Summer Swelter, Yet Again

Here I am again facing the trials of summer heat. Still no air conditioner! I have so many UFOs to attack this summer. With a couple of Calls for Entry in my sights, including for the first time for me, Quilt=Art=Quilt at the Schweinfurth Art Center in New York and Art Quilt Elements at the Wayne Art Center in Pennsylvania. I have a plan and so far even with this spring's deviation from the goal list, I am on target.

What set me off of my planned goal list was a call for political art in Threads of Resistance. Feeling as overwhelmed and panicked as I still am about what is happening in my country, I felt a need to try to create a piece in just two months for the exhibit. Organized and run by The Artists Circle, a group of textile artists, Threads of Resistance received over 500 entries. I did not make the cut. I will, however, be traveling to The New England Quilt Museum for the opening on Saturday, July 15, 2017 because I just can't wait to see some of my favorite works up close and personal. For more information about the show go to threadsofresistance.blogspot.com.

This is my entry, which I am very proud of:

SEES NO EVIL

24" x 42"

April, 2017

Beadwork, Andrea Theriault

Photo by Joe Ofria

This was my first dyptic. I chose to do a dyptic because I saw my issue as being a two headed monster of a problem. On the right is a close-up map of the US middle, red states. You can see all the tributaries of the Mississippi River reaching from the right across the piece. The black, gold and silver spots represent oil or gas leaks and the gold beadwork lines represent the network of pipelines that already exist in these states. My daughter, Andrea, actually was a strong influence in some of my creative choices and she did all the beadwork on the second panel. 

With so many leaks already a part of history, why would any administration actively support two more pipelines, the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines. Which brings me to the left part of the dyptic and what I think is the second aspect of this problem. Someone is refusing to acknowledge or see that pipelines leak and cause havoc. Environmental issues are front and center with me. I am very worried about clean water, air and land being available for the future for all our children and grandchildren. 

You may not like my politics. I only ask as an artist and a citizen of the USA, that I still have the right of free speech in order to air my grievances in the most natural way possible, through my art.

I entered a couple of other calls for exhibits also showing in Lowell this summer. The first is at the Whistler House Museum of Art and is called Contemporary Art Quilts 2017: A Juried Exhibition and will be opening August 5 to September 1, 2017. The Artists Reception is on Saturday, August 5 from 2-4pm. I entered Queen Bee and Lady Feather, neither of which has ever shown. They accepted Queen Bee.

QUEEN BEE SAYS NO TO GMOS

43" x 45 1/2"

2014

Photo by Eric Zhang

Since I didn't have to create a piece for this exhibit, that freed my time to consider creating a piece for another upcoming call also showing in Lowell this summer. This call is named Little Black Dress and is showing at The Brush Gallery & Studios from August 5 to September 16. The Artists Reception will be held on Saturday, August 26. Based on my reflections of the times I have worn this type of dress, it is more like a pictorial memoir than my usual art quilts. I used two of my former "little black dresses" as some of the textiles for this piece. The blue in the title refers to the tall bearded irises that my mother grew for years and painted so well towards the end of her life. My mother's influence permeates this piece, culminating in the third and last dress being the one I wore to my mother's funeral.

MEMOIRS IN BLACK & BLUE

39" x 39"

June, 2017

I stretched my usual technique style a bit with this one using not only fabric which was printed with my own linoleum cut, but I incorporated the actual dress tissue-paper patterns, dresses and used a photo transfer onto silk fabric for the first time. This emotional piece may be the beginning of a new series, but with all that I have on my plate I won't be able to continue the series until next year. Memoirs was accepted into the exhibit at the Brush so both Queen Bee and Memoirs will be showing in Lowell, MA late this summer.

Moving on to what I am working with right now, Apollo will be finished by mid-July. I have been working on it in fits and starts between the other pieces this spring. I am not far from completion. I will put up some pictures of the process in my next post. Also on deck for later this summer is A Child's Eye in which I must create a 3 foot wide drawing of a wicker settee by using discharge medium on fabric outside on my deck. Fresh air and good weather are a requirement for discharging.

Sideways view of a thistle growing in the median near where I used to work. This photo is my primary source for the drawings of the thistles used in Apollo.

My first drawing of the wicker settee in A Child's Eye. I have since had to redraw the entire settee. Because it is so big, this is going to take a long time to draw out with a thin brush on fabric over my light box. 

Time to turn in for the night. Tomorrow is another busy day in the studio!

Lady Feather Has Arrived

My feet are swollen with the heat and sitting for hours on end in one place stitching for nearly a week straight and I am bone tired but the lady is done and has been entered into a show - two days before deadline even. She certainly was a high maintenance kind of girl!

In this shot I had laid different components on top of what was stitched down so I could get an idea of how she was coming out and how the colors were "playing" together. It was at this point that I discovered that I had no pink dogwood fabric. Carol Eaton came to my rescue with a perfect piece of fabric which she mailed out to me. The sky fabric is hers as well, so a good chunk of this piece has a bit of Carol in it.

Continuing from my first two posts about the "Lady", I found that creating this piece was way more full of layering than any other quilt I have done to date.

Simple components like the birds were easier. I fused them onto muslin together and popped them onto the quilt. Soon they were ready to be quilted. 









The flowers went on pretty easily as well. Each flower was fused to muslin first and then over the quilt to mask the stitching underneath for the sky. However the tiny bits of white at the tip of each dogwood flower were sewn separately and each thread had to be tied off and buried in the back. If I had a nickel for every time I buried cut thread, I'd be rich!




What really took time and brainpower was layering the feather quiltlets, her right arm, the Mourning Dove, her blond locks, and the handle for the mask. They all converged into one area. I ended up adding padding between areas like the feathers so that the fingers, which were on top, were stitched on an even surface. It became like a game of puzzles that I had to solve.

But it did get finished in time to have it photographed. And to enter it two days early for a call. Which call? Quilt National '17.

My detail shot (yes those are real feathers sewn on her mask)...

and here is the reveal...

LADY FEATHER

43" x 42"

Completed August, 2016

$2,800.00

Commercial and Hand-dyed cotton, silk and organza; fused, discharged and machine stitched with leather cord and feathers as embellishment

OK, so let's talk about the elephant in the room. This is my first time entering Quilt National. It has been my number 1 goal to get accepted into QN since I first saw a QN catalog back in the 1990's, twenty years ago. I feel that only now, after years of practice and building a reasonable body of work, am I ready to try. But the reality is that countless artists submit many times before getting accepted (if at all), which in a biennial show means double the years of waiting. I am staring straight down the barrel of a loaded shotgun that's aimed directly at my heart. I am expecting that it will go off and I will have to deal with rejection. 

My good friend Sue Bleiweiss just wrote an article for her blog on rejection and how necessary it is towards fueling the hard work we need to create growth and expertise. Her thoughts are right on the money! My first five entries into exhibits ever were met with acceptance, which is down-right unusual. Then I got a bucket full of rejections and I feel that I am somewhat numbed to the sting at this point. I have been twice rejected from Visions. But honestly, you can't let it get you down and you have to just keep trying harder.

So, come the first week of October we all will know who did get into Quilt National. No matter what the outcome, I will be submitting a piece every time the QN call comes up from now on. I'm already thinking about 2019!

onward...

I have another deadline approaching. I have mentioned Apollo in previous posts. I have just begun to really get into it. I am working the background areas like a landscape and adding foreground wildflowers layered on top. Lastly will come the Alpine Apollo butterflies which are sipping from the nectar of thistles. If Lady Feather nearly killed me, Apollo surely will finish me off! I will be posting as it gets going into full blast. 

To get into the mood, I visited a butterfly garden in Westford, MA with a friend this past Monday. It was just amazing, they were everywhere! Here are some photos I took.

And not that long ago in the beginning of August...

SAQA MA/RI had a call for entry this spring and I juried into the exhibit called "Currents". It opened August 7 at the Brush Art Gallery & Studios in Lowell, MA. It was wonderful seeing so many people there to take in the opening!

Here I am with my entry called Reunion, which was taken from a photograph of Multnoma Falls outside of Portland, OR.

And one came home...

Mariposa has been touring with "Butterfly Whirl" and the tour has finally ended. She is back home. I decided that life is too short not to enjoy every minute, so I hung the girls in my bedroom. I say "good night" to them each night with a chuckle under my breath. 

Next post you will be seeing some of Apollo...

Dog Days

Here we are again, 80 degrees and rising in the studio! While I often have much to do in the summer, it is awfully hard to work in this heat. One of these years I have to get air conditioning installed in the studio.

It's been a busy spring. After it's premier at the Fuller Craft Museum the SAQA MA/RI exhibit "Art as Quilt" opened at Highfield Hall, a mansion and museum/gallery in Falmouth, MA on Cape Cod. As curator of the show, I got to bring the work down to Falmouth, help hang it and recently take it down to bring it all home. 

This was such a successful exhibit for the SAQA artists in MA, RI and CT. Six pieces sold while at Highfield Hall, so there are six very happy artists. The opening in Falmouth was on May 1 and the place was just packed.

Our second show, "Currents" was juried in May as well and my piece, Reunion, was accepted into that exhibit which opens at the Brush Art Gallery & Studios in Lowell, MA on August 7.

right: the crowd at the opening of "Art as Quilt" and Sue Polansky and Carol Vinick in front of their work

Co-Curator, Sue Bleiweiss has been working on the exhibit catalog which will be available soon through Amazon. Twenty-five pieces by fifteen artists were juried in. I am enjoying the process of curating shows and am looking forward to planning more in the future. It really is exciting to see so many amazing works of art come together in a show. 




On the homefront, I have set goals for entering calls for 2016. My first attempt was a rejection but as I mentioned Reunion was accepted into "Currents" this summer. I have two all SAQA big shows in my sights as well as a couple of others. They are all coming due from September through the end of November. I also have targeted a couple which come up in the first months of 2017.

The first call to come up is called "Layered Voices" and the deadline is September 30. I am working on a piece with butterflies and thistle. The butterflies are the Alpine Apollo butterfly, which is the rarest butterfly on earth and a partial lacewing, white butterfly with black and red spots. Organza is providing me the lacy wings. 

The shot to the right approximates the look I am trying to achieve with the background, which is a landscape of an Alpine grassland valley. My drawing is almost finished, the fabric sandwich is ready so I should be sewing this one soon.

Lady Feather has begun as well. I like working more than one piece at a time. I started with the background, which is a fantastic piece of blue and white from Carol Eaton. So fantastic that I didn't want to waste any. So I drew on tissue an outline of where the background would go, cut it out and fused it to plain muslin. 

 

Below is the fabric background stitched with a "windy" texture. My next move is to flesh out Lady Feather herself onto a piece of muslin and then to work her nest of a "bad hair day". 

I have been making her feather necklace bit by bit. The feathers are made in relief, sewn, turned, hand pieced together and then stitched.

Above they are sewn and ready for quilting.

And then the ribs of the feather are created with quilting.

You will be seeing more of this one as I continue working it. Apollo will remain undercover for a bit as I am making it specifically for a call for entry. I may decide to give you a shot or two of the background stitching as it comes together. But the butterflies will remain a secret surprise.

My last bit of news is that I am published! I have an article in "Art Quilting Studio's" June 2016 issue. Queen Bee Says No to GMOs, Mariposa and Empress of the Pines are featured in an article I wrote called "Nature's Portraits: Tapping into Imagination." I must say I am over the moon excited. I was just in a JoAnn's shopping the other day and I looked through the magazine section and found the issue I'm in. 

Well that catches me up for a bit. I am busy, busy, busy. I have taken on so many projects at once and they all have to be done by fall and winter so I may not be writing much. So tomorrow is another day with the heat, a fan and a sewing machine.

Developing Landscapes

Last summer I went a bit crazy taking photographs of landscapes with and without architecture. I amassed quite a few that I found to be perfect for possible quilts. After spending some time playing with Photoshop I ended up with several folders full of possible quilt subjects. I began creating a few earlier this year and just finished one as my entry to the SAQA Regional call for entry, Currents.

My first small sample piece became my donation to SAQA's Spotlight Auction this March in Philadelphia. It began with a photo I manipulated in Photoshop and then a black and white adaption of that photo.

I used a new tool to create my drawing. My LED light pad from Huion is 18" x 14" and has adjustable brightness. Once my photo was enlarged to the size I wanted it, all I had to do was trace the areas I wanted onto paper.

Because this piece was so small, I found myself using my tiny thread scissors to cut my fabric pieces. I also used my exacto knife to cut pieces and to cut reverse appliqué areas out of the top layers as I built from dark under layers up to the lightest.

The finished piece is called Surf's Up and was sold during the Spotlight Auction. 

My next piece was taken from a photo  I took last spring of Multnoma Falls in Portland, Oregon. After taking the black and white photo to my local print shop, I enlarged it to 20" square and used this enlargement as my guide drawing directly onto the print with a marking pen.

I used the same techniques to cut and fuse the pieces in this latest piece as I did  with the previous one. While I love the look that this work is producing, the tiny pieces are wrecking havoc on my eyes. I don't know how long I can continue to do work with pieces this small. 

REUNION

25 1/2" x 25 1/2" 

Completed April, 2016 

Commercial cotton batiks, fabrics & hand-dyes; fused and machine quilted

I have another one of these begun which is taken from  a photo of the marsh areas in Eastham, MA on Cape Cod. It is a bit bigger and will finish off between 30 and 32 inches square. It's about a third of the way done  and I should be able to complete it before summer's end while I begin work on Lady Feather, my next in the series of fantasy inspired nature women. 

Here's some of what's coming: