Followers

I'm truly terrible at anything technical. How I ever got this blog to look this good is a mystery. Through no help on my part my followers have reappeared. Yay! Welcome back followers and thank you all for following.

I seem to have lost all my followers. I think it may be a blogspot glitch. It's taken me two years to figure out how to use this technology. It may take me two more to figure out how to get my followers back. I thank all 17 of you for following me, I did not, repeat NOT delete you.

SAQA Conference in Denver, Colorado

May 19 through May 22 I spent in Denver, Colorado on a whirlwind of events making up the latest SAQA Conference. As I have just joined SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) in September of 2010 this was all new to me. I arrived into Denver via the Denver International Airport at around 12:30pm, Denver time. I had arranged for a shuttle trip to get me into the city and it was there that my first adventures began. Two women traveling from Connecticut for the conference were on my flight and on the shuttle with me. I ended up having a wonderful luncheon with them in the hotel tavern, talking about quilts, exhibiting, and SAQA. Thanks to Cathy Smith, Rita Hannafin, and Marianne Williamson for being such wonderful company and ushering me into the fold.

Thursday night's festivities were so much fun. The evening started with "speed dating" SAQA style. 10 or 11 people seated at a large round table took turns passing their business cards and speaking about themselves and their art for 2 minutes each. With three sessions of this we all met at least 30 people. I ended up coming home with a bag full of business cards and have spent the last few days checking out websites, blogs and online galleries. Immediately following the "dating" session was a reception for the SAQA trunk show. 12" x 12" pieces from at least 50 artists were identically matted and mounted on large boards to create a show of incredibly unique and visually exciting "mini" works of art. It was a knock out! My picture above is of people milling about in the foyer where you can see the boards with all the pieces mounted.

Friday was a jam packed day of getting to know people, listening to speakers and going to workshops. The first panel of the day was Deidre Adams, Carol Watkins and Charlotte Ziebarth, all very accomplished Denver artists. I was riveted by their descriptions of their processes, work habits, and the photos of their art. Each of them likes to work with a mid-range size of about 36" x 40", Charlotte saying she was challenged to work in a smaller format for SAQA's trunk show. On average they each produce 10 works, more or less, a year. I really am in awe of each of them and find them to be incredible models of success for someone like myself who is beginning the journey.

My workshops for the day were with Carol Larson and Dr. Monica Dixon. Carol was so informative that I made pages and pages of notes of what to and what not to do when submitting an entry for an exhibition. Monica's workshop was filled with the energy she exudes. I came away wanting some of what she was having. Her workshop was about fueling the creative fire, and I felt very energized to make some changes after her hour session. The keynote speaker at our luncheon was Luana Rubin, owner of E-Quilter.com, one of my favorite haunts for finding the best fabrics. She is leading quite an adventuresome life and I found her talk full of inspiration.
One might think that the day might have ended there. Not on your life. Thanks to Judy Warner who signed me up for a ride out to Golden to see three exhibits. Those of us who flew in and were without rental cars had to get hooked up with a ride. Golden, pictured above is a quaintly western town surrounted by mountains and buttes. I hopped into a car with Del Thomas of California. She had driven out in two days for the conference. We had some fun navigating a navigation system as Del was about as clueless as the rest of us as to where we were going. But she did a marvelous job at getting us there. Our first stop was the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. What a wonderful show! My favorites were pieces by Lea McComas, Christine Broer and Gay Lasher. They had prepared a great little feast as well, not your usual cheese and crackers. We did a few circles around and finally found the second show, "Sidelines," a powerfully constructed show meant to pull at your emotional strings. Pieces by Annie Helmericks-Louder, Kathy Nida and Regina Benson resonated with me. I ended up buying the show catalog. The last leg of our trip brought us back into Denver to the Ice Cube Gallery. Carol Ann Waugh's one woman show was breathtaking. We even got a tour of her studio which is behind the gallery.
Here are my three car-mates outside the Ice Cube Gallery. It was a wonderful night of fun!
On Saturday, we started all over again with so much information. I thought my head would explode by the end of the day. The first panel of the day was on working 3-D. The panelists were Susan Else, Mary Beth Bellah, Carolyn Crump and Jull Rumoshosky Werner. Carolyn's elephant was amazing and she got a few laughs talking about the challenges of working with large sculptural forms. My workshops for the day were with Gregory Case, learning how to shoot photos well of your work, and with Valarie Poitier, learning how to professionally promote yourself. Valarie is pictured above at the beginning of her session which was a very "hands on" workshop. Nancy Bavor talked that afternoon about archiving your work, something I must admit I have never thought about.
While all this was going on, the best part of the weekend was what was happening within the structure of it. We were all having a great deal of fun learning, but even more so we were making fast friends. I am pictured above with Judy Warner on the left and Jean Judd on the right. I always get home and wish I had taken more pictures. Missing in the snapshots are Dawn Browning and Margaret Blank who are part of the Visioning Project with me.
Thankfully I have at least one photo of the whole visioning crew, including it's creator, Lisa Chipetine, third from the left in the back row. It was so nice talking to all these friends for the first time in person and not through the computer.
After a grueling flight home on Sunday, with a three hour layover in Detroit, I sat down to mull over the experience. I bought three SAQA books, two of which are above, which I find incredibly inspiring. I was lucky for once and came home with one of the door prizes at Saturday's banquet of two lovely pieces of Lunn Batiks. It seems that the security at the airport absconded with my three complimentary pots of fabric paint that were packed in my boarded suitcase. I guess they thought fabric paint is a dangerous substance. But I came away with so much more. I have new friends, a wealth of information, and a jump-start to my ambition to be the artist I strive to be. I can't wait for next year in Pennsylvania.

Blue Mystique

Isn't this just the most beautiful color orchid! It's a gift from my husband, Tony, for my birthday which is today. I love having a birthday in the spring as it's my favorite time of year. Everything in the garden starts to green up and grow. After such a harsh winter so full of snow, it's just wonderful having a spring finally. Still a bit cool here though so my attention falls to my indoor flowers, especially this new beauty.
I have such good luck with orchids bought reasonably at the Home Depot. The blue orchid is named Blue Mystique. Since they are so cheap, I'm always able to get new ones and I have them all over my house. The one below is a usual coloration for an orchid. This is also a gift from Tony. I have the same color orchid I bought last year in my kitchen and it has rebloomed this year but with fewer flowers.
Having flowers in the house is so inspirational to me when it comes to finding my artists heart. Cut flowers are lovely for such a short time, so I really have loved having the orchids growing in my home. The bright magenta one below is a miniature orchid I picked up last year at HD. It sits in the west exposure window of my kitchen above my sink, catching a lot of steam from cooking and cleaning and just the right amount of sun. I was thrilled to see such a lovely show of flowers again this year. It has a sister miniature sitting next to it which has a yellow flower that is sending up a shoot with buds. Just about the time that the flowers fall off of the magenta one, the yellow one will be blooming.
To update my progress on Mermaids, I have been stitching the wave. It is so frustrating pulling and pushing this large quilt through the space on my Bernina, that I am actually considering getting a new machine. This sounds like blasphemy to me as I have loved my current machine for years. I have created pieces as large as 4 feet in one direction before but usually smaller in the other direction, either 2 or 3 feet. They are not easy either but by comparison to my 4 x 6 foot Mermaids, they were relatively easy. Most of my work has been on the smallish side up to this point, so I am getting a real education in how to deal with large quilts. My plans for quilts in the near future include many more large quilts, in the range of 4 x 6 or even larger.

I have loved my Bernina because of it's perfectly consistent and beautiful satin stitch, which is an essential part of the look and construction of my style. This makes it difficult considering a different machine as it would need not only to have a longer arm but a consistently perfect satin stitch. I have been thinking about a Janome but I haven't done any real research yet. I would welcome any suggestions, or opinions on machines from my fellow quilters. I guess that my birthday wish is for a sewing machine that meets all my needs!

As I am almost finished with the wave's satin stitching which holds all the pieces on to the backing and quilts them to the piece, I will be shifting focus to the two mermaids soon. The mermaids get fused and stitched over the existing wave. The wave is a commanding presence and is just beautiful. I don't want to destroy it by choosing poor fabric choices for the mermaids. I need for it all to flow visually and this is my next hurdle. I'm excited by the prospect and eager to start in.

Another thing which is on my mind is my trip to Denver, rapidly coming up in a month's time. I'm excited about meeting the women I have been talking with in the Visioning Project and about learning new things and discussing my craft. Not real happy about all the issues the airlines have been having lately. I am flying out and as always a bit nervous about that. I do love a good adventure though, and I'm about to have one!

The Wave Comes to Life

I love how I start in on a quilt with an clear and planned idea of where I'm headed and end up in a slightly different place. This is the joy of art. The colors are chosen, the wave is cut and ironed and I have started stitching it down. Looking at the fabrics I lined up to use, especially knowing which were my expected favorites, I'm enjoying looking at which ones were and weren't used. The wave has a life of it's own. I used lots of fabrics with dots and "bubbles." The wave grows from the darkest, most saturated and even muddy teals up through mid-hues and into lighter, clear-color blues and aquas. It really has the look and feel of water, a cresting, Japanese inspired wave. I pulled it up out of years of summers on Cape Cod - my Mom and Dad's summer home and finally the site of my Mother's retirement. I have spent countless hours watching the ocean move, and spill. And now that I needed to create a wave, it came mostly from feeling; the smell of salt air, the glint of sun reflecting off a breaker, the feel of sand between my toes.

Sewing is a challenge, even though most of it so far is just long straight lines from left to right and back again. My Bernina, which I love for the constancy of it's satin stitch has a rather short arm. I am rolling and unrolling like crazy. It's a bit of a challenge! As I look at the wave on my work wall or taking up almost all of my work table, I am overwhelmed by how big it is.
I'm not even going to think of the mermaids until all my wave stitching is done. Then I will drop them in on top.

Last night I got an unsolicited and very unusual complement from my husband. He is trained in art and is a jeweler by trade. He loves extreme realism in paintings and sculpture. His own drawings and paintings were exercises in extreme realism. He respects my work, but does not really have an affinity for it. He does have a good eye though, and his comment was that he thinks I am finally working on "a prize winner," as he put it. Put a smile on my face. I think he's on to something though. I am finally working from within to create this piece using everything I have come to learn about art; color, line, composition, repetition, etc. and blending these with as much of my heart and soul as I can muster.

I am working as much as I can after work on my day shifts - just trying to plug away at this to get it done in time to photograph it for entry by June 15. I must be out of my mind! Been thinking about how to use what I am learning with "Mermaids" in the next one, "Medusa." I have been collecting fabrics for "Medusa" too. Always thinking ahead! I just picked up a black and white snake scale print. I'll be hand painting over it to create stripes and diamonds on the snake skin. I'm looking forward to doing this. But for now, I have a quilt to finish and very little time to do it! Back to the sewing machine!

Quick Update

Spent the day working on Mermaids. It took quite a while to cut the backing and batting for this one. It is pretty big and I like to have a good 6 inches all around as an extra safety net to offset take-up with the quilting. It is quite a challenge also to figure which pieces go down under others.

I still do not have my sky fabric in hand. I actually called the company today but only got a message machine. Something's got to be up as they sent it Priority Mail and it was 8 days ago that I received a confirmation email. The sky fabric is key to getting things really going. It is the backing for the top two thirds of the quilt. I only have one night shift this week and Friday is a day off. Hopefully I'll get the fabric tomorrow and I will be working a couple of hours each night I work day shift.

An Adventure

OK, so I wasn't planning this, I just read one of my e-mails from SAQA about a regional meeting at the NE Quilt Museum....and I had the day off. I hadn't been able to catch the opening of the quilt show, "No Holds Barred," and I wanted to take a look at all the wonderful quilts. It takes a good hour and a half to get there on the highway, so I intended to make a day of it.
I expected the museum to be open by 9am. The SAQA meeting was to begin at 10am. I got there 45 minutes early. So I walked around a bit in downtown Lowell. The museum is right across the street from a locomotive museum. They refurbished this baby and it's a permanent "sculpture" set by a stream and next to the old rails.
It boggles my mind that someone actually thought to build something as complex as an engine to pull cars full of people and products. And here I am playing with my computer and stitching together pieces of fabric. The museum opened at 10 and I settled in to the meeting upstairs. Met some wonderful people and got inspired by their work. It seems that the MA/RI region needs to expand a bit in Little Rhodie. I think that would be a really good thing. There was one other woman in attendance from RI, Allison from Barrington. Perhaps the two of us can get our heads together and get something moving here. We aren't the only two art quilters in RI I'm sure. The quilts, as always, were amazing and ever inspiring! There is a lot of talent in this corner of New England.

After the meeting I tagged along with a group for lunch. The food was delicious but of course, the conversation is what made the afternoon so much fun. Thanks to all who made me feel so included on my first excursion into the world of SAQA, Valarie and her lovely family, Celeste, Valerie, Michele, Judy and Judy. It was such a fun day.
And when I got home, lo and behold, packages with yummy fabrics, a Quilting Arts magazine, the backing fabric I have been waiting for, (but no sky yet), added to my museum acquisitions of a few fat quarters and some info on upcoming shows and quilt festivals. What a lovely day. Tomorrow, after work, I look forward to hitting my machine in a big way!