Full Calendar

Spring has sprung in a very big way! The calendar is getting very busy and I am being a very busy bee in the studio as well. 

Let me begin by officially posting the news that Angelina's Eggs was accepted into the SAQA exhibition 'Balancing Act'. It will be showing for the first time at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX this fall and then traveling to both Chicago and Portland. I have also heard that my piece, Mariposa, which is still out on exhibit with 'Butterfly Whirl' will be travelling to Houston this fall as well. I will have two pieces showing in Houston! Boy do I wish I could go. Not in the cards this year.

SAQA MA/RI had it's first quarterly meeting here in Rhode Island at Blaine's Sewing Center in Cranston on March 28. We invited quilting guild members here in the state to come check out one of our meetings and Sue Bleiweiss, Allison Wilbur and myself provided demos of ways to finish an art quilt and on free motion stitching. Thanks have to go out to Blaine's for letting us use their facilities and machines and to Bernina who provided the machines. It was a great meeting and great way to start off the year for SAQA here in MA and RI.

The only time to breathe was Easter weekend because it started to roll again with the start of MQX in Manchester, NH. This was a wonderful large show full of vendors and amazing quilts. I didn't take or teach any classes but they were going on all weekend. Perhaps next year I will apply to teach. I got to see one of my favorite art quilts of late, which I watched being created online last year by very talented, Andrea Brokenshire. Titled "A Passion For Purple", this clematis is the most amazing job of both painting and stitching that I have ever seen. Kudos to Andrea for winning two ribbons and a Janome Memory Craft sewing machine. I was just tickled to see it up close and personal.

I didn't even get to blink before returning the next day to northern MA for the opening of 'Seasonal Palette' which is a SAQA juried invitational exhibition with the theme of the seasons. Sue Bleiweiss, co-rep for MA/RI SAQA filled in for Martha Sielman and led a walkthrough of the exhibition currently on view at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA. The show was inspiring and physically gorgeous with all pieces having been constructed the same size. 

Each artist also included a journal of their process which was fascinating. I could have spent hours just perusing the journals. Below are a couple of my favorites, as I am a lover of all things full of color and drama. 

On the left is a detail of Autumn Celebration by Benedicte Caneill from New York and on the righi is a detail of Reflections of Summer by Jenny Hearn from Johannesburg, South Africa. If you are in New England you might want to make a trip to NEQM before July 26 because this is one very amazing show.

Well the calendar continues marching on. This Friday, April 17, I will be up in Worcester, MA at the Sewing and Quilting Expo. I will be helping to man the SAQA booth, #812, all day with other MA/RI members. I will be bringing the SAQA MA/RI Trunk Show with me to display. Come by and say "hello". On April 25, SAQA MA/RI is sponsoring a lecture and photo shoot for registered members with professional photographer, Joe Ofria. Joe has been photographing fine art for over 34 years in the Boston area and will be speaking to our members about how to successfully use a point and shoot digital camera to get quality photos of your work.

Then it's off to Portland, OR for me on April 29 through May 4 for the SAQA yearly Convention. On Friday, May 1 from 7-10pm, I will be providing a demo on the use of fabric markers to enhance art quilts at the SAQA Maker Space at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton in Portland. This whole extended weekend promises to be so much fun. I will be posting from Portland, hopefully, with lots of pictures and updates of what is happening.

When I arrive home I will be joining Sue Bleiweiss and Cheryl Rezendes in jurying our SAQA MA/RI exhibition, 'Art As Quilt' which will open in September of this year at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. The call for entry for all MA/RI and CT members is open from May 1 through May 31.

Phew! You may be wondering how anything is happening in the studio. It is happening every day. I feel so blessed not to be working outside the home and to be able to be in my studio every day. I enjoy a day off a week to play with my granddaughter, Riley but every other day I spend a good chunk, if not near all of my day playing with fabrics, markers, pencils and sewing machines. Above is a sample piece, in process, that I have done for my demo in Portland on using fabric markers to accentuate an art quilt. There are three of these sample pieces and their step outs being prepared.

COLOR Stories

COLOR Stories is the name I have given to a sketchbook journal I've just begun. I have a page here where I will be regularly posting progress in journal entries with photos of my process as I go along. I hope to 'sketch' several fabric paintings which will become a fabric journal when finished. Each entry I will be adding to the last post to create one long journal entry. I hope to both learn and teach a little about color, composition, value, balance and other elements of art as I create each piece in my own unique way. I'm sure there will be experiments along the way, which adds to the fun. While I hope to gain a fantastic journal at the end, the journey here will be the focus. To follow along with me simply click COLOR Stories, above, where you find the boxes highlighting my pages.

And when I get home from Portland I will be visiting my Exhibition goals again to crack the whip at completing a few more large pieces, starting with Empress of the Pines.

28 Days

Setting goals and achieving them are two very different animals. Late last fall I did some planning with my mentor's guidance. Ultimately I came up with a list of major pieces I want to create this year and a calendar set for the exhibitions in which I wish to enter them. Easy enough task. I have more ideas in my head than time to complete them!

Time is a valuable commodity to an artist. I have learned a lot about what time means to my practice of art. I have never been one to seek the easy or quick way to do something. My art is evidence of the fact that my techniques take a great deal of time. The more time I put into a piece, the more technically sound it becomes. Conversely when the clock seems to be ticking way too fast, I feel the pressure and it often shows in the stitching.

My last piece was drawn, fused and stitched in 28 days. I conceived of the idea years ago but only recently did I see an exhibition come up that was a possible fit; SAQA's Balancing Act. 

My paternal grandmother was a strong woman and a very important role model for all of her granddaughters. She wasn't formally educated, growing up in rural Italy, the daughter of peasant farmers. After immigrating and working a lifetime in this country, my grandfather's social security check was not quite enough to make ends meet. So Angelina found a way to grow the cookie jar. She peddled her chicken's eggs door to door in the neighborhood along with the vegetables from their garden. Now called cottage industry, my grandmother worked hard for that extra cash.

While I had the concept firmly in my head, bringing my beloved grandmother to life was daunting. I struggled with color and fabric choices, changed the drawing, and I even altered my initial concept of having chickens hanging by beads below the bottom edge.

I spent quite a bit of time creating the chickens. I used my fabric markers to flesh out all the feathers.

I even hand stitched the ribs on the feathers, found a wonderful straw fabric and that got the marker treatment too. But as time progressed I found that I wasn't keen on how they looked with the body of the quilt. And time was running very short so I couldn't start over. Sometimes an artist goes down an unproductive path accidentally and WHAM, days are gone!

Geometric or architectural perspective is definitely not my thing so getting the coop put in took some more of my time. Before I knew it I had only one more day to finish and I ended up working all night to finish the border and binding, hand sewing it between sleepy nods of my head. 

I always take that one final critical look at each piece as I finish them and see them hanging ready to be photographed. I always see something I didn't see before and I almost always wish I had more time to alter one or two things.

With this piece, although it is emotionally dear to my heart, there are more than a few things I wish I had more time to correct. A few of those nagging self criticisms can't be altered without starting again. Maybe I am being overly critical because we all do that don't we. I'll know soon enough if it is good enough to be accepted into the SAQA exhibit. I have had a string of rejections, and without jinxing myself, if this one is also rejected, I will know why this time.

ANGELINA'S EGGS

32" x 45"

Completed 2015