up, get them started again.

You don't even need a motor so you can do them in the middle of your backyard.

So I highly recommend the old machines if you can get them.

Research, find out how to get it working again.

They're all a big piece of history.

They were meant to last forever, for hundreds of years and they have so far.

And show them to your kids.

Show them how they work.

Let them make a little tiny quilt to give to Grandma.

You know make some little bags, little napkins, and get them inspired to be able to do it again.

This is what I consider the first collaborative work of the Aabijijiwan exhibit with myself and Monique both working on this piece.

The idea was conceived as to how to connect and reflect and show what happens along the river.

I consider this sort of DNA memory of the Mississippi River banks.

These braids were buried in I believe eight different locations.

They started down in the New Orleans area at Studio in the Woods was where I put the first braids into the ground.

Monique had several sites where she wanted to have the braids buried and then I came back north and buried them in four locations in this area and then brought them together.

I've been envisioning this particular thing for a long time and I'm really happy that it was close to what I was imagining it to be.

So there's a lot of things going on in my mind when I make art and that have connections for me and I try to have those come through in the work.

And this idea of a DNA memory, braiding, braids are really a beautiful aesthetic thing that I've done most of my life and so it was sort of this sharing or gathering what the land around the Mississippi River wanted to give us for this exhibit so that people can get a sense or a feel or an energy because I believe that these all have, they have distinct colors, but there also is this energy that comes with the DNA memory.

And they're saying now DNA memory goes back many generations, so if we have DNA memory, I believe, doesn't the land have it as well.

Again these are what what the Earth gave to us, but the more healthy the soil, the more that's going on, the more happens to the fabric.

So that was sort of an interesting process to look at.

I think there's a pattern to it but also a randomness because they were different sheets, used sheets, and in different places.

So there's this continuity is the braid otherwise it's the energy of the work of the artists and the land.

So I feel like this piece is where we really began the exhibit installation and our work most consciously as collaborative because we do have independent works that are responding to conversations into each other's work as well.

But I love this piece as the connector for us and for the audience.

The whole river or both ends of the river has some representation here.

Monique responded to this piece by creating and producing maps of all the locations where we buried the fabric braids, which I really love, and she collected water from those sites as well.

So this mirrors this piece and so it's telling the same story a different way, which I really love that concept.

So it's speaking in the language of maps and in the language of water but it's also talking about where these pieces were before they arrived here.

I really love that Monique's aesthetic and her love for maps is she chose maps that spoke to her.

They aren't necessarily all created in the same timeline or from the same original source, and I think that's what makes it really beautiful and its own representation.

I love that she brought the water up from the bayou here and we went out and collected water.

So there were steps that happened for us as we drove around and did these things that were meaningful for us.

And this cypress wood she had shipped up, there's a whole story about that and what's going on with losing the land down there.

So she wanted to be really thorough in in how she represented her land base in her homelands as well.

And so I love this sort of back and forth conversation that's going on between these pieces.

I love the things she brought from the land to add as well.

So this wonderful body of work by Monique was created after her trips up here.

She had come up three times and so it's a combination of images from her homelands and from here and people that she met and they were all created in response to the work that is next to it.

But I love the sort of patch blanket sort of metaphor that is part of this aesthetic so this sense of connecting things together visually but also metaphorically and content-wise.

So this install as a whole is called Unfinished Business and it's a play on the fact that all these pieces are made with scrap fabrics from other things that I've created like star quilts, ceremony blankets, ribbon shirts, skirts, and so I save everything.

There's 28 in this configuration and they're all stories.

So for me the process of stitching with a needle and thread is about connection to my relatives, my ancestors, because that particular skill was passed down to me and when I'm sitting and hand-stitching and thinking I'm having conversations with the ancestors, I'm remembering a wonderful event or a beautiful sunset or a moment in time that impacted me and has stayed with me.

So there's a wide variety.

There's songs in here as well.

So there's all kinds of information in these.

But I pointedly, my intention was to have sort of this raw or less polished perfection.

I, like, wanted to liberate myself from trying to be perfect or try to have the perfect stitch but to let the stitches do what they wanted to do.

And so some of these the story comes out of creating the piece.

All of a sudden I'm putting things together and a story comes.

Sometimes there's a story that wants to be told and I'm finding what I think will tell that story.

So they're nice because they're sort of spontaneous and they don't take forever to make.

A lot of, like when I work on blankets and quilts, those can take several days, you know, where I'm making a pair of moccasins or something.

Where these I can have something done in a few hours and be really enjoying it.

So they are a little freer, but I think they're a whole story as well, and that's why when I called it Unfinished Business it's like I don't know if I'll ever stop making them now.

I'm taking a rest at the moment, but I keep coming back to them because there's more to stitch about.

So I think I'd like to talk about the star quilt that I created because that is a big jump from the fabric scrap pieces to one of the larger style of works that I do and so this is a very intentional piece that changed.

I knew I wanted to make a star blanket that talked about the fragility of our environment, our time, just this whole sense of transparency, the how do we talk about what it is that we're needing to do because we're in this place and time where there's a lot of concerns about what's happening environmentally and what's happening up here in regards to our water, you know, our soil, our lands, so I was really thinking about that.

And this is a wonderful collaboration because some of the fabric came from an artist that I met when I was down in the bayou area, and it was another woman from the Houma Nation, Tammy Greer, and she loves to dye.

And she dyes fabric from plants and she had sent some up for me to work with, with Monique, and that when I thought about this I contacted her.

She goes well I should have some lightweight fabric but if I don't I'll dye some for you, and so I had this package arrive.

And in the meantime, I had had a conversation with Monique and the director of the Weisman who were both unfamiliar with sundogs, and we had talked about there was just this beautiful sundog and Monique and I were here in The Watermark talking and she kind of just what's a sun dog and so I was like oh.

And so this suddenly had to become a sundog, and that's what it wanted to be and so that's what it became.

And so that's the blues and the colors of our winter skies and so I dedicated this piece to Monique so that she would always remember about our sundogs that we have in our skies up here.

So this was the unexpected piece in the exhibit for me.

I named it the 8th Street Gang Honor Song an Ode to Lorraine, who was my mother.

But I had originally had the idea that I was going to work with a cyanotype and I was going to create another blanket, and then I realized I started copying and collecting all these photos of my mother.

And it's important to context these photos.

My mother's family was the first Ojibwe family to buy property in Bemidji after it became Bemidji.

There were 10 kids.

They grew up and were part of Bemidji as a community itself.

My father's family came down from the Boundary Waters, and he came to Bemidji when he was in eighth grade.

So this is where they met and they were friends with each other's siblings and so there's this whole history.

And I'm thinking about alternative history in Bemidji because the visibility of our Ojibwe community is still working to be as apparent as they should be because this is our land and our space.

We're between three reservations in Bemidji and it's a place of significance to us historically and today.

But what I understood when I saw how my mother was very determined to have a good life for herself and her family and to enjoy her growing up years in Bemidji.

And so it became this celebratory piece instead.

And so all of these images have my mother or her family that are in these images, and so it is a history of her life from very young, from when she was a child, until she married my father and they moved out to Washington State.

And so we're going to celebrate.

She was also the first Native homecoming queen at Bemidji High School in 1951 or 52 and so we want to recognize and honor her for that.

So we're going to have a little reception for her at the end of the month.

But like I said this piece makes me happy, and I hope it makes her happy when she sees it later this month.

Thank you so much for watching.

Join us again on Common Ground.

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Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org.