Detta Lange 1 - Print Maker

Portrait and interview - 1993 

Detta is a painter, printer, healer, reflexologist, metamorphic practitioner, a medicine person, pipe carrier and holder of the Circle Garden.  She is a member of the Dartington Printers’ Group.

She was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923, and at the age of ten was sent to a convent boarding school in Bavaria.  In this part of Germany, she learned much about nature’s magic beauty and it was due to the nuns’ influence that she started to think and ultimately protest against regimentation.

During the early part of the war, she went to the Alps to help the mountain farmers and so avoided working in the munition factories.  On her return to Berlin, she studied theatre design and the graphic arts and began working in the resistance where she met Hannes whom she married in 1942.  For years, they lived in danger of being arrested by the SS.

At the end of the war, with their three children, they emigrated to Canada.  In Edmonton, Alberta, she started a Montessori School and trained teachers to use art in schools.  She was made Art Director of the City of Edmonton.  In 1955, Detta accepted the position of a lecturer at the Art Department of IHC, a private liberal arts’ college.

In the same year, she met Thomas Banjakja, a spokesman for the people of the Hopi nation in Arizona.  Her understanding of life and the universe was greatly expanded through this meeting, which led to a continuous contact with the Hopi people and an ongoing deepening of her personal life experience.

In 1976, she decided to stop teaching and to spend six months, winter and spring, on Iona.  It was a retreat and a new beginning.  She has let life live her ever since.

In September 1993, Detta opened The Hannes Lange Centre of Healing Arts in Totnes, in memory of her husband.  “I used the words Healing Arts in the name of the centre, as I know that creative imagination is vital in the progression of healing.  We here are acting as catalysts; we listen and provide a supportive environment which is conducive to creative changes.  Thus, clients become actively involved in their own healing process, body and mind.”  The Centre is also used for poetry and writers’ groups; for people on the medicine path (Grandmother Circle) and for workshops and talks by various speakers.

Detta is a member of the Dartington Printers’ Group who are currently working on their third limited edition publication of original prints.  The first book Alpha Beast was followed by illustrations of Robert Herrick’s poetry to mark the 400th anniversary of his birth.  Each book, accompanied by an exhibition of the framed prints, is launched at The Cider Press in Dartington before moving on to different venues.

Update: Detta died in Totnes in 2016.  Her work is represented in The National Gallery of Canada and the University of British Columbia.