Work and play
My art collective here in Trondheim is so quiet during the summer months, as most folks have headed off to their cabins on the Norwegian coast or into the mountains. The city feels emptied out, except for tourists, most of which have arrived by cruise ship from hotter, most southerly locales in Europe. Norway is naturally air-conditioned, and this is becoming ever-more important to a warming planet.
As Espen Frithjofsen wrote in a blog post for ArtofNorway.org : “As the continent swelters under record-breaking temperatures, many look northward to escape the sweltering heat.”
I am most at home in a quiet place, and I love the solace that is my quilting studio. I can open the large windows of my studio and breathe the fresh air that sweeps in from the nearby fjord. My quilting studio is located in a former mental hospital, Rotvoll Asylum, which housed 275 residents by 1898. The institution was positioned on picturesque shores of the Trondheim Fjord, and offered a peaceful setting for its residents, and the opportunity to spend time in the outdoors, protected from the rest of society.
According to an article from NTNU (Our local university): “Treatment at the asylum consisted of various collective measures such as physical work and social interaction. Rotvoll Asylum had a fully actualized farm where patients participated in basic farm chores and activites. There was also a smithy, a workshop for shoemakers, tailors, bookbinders, carpenters, and painters as part of the buildings.”
“Play is the mediator of the invisible and visible.”
- Dora M. Kalff, Jungian therapist
In addition to being therapeutic, work is sometimes also play in the mind of the doer.
Research from Dr. Marian C. Diamond shows that “Playful adults are more likely to employ positive coping mechanisms, such as acceptance and reframing, in stressful situations.”
I can relate to the healing power of work. I’ve often been chided by friends and colleagues for being ´one serious cookie´; however, my approach to life and work most closely approximates ´serious play´. To many, my work may look like play, and my play like work.
During my time in university to become a licensed art educator, I remember running across Piaget´s famous research into childhood play, wherein he referred to play as ´the work of the child´. Moreover, David Hockney, the contemporary British painter once remarked
“People tend to forget that play is serious.”
(As quoted in Simon Schama´s March 10, 1996 article in the New Yorker, “David Hockney, California Dreamer”.).
I feel a relentless urgency to create more, get lost in the flow of making. Curiously, I realize that I am at my most creative when the path before me is uncertain. Personally, my serious play constitutes both means and ends. I have found the perfect meaning for my life as a maker- at once the ship’s captain, the anxious heart of the stow-away, the myopic deckhand focused on the process, and the pirate who might upset the whole operation. Like Bruegel- however silly, disruptive or instructive this playful journey has been- as an artist, quilter and maker– it is important to me. And more broadly, it is my own small contribution to our complex world.
For more information about Rotvoll kunstnerkollektiv :
rotvollkunst.no
Aerial photo of Rotvoll farm and asylum.
Photo: Schröder / NTNU UB
Exhibition of Kari Greenberg's work
Rotvoll Kunstnerkollektiv, March 2025
