Art with a Friend

A month or so ago a friend who had just moved to the Syracuse area from Missouri invited me to come see her new home and go with her to the Art=Quilts=Art exhibit at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, an irresistible invitation. Now driving the two-plus hours toward Syracuse at this time of year is challenging (and the reason I never got to the show last year), and the weather did what it could to make me question my decision to go yesterday:

It had snowed a good part of the evening before, but I didn't see a single snowflake fall during my drive, just glorious landscapes as the snow highlighted the lines of trees on the mountains.

I often like to see art exhibits and particularly quilt exhibits by myself, moving at my own pace without having to worry about someone else looking surreptitiously at her watch as I stand contemplating a particular piece, but my afternoon with Mary Lou reminded me of the advantages of sharing this experience. Mary Lou is not a quilter and probably saw more art quilts yesterday than she had seen in the rest of her life, but she is a keen observer and does sew. She quickly caught on to my need to stand back and then move close to a work, even calling me over to see the tiny red stripe in what looked like white lines on black from a distance in one of Kathy Loomis' quilts. 

And we looked for patterns together and tried to figure out techniques and commented on things that drew us to a particular quilt. We noticed different things and it made for a most enjoyable afternoon. Of course we were surrounded by strong works of art that were capable of holding our attention and worthy of the time we spent with them. I could have spent much more time there but the sun was continuing to move across the sky and I did not want to drive my entire trip home in the dark.

So thank you to the weather gods for allowing me to slip between snow storms and thanks, Mary Lou, for your hospitality and companionship!

And if you are still with me, thanks for your company as well!

Even More Local Art

Every December VESTA, a group of local professional artists and craftswomen, gather some of the pieces they have been working on over the course of the year and create an exhibit at the Gmeiner, the local art & cultural center here. Its opening coincides with the town's big holiday festival, Dickens of a Christmas, when Main Street is closed to traffic and becomes wall-to-wall people ebbing and flowing around vendors set up on the sidewalks. I have no pictures of the crowd this year because I spent the whole day talking to visitors to the gallery.

We are an eclectic group as this shot of a corner of the gallery shows:

Here you see hand-dyed and hand-woven scarves by Ruth Ann Miller, baskets hand woven from willow Patty Dillman grows herself, aprons made by Barb Most with pockets made from old handkerchiefs and other linens or photographs from the thirties, cards designed and hand colored by Linda Hoerner (who also makes jewelry), a quilt or two, of course, and on the bench an in-progress lace project by Judie Mainus. 

Kathy Cummings painted, among other pieces, a three-part series in oil, cleverly depicting a little girl's coming-of-age through her shoes.

And Alyson Leach, who also works in oils, included several pieces from her Vanishing Landscapes series in the show:

My photos of Alice Mickey's beautiful clouds done in pastels that you can see on the back wall of the gallery  need a retake and will be added later.

And there was more: jewelry made from re-purposed elements by Ali Taylor, glass beads and jewelry by Kathy Riley and Jen Kuhn, who also makes felted art fabric from alpaca wool.

I think our diversity adds energy to this exhibit; it certainly adds it to our conversations when we get together.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!

Local Art

The best way to experience art, of course, is to see the real thing--to stand in front of the original and see the texture and color and line the way the artist put it on the canvas or created it out of fabric or stone or wood. Getting regular doses of original art can be a challenge for those of us who live in the less urbanized parts of the country and so I decided to take advantage of the opening of a show in the surprisingly impressive gallery at Penn College in Williamsport (about an hour from where I live) a couple of weeks ago.  The art of Virginia Bradley and Chris Malcomson from Philadelphia was on display, two very different artists who happen to be married to each other.

Malcomson works on huge squarish canvasses taller than I am. He does a lot of underpainting (a technique that could be akin to overdyeing?) so that when he is finished his paintings glow with color. In his talk he spoke of his love of Rothko and other painters who suggest thresholds in their paintings, inviting us to go through the painted surface.

"Reaching" is one of the pieces he showed us and my image of it is from the publicity for the show.

He said his goal was to "paint stuff that was trying to add something to people's lives," and he said it in his British accent so it became even more significant.  "As life gets busier, art should go slower" so it becomes a place "where people can stop and go inside themselves and then go anywhere they want." His paintings certainly slowed me down as I stood in front of them and soaked in the strong blues and reds with hints of many other colors breaking through.

Bradley establishes a dialogue with the images in her work and there is much activity in her pieces. She layers prints over a variety of backgrounds and then adds layers of paint and other media over them.

She created one very interesting layer by pouring molten pewter over a print of girls in classical Rome and then carving into it to create even more texture. Her fearless experimentation was infectious.

I came away thinking about art and its meaning and purpose as well as color and texture and experimentation--all making the trip worthwhile. The show is at Penn College until Dec. 11.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!

Happy Thanksgiving

To all my friends and mentors who make art with fabric or paint or paper or glass or words or pixels or a million other media, thank you for sharing your thoughts and your laughter with me, for giving me just the right word of encouragement when I needed it, for inspiring me with your work and creativity, for helping us all see this world  and ourselves a little differently.

Ice Flowers formed by frost heave
From a walk with Terra Thanksgiving 2011

Féileacán 2

Last year the little Celtic knotwork butterfly that I made for Ami Simm's Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative sold so quickly at the VESTA show that I decided to stage a repeat performance. Well, I did my part of the performance; let's see if anyone buys it. If someone does, the proceeds I get after the gallery takes its slice will go to AAQI; if nobody buys it, the quilt itself will go to the AAQI auction.

This one is the same knotwork pattern as last year but with some color, background, and body changes. I started this after the last one sold, thinking I would add the butterfly pattern I created to the Celtic knotwork class I teach and would use it as a sample. But, due to a long list of obligations, the class did not happen in the summer. Perhaps next summer--but that would mean I should get started on another butterfly.

These are, by the way, my hand-dyes, except for the commercial purple batik.  I had a tough time making the body stand out from the purple and finally decided to edge it in two colors of couched perle cotton---light blue and dark purple and I think it works.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!

Risk

Since I had finished what had become my comfort quilting, I decided to go back to work on my Doodle Squares to keep up my free motion quilting practice. After all, the VESTA show is fast approaching and I have less than half the number that I had last year to sell. And decided to move from the safety of the well known pattern to the risk of trying something new.

Now if you know me well, you know drawing is not my strong point. But I have learned that if I really, really, really look at something, there is a much better chance that I create a good-enough approximation of it. And if I can draw it, I can perhaps quilt it as well. I have been quilting oak leaves and other smooth edged leaves for years, but I always wanted to do a free-motion maple leaf. I have been studying, i.e., really, really, really looking, at sugar maple leaves on my early morning walks with Terra for the past month or so and remembered reading somewhere that if you start with the veins, it's easier to draw a leaf. I tried a couple with pencil and paper and lo and behold! they each looked like a good-enough maple leaf. So on to thread and fabric:

Now, it's lucky for me that no two maple leaves look exactly alike so there is a great range of acceptability and I think I could use some more practice getting the shape a bit fuller but I was pleased that my first attempts did resemble maple leaves--closer than I have ever gotten before.

Usually my Doodle Squares are reversible and for the back of this one I had chosen a batik that I loved with these great green dots on it. But--repeat after me--a print or heavy texture hides quilting stitches.  I know this from years of trying to hide my quilting stitches, but, for some reason, I forgot that cardinal rule when I was choosing the fabric.  The leaves are difficult enough to see on the top but on the back they become an excellent example of camouflage, a Can-you-find-the-hidden-leaves-in-this-picture game.

I even outlined all the leaves in a dark purple that should have contrasted with the background. They still didn't show up.  Oh, well. . . 

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company.

Safety

During the past few weeks whenever I couldn't figure out what to do next on my current quilt project I have been steadily working on the background quilting for a largish quilt. When I decided on this pattern--what I call an interrupted meander--that would cover a large border section, I knew it was the right decision but thought I would become achingly bored with it.

Now I like this pattern and have used it before. It suggests a leafed vine to me, but only suggests it. But there would be so much of it this time. 

Well, I finished it up last week and I am finding I miss it. It was safe and comfortable. I could do it easily and no decisions needed to be made. I just switched to my free motion quilting foot, put down my Supreme Slider, popped on the appropriate thread and simply quilted for a while.  I didn't need to worry that the slice I was about to make through the quilt top would ruin it or the tulle I was about to fuse down wouldn't work or even figure out how I was going to quilt the little quiltlet I am working on. 

While always living in a completely safe and predictable world is not healthy for artists and other living beings, it sure is nice to visit once in a while.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company.