Quilt virginity

Yesterday Karey Bresenhan, the head of Quilts Inc., which sponsors the big quilt show in Houston, posted a message to the Quiltart list.

She wrote:  "please…don’t jeopardize your chances at winning a ribbon by showing your work prematurely on your blog or Facebook page. The judges keep up with these pages, too, you know, and they really like to judge blind, which means they do not know who made the quilt. If your good news is spread everywhere (WITH a picture) then it’s going to be hard for them to maintain that necessary lack of knowledge. This could work to your detriment, folks. Although it is not illegal this year, I strongly recommend that you take those pictures down right away. We’ve had several judges complain already, so I feel pretty sure this loophole will close next year. In the meantime, it is in your own best interest to take down the photos."

Judging by some responses on the list to that message, I am not alone in feeling that this is wrong.

I understand that every show sponsor wants to have a lot of new work on display, and doesn't want its thunder stolen by work that has been seen a lot.  Some of the top shows require that quilts have not been shown anywhere else, and a few even require that they have not been seen on the internet.  But even Quilt National, famous (infamous?) for its strict virginity rules, doesn't prohibit people from showing their own quilt on their own website, blog or facebook page.

And apparently, neither does the International Quilting Association, the sponsor of the judged categories at Houston.  Yet people are being threatened that if they post a photo of their quilt, they probably won't win a prize.

I think this is kind of low.  If a show thinks it can get away with such a restrictive virginity rule, then it should announce it in advance.  People can decide whether they want to enter or not, with those conditions.

Now on to those complaining judges.  Having both juried and judged a bunch of quilt shows, I know that it's nice to come to the table in total ignorance, to see everything as if it arrived just yesterday on a spaceship from Mars.  You don't know who made it, you haven't seen it before.  But this is frankly impossible, even if you don't own a computer.

The quilt world is a small one, especially at the top.  The same people enter year after year, and those who follow the shows come to recognize their work and their styles.  Even if these people don't post their latest quilts on their websites, I'm pretty sure that many of us would know the maker.  




I knew this quilt was made by Kathy Nida, before I ever looked at the signage

If a quilt expert, who presumably has been to many, many shows and seen hundreds if not thousands of quilts, is asked to judge at Houston she knows she's going to see identifiable work.  If she feels that being able to identify even more work, thanks to her internet travels, would make her job more difficult, then perhaps she should voluntarily stop "keeping up with these pages" for a couple of months.  Or decline the honor.

But I have to go back one step and disagree with the very premise.  Karey suggests that if a judge knows the maker of a quilt, that quilt isn't going to win a big prize, but we all know that's not true.  If it were, then Hollis Chatelain and Caryl Fallert, just to name two among many of the easily recognizable usual suspects, wouldn't keep winning at Houston and Paducah.  

In the legal system, judges recuse themselves if they are close friends with the plaintiff or defendant, but if we asked quilt show judges to recuse themselves when they recognize an artist, we'd often have nobody left to choose the winner.  That's a standard of viriginity that would quickly put the quilt shows out of business.