Getting Through the Slump

April 26, 2006

Well, that last quilt turned out pretty good after all. But it’s inevitable that there’s usually a let-down after one of those adrenalin-push deadlines. A loss of single-minded purpose. A loss of focus that allows me to ignore all kinds of trivial humdrum things that now I don’t want to do.

BUT, I had a plan for this! If you remember, I built extra design boards and had another quilt project lined up on the second set of boards to try to get me through one of these after-project slumps. Yesterday I took the background fabrics off, sewed them together, and now have them pinned to my main design boards.

I rolled up the last drawing which leaves the big table empty. Oh it feels nice to have a clean table!

Put the old drawing in the old drawing basket…

and got out the new drawing.

Now to start cutting up all the patriotic fabrics I’ve been collecting for this red, white and blue quilt. It’s kind of like a big assembly line. Except that there’s only one person at work on this assembly line. Me, and I work at a turtle’s pace! Why does art take so long?

So I’m ready to start the next one. But maybe I’ll take a little detour and do something small for a change too. Here’s a CD I made for the museum with photos of from the exhibit (mostly what you’ve already seen in the photo gallery.) But the packaging looked slick, so I wanted to post a photo of it.

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Museum Installation

April 23, 2006

I couldn’t stand it and had to sneak over to the museum to see Jim and Gregory hanging the Uncommon Threads show. I love these big portable walls that stand in the middle of the main gallery. Impressive space, isn’t it? That’s Jim the curator in the corner trying to make sense of the list of the 78 art quilts that we brought him.

It was probably good to get in a little practice with my camera under the mixed lighting conditions because tomorrow I will be taking photos of the quilts and our reception. The reception will be 5-7 p.m. but there is another big event going on at the same time, so it will be interesting to see how many people make it to the reception.

A friend is retiring from the position of city manager, and a whole Cardinal baseball game has been named in honor of his retirement. After our reception, we’re going to try to go to the game — so it’s interesting to think about dressing for an art reception AND a baseball game. And there’s also Merrilee’s tailgate party to remember since she found out the city-owned museum won’t be serving wine at the reception and is stocking up her jeep. I’m thinking those red cowboy boots will work pretty well. I tried them on tonight with a couple of my dressier ensembles, and the boots were definitely a glamorous touch.

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Kicking off the Exhibition

April 23, 2006

The reception was Friday night, and the exhibition is off to a great start. Lots of people came, and the quilts look amazing. You can see lots of photos from the installation, reception, and the quilts themselves in this photo gallery I’ve put together.

We also had a very nice article that appeared in the paper this morning with lots of photos. You can read the article here…

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Towers of Babble

April 20, 2006

Finally I finished this quilt, or at least turned it in to the museum for the show, so I can’t work on any more even though there are few details I could still add.

The worst was having to stay up all night Monday night. About 3 a.m. I started getting delirious, looking at this huge wadded up thing stuffed under the arm of my sewing machine and thinking, why exactly am I making a QUILT in the middle of the night?! Or maybe it was worse the next day when in a state of fatigue, I tripped and fell down the concrete stairs outside of my studio the next day. Luckily nothing was broken, including my laptop

The sad thing is I still didn’t finish it, and Merrilee had to negotiate another day for me to work on it. But all’s well that ends well, and the quilt is at the museum now and will be hung as part of our group show. And now that I’ve turned it over, I have a great sense of freedom! If you’d like to see a bigger photo (it’s the biggest I’ve done — 57″ x 85″) and more close up details, check out my web site update here.

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Quilting the Towers

April 16, 2006

All week I’ve been trying to get this quilt done for our museum show next week. Can you believe I even went right to the studio from the airport and started working? The background is ready to quilt, so I’ve taken off all the little stuff. The car was all in pieces pinned to the board, and since it’s difficult to put together, I slipped release paper under it and fused it in place.

Taking the car off in one piece got me all excited about the idea of making a irregular shaped quilt. It would be nice all on it’s own, wouldn’t it?

Seems like it took forever to load all the parts onto my new frame, and I still didn’t get it on straight. Or maybe the top isn’t straight. Who decided to make this thing so big anyway?

I don’t know why I’ve been so intimidated about working on a frame. I had all sorts of plans on how to quilt this thing, in fact I laid bed at night thinking about how to do it. I also made a mini-quilt to test some ideas. However the elaborate plans I had including taking it off the frame and reloading it sideways to quilt the top resulted in some quilting that I eventually had to tear out.

But the Viking and the frame were good for the big areas, they went fast and easy. Now I’m planning on doing the sound waves with embroidery instead of with the machine. And here’s a chance to see one of my backs. Since I don’t use batiks very much on the front, I love to put beautiful batiks on the back. All the multicolored stitching across the batik backing makes for wonderful textures.

I can’t do some the precision quilting I like on the frame though, so later returned to my Bernina. At first it seemed SO SLOW compared to the Viking, but it’s much easier for me to be precise and do directional patterns.

In retrospect, I probably should have left the buildings on and quilted them on the frame. Maybe next time I’ll be better at this whole thing. Well, this much is done but there’s a lot more to do, and I only have one day left!

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Snyderman’s 5th International Fiber Biennial

April 14, 2006

Just before my plane left Philadelphia, I got over to Snyderman Gallery to see their 5th International Fiber Biennial and was glad I did. They have a great cd catalog for only 7.50, so I’ve been able review the artists and their statements now that I’m home. The show had lots of great work, and here’s some artists who made me take a second look.

Ed Bing Lee’s Hamburger is made of thousands of knots marks…”the beginning of a series of ’sculptured’ food images. I have elected to start with the Burger and Hot Dog because they are so ubiquitous; because they are the quintessential icons of Americana, socially, economically and philosophically; and because they are so whimsical.”

Photos don’t do justice to the beauty of Karin Birch’s framed embroidery pieces. She definately takes embroidery to a new level.

Shizuko Kimura does these amazingly delicate drawings from live models with thread, paper and fabric.

I’ve always loved Kay Kahn’s quilted vessels. She starts with words from a fragmented dialogue combined with allusions to ancient Greek amphorae and the classical frieze, but places her human figures into contemporary life. I think it is exceptional to have a mastery over so many things — color, three-dimensional form, and imagery. This is the first time I’ve read her artist statement, which included a section on how she works:

“My vessels are basically quilted, but I approach quilting from a different point of view from other artists. I quilt first, using the layered structure of quilting to make a thick, yet malleable material to use for construction and as a strong background for my imagery. As I work to build up the surface, I am looking for a complexity of color, composition and idea, using fabric and stitching techniques to achieve this goal. I stitch as if I am drawing, overlapping layers of lines, and I use applique to make large blocks of color and shape. I work the imagery on flat panels, then construct the three dimensional forms in a technique similar to slab building in ceramic sculpture except, of course, I am lacing up the edges with thread.”

Cereal Boxes by Bird Ross, another artist who intrigues me. I love her artist’s statement:

“Wear what you like and like what you wear! In my most recent explorations of constructing jewelry from reclaimed materials, I combine the unexpected with the unusable, the marvelous with the mundane, and the precious with the passed-over.

It is important to play when you can because tomorrow…you may have an appointment.”

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Art Quilts at the Sedgwick Opening

April 13, 2006

“Throw away the box, I’m wearing those red cowboots out of here.” And so I left Dudes Boutique and went directly to a packed house at the Art Quilts at the Sedgwick reception (which wasn’t at the Sedgwick, but at the Philadelphia Arts Alliance).

I was actually color-coordinated with my best black suit, red blouse, and red Pucca watch, which seemed almost as popular as the red boots. I met a lot of great upbeat people on this trip, but it was especially fun to meet fellow art quilters and/or bloggers.

(left to right): Rayna Gillman, Lisa Call, Pat Autenrieth, Valerie Goodwin, and Sandra Woock. Darn it, I didn’t get a photo of Pat Kroth who generously shared her room with me so I could stay downtown near all the action — but here’s a cool exhibit that she’s curating called Text and Texture where fiber artists are collaborating with poets.

The show was great, and I was dully impressed with the high quality of so many of the works, and hey, there’s my quilt! Okay time to go…I talked Lisa and her pals Sandra and Carol into leaving the reception in time to catch the opening at the Fabric Workshop.

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The Fabric Workshop

April 13, 2006

I’ve always wanted to see the Fabric Workshop and Museum. It’s devoted to encouraging artists to explore new work in fabric and other materials, and recently they produced lots of silk-screened polka-dot fabrics for Jun Kaneko’s Madama Butterfly. We got in at the end of the reception on Friday night.

Here’s the best photo I took there — yes, it is the Men’s room. It has a glass door so you can just see the entrance which is covered with a fantastic hand screenprint with fluorescent ink and rayon flock on Tyvek by Virgil Marti. I found the details in a big book of artist-designed wallpaper in the collection of the Fabric Workshop.

And here’s the inside of the women’s room. I guess they think that women need more reading material.

The exhibition on the fifth floor of the museum wasn’t what I expected, but the fourth floor was fantastic! Look at these long (and this is just half) work tables for surface design on yardage of a major scale. Hmmh, gives me some grandiose ideas for a space in the back of our warehouse!

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Philadelphia South Street

April 11, 2006

Before I left for Philadelphia, I spent hours looking up locations for all the galleries and shows I wanted to visit. But when I got there, I scrapped all my plans to stay in the hotel room, do yoga, eat salad, and get ready for another PBS interview.

After the interview the rain passed leaving a beautiful spring day. Rather than stay inside I walked to South Street to see the incredible mosaics of Isaiah Zagar.

He’s covered many many buildings, some two-stories high, each with a different theme. I had to admire his Magic Garden through the locked gate, but it was still worth making a donation.

He uses all sort of crazy found objects like bottles and bicycles in his mosaics, but I love what he does with faces the most.

Another reason to visit South Street was for the funky shops — American Pie is a great crafts shop and look at what I bought at Dude’s Boutique to wear to the AQATS reception!

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Nodding Heads

April 6, 2006

Okay, I’ve made it to Philadelphia after sitting on the runway in Cincinnati wedged between lots of strange people for far too long. Weather’s great so I don’t know what I’ll do with those five sweaters I packed. My sense of geography stinks, I guess I thought I was traveling to the far north.

I met these people in the hotel bar (actually they aren’t strange, I know and like them, but I think they prefer to go unnamed on blogs.) We went to the Nodding Head Brew Pub for dinner and admired the nodding head collection of dolls ranging from Mr. Bill to the Abdominable Snowman. I think the people in the photo look blurry because they’ve been drinking. Or maybe because they were nodding their heads?

I found this great book in the Cincinnati airport — it has short essays about 50 remarkable women who have changed history, written by 50 great women writers. Beautiful photos too. It’s inspirational, and just wets my appetite to learn more about some of these women. Also, how could I resist a book that has Audrey Hepburn on the cover?

Tomorrow I hope to get some photos of the Art Quilts at the Sedgwick opening and some other fun art stuff.

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Red Red Red

April 5, 2006

I really have been working like mad to get this quilt done before I leave for Philadelphia tomorrow for the opening of the Art Quilts at the Sedgwick show. See I even got my dentist in it now.

But finally admitting defeat, I turned my attention instead to getting out a mailing of stuff for our upcoming musuem show. We even wrote a nice little newsletter to go along with it that you can see (actually that was another goal - get a newsletter done by end of March - ha!)

Meanwhile someone else at our house has red on their mind! This little car finally made it across the ocean to our local Porshe dealer so the big R could pick it up.

It’s actually a very practical car — no backseat, that’s were the engine is. And although there’s no room for luggage, there’s a nice little spot for Mochi to ride.

She actually likes riding there and is sad when that engine roars off and leaves her behind. She was also very good at posing for a portrait for our newsletter!

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