Starting life over at 52 - why not? That's what Juliane "Ju" Bock decided to do - in Cascais and unleashing her creativity like never before. Now she's getting ready for her first ever exhibition at the Barros & Bernard Gallery in Lisbon. "Roots" opens this Wednesday, May 8, and will be on display for a month, until June 8.
Born and raised in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul, she grew up in rural Brazil, in an environment where wool is one of the main drivers of development. It is precisely this material that she uses in her works, the threads she weaves on the loom to create colourful compositions, full of texture, reflecting a part of herself or a particular element that is important to her.
With a family connected to crafts and manual labor, she has always experimented creatively in her free time. "The arts have always been part of my life," she tells Time Out. "I studied fine arts, I am a journalist and screenwriter by training, but the arts have always been part of me and I come from a family where crafts are very strong. Embroidery, knitting, crochet, painting... My grandmothers and my mother taught me to knit. My youngest daughter does crochet. We are a family of very strong women. So I always painted canvases, but always gave them as gifts, never commercialized anything."
At the end of 2021, during the pandemic, she felt the need to explore something new, to find a way to channel her energy. "I needed a challenge, to learn something. So, I turned to tapestry. I bought a loom, I wanted it to be a manual work and related to wool, because I came from all that tradition. I always made my own sweaters or for my family. Of course, I had to learn how to weave and do all the production, but I had a familiarity with the yarn. I bought online classes and started doing it, it was quick. When you have an artistic background, you just apply the technique. The creativity is already there and off you go. Little did I know we would be moving to Portugal."
Before moving to Cascais, Ju Bock lived abroad for 17 years with her husband's work, who held a top position at the Budweiser brewery. They went through Belgium and Switzerland, spent several years in the United States. "But my husband retired in the meantime, our daughters live in London, we were very far away and we decided to come back to Europe. And we had to live by the sea. We also missed the Portuguese language."
They chose Cascais for its tranquility and proximity to the ocean. And Ju was enchanted by Portugal's "loom cradle", having visited Portalegre or Castelo Branco to immerse herself in tradition. She had classes with artist Diana Meneses Cunha in Sintra and wants to go to Manteigas to get to know the local wool - the purer and the less chemicals it contains during the manufacturing process, the better.
Affectionate memories
The "Roots" exhibition consists of 10 unique pieces. Ju Bock began working on them in August of last year. The one that gives the title to the show took the longest to complete - it took three and a half months of daily work. "For this one, all the threads were brought from Rio Grande do Sul", she explains as she guides us through her studio, located on the lower floor of her house, which can be visited by appointment. "They came from a farm that breeds sheep, does all the manufacturing and dyeing". In various shades of brown and green, the idea was to portray various herbs and typical colors of that region. "But of course, it evokes the affective memories of the people who see it. I've had friends who looked at it and said it reminded them of the Alentejo. I think that's what art is: you search in your affective memory for your story in the works. The reliefs of Rio Grande do Sul are here, with its driest and most productive seasons, with all these greens".
Another of the most important works is called "Sea". The daughter of a mechanical turner, who still has a hardware store today, Juliane grew up 700 kilometers from the Atlantic. "My parents didn't have much, so we worked all year to spend 15 days at the beach. And we waited all year for those 15 days. So, arriving at the sea was magical. First, I lived in a region of red soil, where you get very dirty for anything. White clothes are impossible, for example, they get dirty very easily. So to arrive at the sea, on the sand, and play and not get dirty, was a novelty for us. The whole composition - the smell, the sea, knowing that we would only stay for 15 days... We wanted to absorb everything from that space. And I always looked for the sea on vacations. The sea calms me, it does me good and nothing is more typical of me than having the sea this size with these colors", she says as she points to the piece.
"I've lived all these colours in my life. And I chose to come to Cascais also because of the sea. It's peace and a very important affective memory for me". Hence it's not strange that other works of hers have titles like "Waves" or "Sand". The most spontaneous of all was "Chaos", made in the early morning after a trip to Hawaii, with many hours of jet lag. "It was midnight, I couldn't sleep, the threads were already ready on the loom, I was about to start a piece, I already had some colours, but it wasn't working. So I took everything off and started from scratch. By 6:15 in the morning it was ready and signed. So it couldn't have any other name than this".
"I was already conceiving some of these pieces when Euclides Barros, one of the managers of the gallery where I will exhibit, discovered your work when visiting my house. "He came here because he had made some pieces of furniture for us. Then he saw 'Sand' on the loom and said, 'Is it you who is making this? The world needs to know your work.' And it was the first time I saw someone outside the family or friends really enchanted with a piece I had produced".
"After 17 years completely dedicated to family, Ju Bock feels that it's time to focus on herself and her passion. 'An expatriate mother with three children has to focus on the family, so I gave up my professional life during those 17 years. I was a mother, a homemaker, and now that my husband has retired, the spotlight of the house turned to me. He said, "Now it's your turn, and I'll give you all the support so you can fulfill what you wanted to do but couldn't in the environments where we lived." He took over the house and our youngest son so that I could focus on tapestry. And he's the one who will buy the wood and cut it for me; he made one of these looms,' she points out.
'I'm very proud of myself,' she concludes. 'I'm 52 years old and starting over. We never start from scratch because we always come with a baggage of life, but it's a new beginning in some way — and that's also what I want to show women and people in general. We're always in time, we can always reinvent ourselves. We just can't be afraid. Unfortunately, society puts us in a box at 50 where it says: stay home, you don't need to produce anymore, you've already lived, your children are there — those who have them — but life can start over. If you feel like doing something, do it. Don't regret not having done it. It's very good to have butterflies in your stomach again, to have this desire to grow and do something. Age is just a number; we just have to live, and we have a lot ahead of us.'"