I met Michael Donnelly in my shop three years ago. A mutual acquaintance sent him a photo of my embroidered coat via Instagram, and two weeks later, she brought Michael to meet me.

"Tell me your story,” he said, and I did. “You know,” he said, “I think I would like to make a film about your work one day.” This began a series of meetings over coffee and walks on the beach, where we shared more of our life stories. When Patricia arrived in Cape Town, we formed a writing group. During these Tuesday afternoons, we read to each other from our own texts. With gentleness and care, we witnessed our personal histories, sharing our deepest thoughts and musings. Michael eventually named our group “The Mutual Admiration Society Writing Club.” These afternoons became treasured moments.

As Michael got to know the story behind my artworks intimately, he also understood the connections and what urged me to make them. Every now and then, he filmed me reading from my stitched book or I showed him other textile works I had made. When I mentioned my embroidered tent, his curiosity was ignited further. One day, I unpacked it, and we decided to take it to the forest and start filming, seeing where it would go and …”waiting for some magic”, as Michael would say.

Thus, the filming began. We had models—Jack and Zoe—for some of the coat and dress scenes. I brought props and anything red that I thought might add some intrigue. We were just experimenting.

What is the film about?

My art-making process is an attempt to make sense of my life, about the choices I made, and how to live with them. The "thread" that winds through these works is essentially about a ´love story… that came at a price´.

While the initial works—the coat, the tent, the book, the dress, the paper shoes, and the fragmentario vessels—each have a definitive story behind them, with this new work, I did not want to engage with old emotions from long ago. Instead, I sought a new way into the narrative.  

Looking at the finished movie, I found it fascinating how Michael transformed the film into a ghostlike, out-of-focus story, which is of course one of his specialties.  the eerie atmosphere achieved through the sound and the bluish tint of the film feels both vaguely familiar and disturbing,  It hints, if one dares to look that far, at the lurking dangers of a certain Grimm’s fairy tale unfolding in a forest and the possibility of Bluebeard’s castle being somewhere not too far off.

But this is not what it is about; it is far less dramatic. It is, rather, one woman’s attempt at her own handmade life. Fragments of cloth stitched together until they made sense to her, appeased something in her, sheltered and calmed her, allowing her to do something with her unresolved conflicts and resulting heavy emotions by stitching them into works of art. These are things that can be looked at, exhibited, discussed, and, one day, have a film made about.

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