Art student connects with her feelings

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Staff Writer

University of Hawai'i art student Madeleine Söder won an award for her work, called "Indivisible," just in time for the cash prize to help her return to graduate school. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser Madeleine Söder Age: 32 Occupation: University of Hawai'i-Manoa art student; begins graduate studies in fiber art next semester Awards: The Baciu Visual Arts Award for "Indivisibles," on view at the Honolulu Academy of Art's "Artists of Hawai'i" exhibit, which continues through Aug. 26. Family: Parents (a retired engineer and a marketing executive) live in Sweden; brother Tommy lives in Kane'ohe Statement: "My art is me, Turning myself inside out Exposing all that has been hidden and pushed away Striving for emotional transparency where there is nothing to fear, no shame, and no need to hide Art is my vehicle of communication, a communication without words between me and myself – and those who are willing to hear."

She could have spent the time worrying.

If she had wanted to, the 32-year-old art student could have fretted about how she was going to pay for graduate school, with maxed-out student loans and only a few options left to explore.

She could have been anxious about getting accepted into the "Artists of Hawai'i" exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, only the second public exhibition of her work outside the University of Hawai'i.

Sûder could have worried, but she didn't. She just knew she had to commune with nature for awhile, to spend some time not talking, rising with the chirping of birds, going to sleep when the day's light ran out.

Nature had been good to her before, inspiring her first major work, "Indivisible." It was about to be good to her again.

Not long after returning, refreshed, Sûder learned she had won the prestigious Baciu Visual Arts Award, given to the artist in the "Artists of Hawai'i" exhibit who "exemplifies innovation and risk-taking in his/her work." Accompanying it was $3,000, enough to pay for at least part of the first semester of graduate school.

"It's wonderful when it comes at a time when it can have such an impact on her upcoming study and work," said Pat Hickman, graduate chairwoman of the Art Department of the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

It's an artist's Cinderella story, in a way: Student comes to Hawai'i to study psychology and public health, takes a few art classes and finds her true calling. Student is accepted at the master's program in art, and suddenly, an award arrives just in time to make the fall tuition payment.

But it's a better story, in another way. It's the story of someone who trusts her inner voice, not only in art but in life.

That's where "Indivisible" came from, a study of women's torsos fashioned out of natural materials, including an intricate pattern of bark and seeds on forms, with banyan aerial roots.

"We felt the work itself displays a wonderful use of materials," said Jennifer Saville, curator of western art at the Academy of Arts. "Also, conceptually the art is very intriguing. ... Each torso is individual, but they're related and different and separate. There's a sense there's a meaning and they relate, but it's elusive. It's thoughtful, but it's provocative to look at — and beautiful to look at."

"Often pieces start with a feeling," Sûder said during an afternoon interview on a bench at Ala Moana, chosen because it was within bicycling distance of her home and school. (She owns no car.)

She'll take the feeling and put a picture onto that, but from there, she lets — what shall we call it, serendipity? a muse? — have its way: "I really appreciate the experience of making art."

Here is a woman who values experiences above all else: For her birthday, instead of gifts, she hungers for adventures.

Adventures have been part of her life, including a three-month trip to India in 1999 that included not just studies with the Dalai Lama, but a 10-day Vipassana (silent retreat) that she calls "the worst and the best thing I've ever done."

Her most fervent adventures are the inner ones, which take place under the canopy of stars or in the pure, unadulterated waters she finds in Hawai'i.

"The ocean is very healing to me," she said. "I've always felt more comfortable in and under the water than above it."

Even her professors see it.

"She finds comfort in being in the outdoors," said Hickman, who took Sûder to Lyon Arboretum for a class field trip to gather materials. She noted that Sûder returned on her own several times after that.

The vivid-hued Lyon Arboretum is not only a long way from Stockholm, the cosmopolitan city in Sweden where Sûder was born, but a long way from the life she first embarked upon there. As a bank cashier right out of gymnasium (the Swedish equivalent of junior college), she'd worked her way up to financial adviser.

She quit when her supervisor, at their annual conference, told her that within a year, she could be a manager in the office.

"I freaked out," she recalls. "... I've always had this inner urge for something else."

She got a job doing security for a Swedish telecommunications company, and made enough money to pay for what would be her first trip around the world. Her brother met her along the way, and in Thailand, he met the woman who would lead him — and later his younger sister — to Hawai'i. Madeleine came to visit him here in 1993.

"The first time I set foot on ground at the airport, I said 'I'm going to come back,' " she recalled, then laughed. "And I did!"

She's been here since 1996.

"Growing up in Sweden, she was aware of the visual work in the art and crafts of her place," Hickman said, noting that fiber is a good medium for Sûder to explore. "Stored up in her is the accumulated knowledge of fiber and art."

Wealth isn't her aim, nor, she says, will it ever be. Walking through Neiman Marcus to use the restroom, she passed a cashmere sweater with mink trim. Stopping to finger the sublime material, a sound escaped her throat when she caught sight of the $350 price tag.

"That doesn't cover my body any better than this!" she exclaimed, pointing to her Ross-issue top.

When she went back to Sweden she worked several jobs, finally for the minister of finance. Despite all the trappings that came with it, her inner voice told her not to follow the money, but instead, follow her heart.

"I had my apartment in the middle of Stockholm ... I had everything that on the outside looked like heaven," she said. "I had a beautiful office, I had all the benefits, I had membership to the ... (most exclusive health) club.

"But I always felt different, like I was pretending I was someone I really wasn't. There was something else."

Art was the something else.

"When I do my art, I create because I have to," she said. "It's the true expression of who I am. That's when I can express things I may not have the words for. Afterward, I may find the words."

Hawai'i is just the beginning of her big, scary adventure, one that has no safety nets, no soft landings.

"There's never an end point," she said. "I just go wherever the heart goes, listen to what my inner voice is telling me. ... In my heart I had this dream, but it seemed pretty impossible at that time."