Official Announcement

Here's for the show in Canberra to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canberra as the capitol of Australia.  Willy-willy - my art quilt - and  I will be winging our way over later this month.  Can't wait.  Tell all your Aussie friends!

8" x 8"

This is round three of the round robin challenge my workshop group has had since we met for a month at FiberFly Studios last spring.  I pieced the underlying quilt block then made a copy of it on printable voile.   I'm so proud of everyone for continuing to do their pieces!

Sparks are Flying

This is the piece - 36" square - I sent off to Illuminations, the 2013 Art Cloth Network exhibition for jurying by Bruce Hoffman.   Let's hope he likes it!  There is a hidden layer of silk satin underneath the panels.  It was so cool to see how two different kinds of silk took the same dye using the same fold pattern.    It's called Sparks for obvious reasons.  Ooops!  I forgot to mention in my Artist Statement that it is foiled, too. 

Confluence in Paterson, New Jersey

Haidu Waters at Vision Gallery in Chandler

Here's the announcement; stop by if you are near Chandler!

Ice Flow St. Pete

I've waited a couple of years since my visit to both St. Petersberg, Russia, and St. Pete, FL, to make this piece.  While it is cold and snowy in the former, it was actually the visit to the latter which really inspired this quilt.  The chunks of industrial glass which create part of an exterior wall at the Chihuly Glass Museum are captured here in fabric and paint. 

Willy-Willy

Off to Australia, both Willy-Willy and I, in October.  Willy-Willy (the name for the swirling wind funnels which act like tornadoes) will be on view at the National Museum's upstairs gallery from the end of October into December in Canberra, Australia, along with the work of leading Australian textile art/quilt makers.   I'm the only American with work in the show.   Lucky me!!

Las Laguna Gallery

If you will be in or around Laguna Beach in the next few weeks please swing by this gallery which will have two of my embroideries: Flotsam and Jetsam, among many other small works.  Check their website for opening hours.  Let me know if  you stop in.

Dye Day

Six of us spent Sunday at Susan Willen's house dyeing up a storm.  Here are some samples from my stash.  The first five photos are of work I completed on Sunday, done very precisely as can be seen by the clarity of the crackle.  The next day I did more of a general immersion dyeing to use up the left over dyes and those samples are much muddier as is expected.  All will, I'm sure, find their way into future art quilts.  Keep a look out!

Schuylkill River

This is my Art Cloth Network 2012 piece which is part of the touring Inspirations series going to Evanston, Illinois, and San Jose, CA, this fall and winter (see side panel for dates).  The "inspiration" was the experience of seeing all that gorgeous trash in the river after flooding.  The piece is recycled bubblewrap and other plastics.

Chroma:Green DONE!

The completion of this piece takes me 14 months and half way through the Chroma series.   In addition to Green I've finished Chroma: Yellow, Chroma: Blue and Chroma: Orange over that period of time.  Up next is Chroma: RED.    I'm still very much enjoying the research which goes into each module of each color and the challenge it is to make them all complex and fun.  They all measure 72" x 45".    Storage is becoming a problem which needs immediate attention!

Taking Another Look

I've been prepping some work for upcoming exhibitions and thought I'd post a bit.

Archeology/Language (detail):

Textiles V:

Tissue Float:

 

Bowl:

How Much Fun Is This??!?!!

Penultimate Module for Chroma: Green

What is greener than chlorophyll!

Another Collage Finished

This is my textile interpretation of Susan Willen's paper collage.  We have all the collages done and framed so we're ready to start setting up some exhibits so EVERYONE can enjoy them.   I'll post the whole show when we have everything photographed.

BANNED!!

In early 2013 I saw an announcement requesting entries for art quilts in an exhibit entitled Light, Hope, Opportunity sponsored by Quilt for Change, a group out of Rhode Island.  Rules were straight-forward: 24” square art quilt on the theme of how insufficient energy sources impact women worldwide.   I knew at once that I wanted to do a piece on the Mexican women working at American maquilladoras in Juarez, Mexico.  These unskilled, minimally paid, mostly young women make products for the American consumer market in well-equipped modern factories.  Hundreds of them, upon leaving work, walk home, often after dark, and have been raped and murdered. There is no safe transit for them, and much of the city is not properly illuminated: no light, little hope, trifling opportunity.

   Though I have done a lot of artwork on global themes – mostly focusing on water    issues – this one especially touched me.  I carefully thought through and designed a    piece I hoped would tell the story in 576 square inches; I named it Juarez.  Pink is a    color I rarely use but here I dyed the background fabric pink and sprayed it in a    splatter pattern with red ink to indicate both female and blood – pretty common    symbols.  I chose to build a cross from some Indian metal chain.  Mexico is a country    in which every city and town has a Catholic church and the cruciform symbol is as    richly complex as one can be; it runs the gamut of love, motherhood, protection to    deceit, violence, male dominance and material wealth.  And MUCH else.  I am not    personally a member of a religion which employs the cross in its symbology, but I   am well aware of its pervasive and varied connotations. 

Onto the pink ground I printed a schematic map of Juarez where it meets the US border, applied the metal cruciform then richly hand embroidered dimensionally across the underlying materials, enhancing and quite graphically depicting the blood and emotional loss which represent the theme of the piece – lack of light and transit in Juarez allowing for horrific crimes against these women.  The artwork is intentionally disturbing, which is appropriate to the theme.

Quilt for Change requested images of the work in progress which I sent, and I was eventually delighted to learn that Juarez had been accepted into their traveling exhibition (2013-2015).  Off the show went in June, 2013, to its grand opening at the Palais des Nations, the United Nations’ headquarter in Geneva, Switzerland.  What a thrill!  Beautiful building, thousands of people walking through, nice display panels but . . . what’s this???  My work was tossed by the UN Cultural Commission at the last minute.  While pictures of bright-eyed Moslem girls in headscarves were fine, a cross on a piece about Mexico is no go.

I realize I’m in GREAT company:  James Joyce, Mark Twain, Marc Chagall, John Steinbeck, Ai Weiwei, etc., etc., all had work banned.  But shame on the UN, an organization I’ve had nothing but respect for up to this point, for shying away from unpleasant truth.  Light?  Hope?  Definitely NO opportunity.

The show will travel to various venues in the US, and I’ve been told Juarez will take its rightful place in the exhibits when it does.  Will it disturb some viewers?  I certainly hope so!

Are We There Yet?

That's the name of this piece which is appropriate as we have been on the road quite a bit this month.  And we are off to France on Monday - Paris and Brittany.  The quilt is a whole cloth piece done with the deconstructed screen printing technique, plus some brush work, then stitched in my recently favorite bird track stitch.

Screen Printing

Spent two exhausting days screen printing with thickened dyes.  A bit of a push since I don't have a proper print/wet studio, but got some interesting results.  This one pleased me so much (and it is on canvas) that I've decided to just have it put on stretcher bars and hung  as it is.  The colors are much richer than the photos demonstrate as it is a foggy June Gloom morning and I just couldn't wait to take the pix.

On the Road and Back

I've been traveling (North Carolina) and will be off again in a week or so for France so there's a frenzy going on at FiberFly Studios during this brief window of being home.    Here are three things I've been working on:

Earth Webs - a contemporary embroidery DONE and off to the framer this weekend

Here's the fourth in the Sea Tangle series.   This is a mixed media piece, sort of a painting on a VERY unusual built ground.   Also  DONE and off to the framer.

And . . . this guy is, at least for now, is named Sunday Best.  When fully clothed he may very well be making an appearance in a book put together by the Australian fabric manufacturing company M+S Textiles as he is comprised largely of their fabrics.  Don't know if I'll be able to get him up and running before my departure date but he's so cute I just couldn't resist posting him.