Uncommon Threads WOW

September 27, 2005

Here’s a new quilt that Cathy Jeffery showed at our Uncommon Threads meeting last week. I love this quilt! I always love the scrappy ones.

In October, it will be Uncommon Threads 2nd anniversary. We just finished our WOW exhibition at the Driskill Gallery based on a triptych challenge that the group started last year. Of course I was a slacker all summer and had no triptych to enter. I may have also forgotten to mention that Uncommon Threads has a new web site here.

Speaking of Uncommon Threads (our local art quilt group), Susie emailed me to say that she’s started a local group. “We’ve been getting together for about a year and can’t seem to get things rolling. We seem to be lacking any focus or direction. I was wondering if anyone in your group would have any advice to help us.”

I asked the group and got a couple of good responses. The best advice came from Kathy Kansier. She said to focus on exhibiting work or developing opportunities to exhibit “even if it is a local library exhibit, it is a start and will get them excited and hopefully bring in more members.”

Thinking about it, this is exactly what we’ve done over the last two years. We started with a small exhibit at our local Border’s coffee shop. Then approached a gallery. Then the local arts council. Now our art museum is wanting us to put on a headline show, our first gallery wants another show, and our regional arts council wants to write a grant so we can put on an even bigger show. Along the way, people have been hearing about us and joining up.

Actually thinking about it all has me stressed out! It’s like a humongous snowball rolling down a hill, gaining momentum and collecting victims along the way!

But to be honest and less melodramatic, working and preparing for exhibitions has given us focus and camaraderie, and I’ve been surprised at how much each of has developed artistically over the past couple of years.

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Illustration Friday - Fresh!

September 25, 2005

I thought of this drawing for Illustration Friday’s theme Fresh early this morning. To get the full effect, I think you have to imagine how Jerry Seinfeld would say “Fresh!”

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The Mad Hatter

September 24, 2005

While in North Carolina, I tried to hook up with some art quilters. I did get a chance to visit Lyric Kinard’s studio and very much enjoyed seeing her quilts, studio and her great art books. However, I was chicken about taking photos - somehow it seemed intrusive. But check out her web site for lots of goodies.

I didn’t ask permission to take these photos of a terrific little exhibit called about Alice in Wonderland by Lori Kerr. No idea who she is, I tried googling and found nothing. Lori Kerr are you out there?….hmm, must be off the grid. But I love her stuff! The borders on her quilts were so fun, makes me want to try some!

She doesn’t quilt everywhere, she uses her thread in a very painterly way.

I think she also paints the fabric in the faces, and occasionally embroiders little details. And she has a sense of humor, that’s for sure.

Where else would an Alice in Wonderland exhibit be? At the Mad Hatter’s coffee house of course, on Main in Durham, a totally cool retro place that looks like it was a pancake house in the 60’s. Next time I’m bringing my laptop so I can blog while I’m sucking down a Mighty Mango served up in a tiki mug.

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Good Mail Day

September 24, 2005

Oh goody! Someone sent me a big box, and it’s very heavy. But what can be inside? Could it possibly be ….fabric?

Ho ho - it is fabric! But who could have possibly known how much I like stripes and polka-dots?

Just kidding, it was me of course. I drove from Cary to Carrboro to answer the siren’s call from the elusive Thimble Pleasures, and was richly rewarded. So well, in fact that my next task was to find the nearest UPS store to ship it home.

Fabric purchases have gotten a lot heavier since I’ve realized I have to buy bigger hunks for backgrounds. Not to mention some batiks for backing…

So I have been anxiously awaiting a package from myself. Now that it’s here, I’m ready to start the ritualistic washing, ironing, folding, and borking. (my quasi-trekkie term for organizing fabric into the “collective”) Maybe I’m obessive, but I really like doing that. Maybe it’s just procrastinating the real creative work.

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The Stick Man

September 20, 2005

On Tuesday, we went to see the North Carolina Museum of Art and also get a bit of homework done for an on-line class I’m taking called Museums and Artists. The NCMA was getting ready to open a contemporary exhibition called Crosscurrents: Art, Craft and Design in North Carolina in cooperation with the Mint Museums. The exhibition hasn’t opened yet, but luckily Russ’s sister knows the director of development, so he got us in the back door to get a peek - a most excellent show!

Outside the museum is 164 acres of land that will eventually be developed into a sculpture park, and they already have a few nice installations. My favorite was one of Patrick Dougherty’s sculptures. It’s made of branches and sticks all woven together into an vaguely architectural form that you can walk through. The little girl standing in the doorway in the photo below gives an idea of the scale.

I love his work. Up close it really is like baskets on steroids. It seems to evoke feelings or memories that go beyond words, somewhat akin to poetry. You can see more on his web site here.

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Airport Drawings

September 18, 2005

Yesterday we were flying from St. Louis to Cary, NC, and I’m not as good as Melody and you others at packing my knitting on the plane. How am I going to get that sweater that needs sleeves into a carry-on with two laptops, a camera and all my other important essentials?

I had got down to using one laptop on trips, because I look like a total mess at the security points when they make me unload all those electronics. But I suspected Russ might commandeer my PC in preparation for his slide presentation, so in a panic I put the Mac back in at the last minute. Instead of handwork, I decided to practice drawing people and found it so engaging I almost missed the line-up call at my Chicago transfer.

This guy was sleeping next to me and he had a tough-looking face I wanted to draw. But I was afraid he would beat me up if he saw me drawing him in his sleep, so I hid my sketchbook really quick when he woke up. I liked a girl’s legs with a backpack on her lap. And there was a man sitting across from me using his fingers to read his book. But he left before I could draw his head, so I put someone else’s on his body.

I wish my sketch books looked like this guy’s. I just finished reading his journal Everyday Matters and it was really lovely.

Oh, I almost forgot, most of the time on the plane I was reading Confessions of a Shopaholic, something a lot of us can relate to. It was really fun - sort of in the vein of Bridget Jones’ Diary.

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Little Critters

September 18, 2005

This is what my sketchbooks usually look like, full of little critters. I’m running out of room in this one, so have been drawing in pen on top of some old yucky pencil sketches. These are ideas for the Fishing for Trouble quilt. You can click on the photo for a closer look at their funny faces.

There’s also a girl boxer, because I just recently saw Million Dollar Baby, no offense to Hilary Swank. And a barber chair because this was drawn Friday morning, waiting in the salon for some fancy Italian hair color to work its magic so that I would look superfantastic for the Friday night opening of Fiber Focus 2005 in downtown St. Louis where my Yoga quilt is part of Innovations in Textiles 6. (actually I ended up looking just the same as always.)

Here’s some crab drawings for another yoga quilt. I need to get on the internet and find out what crabs really look like and if they have six legs or eight.
Update: Yikes, just looked them up, and they can be kind of scary, not the tasty little morsels I was thinking of. And they have eight legs plus the big claws!

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Illustration Friday: Depth

September 15, 2005

I’ve had this idea for a quilt, every since the warnings came out about all the mercury in fish (which I love to eat, wah!). So when Illustration Friday posted the theme “Depth”, I thought I’d get off my tush and work up a sketch. For a quilt, I’ll want more details, but the deadline for posting is tonight. I’m thinking of a title like Holy Mackerel! We’re Fishing for Trouble.

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Itchin’ to Knit

September 10, 2005

Back when my grandmother was in the hospital, I took the opportunity to do something I’d been itching to do for a month…knit! I’m using a nice wool, an alpaca boucle, neither word being one that I know how to pronounce, and it’s a beautiful pink and orange blend that may not show up in the photos. Although I haven’t started the arms yet, thought I’d give you a peek.

I had to knit the neckline three times. The first time when the instructions got a little wacky, the neck turned out so tiny I couldn’t get it over my head! The second time I didn’t think it rolled enough. By the third time I was really sweating it and had to call it done. Knitting doesn’t seem that relaxing for me. I have nightmares that I’m going to drop a stitch and the whole thing is going to become an unravelly mess. And what about all those stringy ends? Am I supposed to be working those in as I go, or use them to sew up the side seams?

I wish I could pick up my quilts and take them with me when I travel, but I haven’t figured out a way to do that yet. I need to sketch more when I’m traveling. And now I’m off to another wedding party! In the meantime, aren’t those little balls of yarn too cute to resist!

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Life and Death goes on…

September 8, 2005

Some things seem to hard to write about. This past week, watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been like watching a train wreck on a global scale…Can’t look and can’t look away.

Meanwhile in my small part of the world, we’ve had another funeral and another wedding. My sister got married last weekend, and for the first time in my life, I was part of a wedding party. Talk about feeling like I was in a movie!

My other grandmother passed a few weeks ago. She didn’t leave many photos behind, but a long legacy of quilts from decades of sewing.

She taught me much about sewing, but not about quilting. I learned what I know about that when I was older and on my own. Some of what I learned from her was to be strong, determined, and persevere. She was one the most progressive and strongest women I have ever known. All her life she had a full-time career out of the house, raised a family, worked on her farm, canned food, painted and wall-papered, and made quilts.

One thing I know that I got from her was the story-telling. When I was young, she would tell me stories and jokes over coffee in the morning. When I was older, she told me jokes and stories over coffee in the afternoon. Stories about farm life, about her brother in WWII, about selling real estate, about current events around the world. Even as she slipped into a coma in the hospital, she was telling me stories in her sleep about people who made Mexican fighting knives and a baby in the family who died a long time ago because the grandmother wouldn’t put more wood on the fire.

Of course my favorites quilts are her patchwork ones. I was thinking the other morning about how quilts could be an allegory for our lives. We can take the little pieces of our lives, the happy and pretty ones, the sad and ugly ones, and of course the odd-ball ones, and put them together to make art.

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