THEY'VE BEEN ACCEPTED!
As this is my region and I am trying to build a resume as well as a body of current work, I felt that I had to at least try for this show. My problem came in looking through the dating of my existing work. Most all of it was dated 2009 or earlier. There are many quilts started in 2010 but they are unfinished, most of them large and detailed making them impossible to finish off in time. So I looked at what I had and chose the piece below as my starting point. Reasonably small and more than half completed I finished it off first.
ENCHANTED
29" X 25"
Completed June, 2013
Commercial fabrics, silk, beads, fused and machine stitched
So the theme for my three pieces had to be New Mexico and the desert southwest. I had to create two new pieces that while having an identity of their own, tied in well with my first piece. The prickly pear in ENCHANTED was actually a drawing of a prickly pear that I have growing on my patio in a large pot. They will make it through the winters OK but I have discovered that too much rain is not a good thing for a cactus. After five years my plant looks a bit worse for the wear. But I love cactus, especially the dichotomy of the delicate flowers and the deadly spines. There are many kinds of prickly pear and the flowers range in color from yellow to orange to pink. My second piece was born from my love of this cactus.
LOOK, BUT DON'T TOUCH
20 1/2" x 23 1/2"
Completed June, 2013
Commercial fabrics, silk, beads, fused and machine stitched
Detail: LOOK, BUT DON'T TOUCH
Well, two is company and three's a crowd. I moved ahead to my third piece but after much work, with the deadline approaching, I took a turn. My daughter, Andie and I sat one day pointing out what was working and what wasn't. We came to the conclusion that ENCHANTED and LOOK, BUT DON'T TOUCH worked well together and that ENCHANTED and MONUMENTAL worked well together, but each of the pairings pushed the third out of the picture. I needed three, not two. So I set MONUMENTAL aside and started a whole new piece three days before the deadline. Crazy! Yes a bit.
SPRING IN CHACO CANYON
31 1/2" X 24"
Completed June, 2013
Commercial fabrics, silk, beads, fused and machine stitched
One of the things that needed to happen in the third piece was that the colors, while showing ties to the others, needed to have a sense of individuality. MONUMENTAL had a turquoise sky and earth colors similar to ENCHANTED and this is what pushed the second piece out of the picture. SPRING IN CHACO CANYON holds it's own with color but the greens and the earth colors tie it in. It was hard coming up with a third bold border. My stash is full with batiks but not so many bold statement stripes or geometrics. I wavered a bit on this choice of border but ultimately I think the simplicity of the piece does support a bold border.
So there it is. I have no idea if my decisions will be cohesive enough for the judges of the exhibit. I gave it my best shot. And in the balance I now have three wonderful pieces that I did not have three weeks ago. The decisions to accept or decline will be made by June 26.
I will be finishing MONUMENTAL in the next weeks because it is a truly spectacular piece. Who knows, I may add to my stash of desert themed quilts and do a few more. I truly loved working on these pieces because they tapped into my passion for New Mexico. In my next post I will take you on my journey with MONUMENTAL.