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Pat Hertzberg, a pioneer in fibre art, shares lifelong love for textiles

October 10, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

At the age of seven, Pat Hertzberg was making clothes for her Barbie doll. Remembering her early days with textiles, she comments, “My road began when I was really young. It grew through a revolving relationship with fabric.”

As a teenager, Hertzberg worked in a small high-end fabric store in Ottawa, which only carried fabrics imported from Europe and silks from China. These were top-of-the-line, very expensive fabrics used primarily for custom-made and high-end fashion gowns. From this part-time, high school job, Ms. Hertzberg learned a great deal about fibre and fabric, fashion and, in particular, “surface design.” On reflection, it was really like an apprenticeship in fibre.

She immersed herself in her studies of fine art in Ottawa and at York University, moving on to fashion design at Sheridan College. From all that were her next 12 years as a fashion designer in Montreal, where she also met and married her husband, moving with him to Toronto.

Once they were settled there, Hertzberg opened a business, creating her own line of ladies sportswear, which she sold to Eaton’s, Simpson’s and the Bay. Eventually, where she had used jobbers to make her clothing, she realized their quality was not good enough and she opened her own manufacturing business on Spadina Avenue.

Yet, a creative soul can be restless and Hertzberg found her interests shifting, as fabric and styles began to change. She started trying and learning different treatments of cloth, as she told us, “like tie-dying, sublistatic printing, fabric painting and whole-cloth embroidery.”

There began another shift, this time to wearable clothing of unique and one-of-a-kind garments, with an emphasis on “funky fabric,” adding more alternative surface design treatments.

Hertzberg has high praise for the Rare Threads Gallery at the Alton Mill Arts Centre, calling it the “best source for wearable art in Ontario.”

The day came when she hung “one of my hand painted silk scarves on the wall,” she began to relate. “Our friends loved it as an art piece! And I began offering my fabric in juried art shows and won awards. There was no one producing fibre art.”

Her pieces have been shown in galleries across Canada and continue to win awards.

Through the fashion world where she began, fibre has brought her to this history, to her current intensely innovative creativity and indeed, breaking all the rules of “each fibre tradition” to spin and weave new ideas.

Using a number of techniques – she has personally created two original textile processes, which are here in her words for the conscientious among you: “The first one I call ‘thread-web’ because it consists literally of thread which hold together small swatches of fabric or strips of fabric. It incorporates various amounts of negative space, which can give the work an airy, filigree feeling.”

The second one Hertzberg calls “wacky weaving,” as she describes, “Instead of having a vertical warp and a horizontal weft, the loom I designed allows me to weave in all directions. Again, using multiple fabric strips, this process results in a rich, multi-layered surface.”

Both processes, Hertzberg admits, “…require a focus on detail and lots of patience. They’re both time-consuming.”

She does teach her thread-web technique.

This autumn, Hertzberg is showing her work in a number of exhibitions.

Her pieces have been featured in the Headwaters 28th Fall Festival Show and Sale at the Alton Mill.

Next are two shows displaying new works, including Ms. Hertzberg’s piece of reconstructed strips of hand-dried artist’s canvas, hosted by CONNECTIONS FIBRE ARTISTS. This is a group of accomplished fibre artists, of which she is a member, staging shows in galleries and museums, mainly in Ontario.

At the Joshua Farm Gallery, the show titled SYBIL features contemporary fibre art that pays tribute to the life of 95-year-old Sybil Rampin.

“My pieces are large and almost ethereal,” she commented. 

On the way to Fergus, the Wellington County Museum is showing Replay. Toys in the museum archives are chosen by Connection Fibre Artists, as inspiration for new works that also include the toys. For Hertzberg, the multiple paint layers on a child’s table prompted the piece she is submitting.

“I will be attending the openings,” she promised.

For ambitions, her main career goal is to expand her exposure with big-name galleries in New York and Europe.

“Europe is really embracing Fibre Art, she remarked. “Europe has always been ahead in Fibre.”

For a more information and even inspiration check out her website: pathertzberg.com

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