Forced to Flee -- zooming this evening!

I wrote yesterday about how my 3-D "art quilt" is now traveling with the SAQA show about refugees, "Forced to Flee."  I will be one of five artists participating in a zoom webinar roundtable this evening at 7 pm eastern, discussing our work in the show.  

The webinar is free and open to the public, but you do have to register first, at tinyurl.com/MUQuilts

Because of the time difference, it will be difficult for non-North American viewers to tune in, and only US artists were invited to participate in the roundtable discussion.  I thought this was too bad, especially since SAQA bills this as a "global exhibition" and many of the artists live outside the US.  So I asked my dear friend Uta Lenk, who lives in Germany and has a piece in the exhibit, if I could feature her in my own little non-zoom roundtable.

Uta Lenk, Everyone has the right (detail below)

Here's what she has to say about her quilt:

Over the years I have met and become friends with a number of refugees, many of them from Africa, who had come to Germany via different routes, but for many of them a rubber boat trip across the Mediterranean Sea had been part of their journey. Germany’s reaction towards the ‘refugee crisis’ has taken a decisive turn, the brief period of ‘welcome refugees’ in 2015 has turned into a Fortress European Union, trying to keep refugees out, violently (and illegally) pushing them back from Greek shores to Turkish shores. 

I have always deeply felt the gap between the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to which the European Union likes to refer when it is reproaching other countries for not abiding by these rights – and the way the EU is treating people seeking a better life by leaving a home whose difficulties were often caused by interferences of European countries, be it long ago or today. I get the impression that European countries do not grant the same degree of Human Rights to people from any country. I used a newspaper photo of a refugee rubber boat on the Mediterranean as inspiration for this quilt. An abstracted boat with its passengers is enclosed by excerpts from the Declaration of Human Rights written in the background, on the sky.

 

Thanks, Uta, for your guest appearance today.  Sorry you will probably be asleep during the zoom tonight! 

Forced to Flee -- zooming tomorrow!

Longtime readers may recall how four years ago I started making little figures from fabric that I called "daily people," and then when I saw a call for entries from Studio Art Quilt Associates I thought I needed to make some more.  The call was for a SAQA show called "Forced to Flee," about refugees -- at any time, from any place.  

So I made a bunch of quilt refugee people, using scraps of old beat-up quilts as my raw material to make sure I would meet the SAQA definition of a quilt.  And the piece, "Tired and Poor," was accepted.

The show has been traveling since 2019, with a couple of dates last year canceled for pandemic. It's now on display at Misericordia University in Dallas PA and tomorrow I will be one of five artists participating in a zoom roundtable to discuss our work.  The webinar will be held at 7 pm eastern time on Tuesday.  If you'd like to tune in, you need to register in advance at tinyurl.com/MUQuilts.  I'd love to have some company!

Good news on tour

Many times I've sent a quilt off for a show, knowing that it will be on tour for a while.  I tend to kind of forget about these travelers, having said good-bye without a firm idea of when they will come home.  At the moment I have two travelers, both in SAQA exhibitions that are getting wonderful exposure around the world.

Last week I got a message that Forced to Flee, the show about refugees that is now on display at Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts in Melbourne FL, will be going to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK in 2022.  Before then it will be at several museums in the US.

Tired and Poor

Then this morning there was another message, saying that Masterworks: Abstract & Geometric, which has been on the road since it debuted in Houston in 2017, will be going to Germany next year.  The show has already been in three venues in Japan, and will be going to China in September.  It just closed earlier this week after a two-month run in Memphis.

And here's a little bit of my quilt in the banner of the email, at the far right:

Crazed 16: Suburban Dream

I wasn't able to see the show in Memphis but Jackie Watkins sent me a picture of my quilt there.

I always think of that quilt as being pretty big (81 x 55") but it sure looked puny next to the huge piece next to it, whose maker I do not know.  (But they're in the same color scheme!)

SAQA's shows are the main reason that I belong to that organization.  I've lost count of how many times I've had work in their shows, and I am always pleased with the quality of every aspect of the operation.  Bill Reker does a great job of finding venues for the traveling shows and manages all the hassle of shipping.  Hats off to Bill and to SAQA for world-class show management.  Thank you!

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Update:  the huge quilt on the left wall is Letters from a Friend II, by Els van Baarle

A happy ending

I wrote on Thursday about my disappointing experience with the new SAQA book, and posted a similar message on the SAQA email list that evening.

So I was pleased to read an email message last night from Martha Sielman, SAQA executive director.  She wrote, "I have just confirmed with Schiffer that they do offer a discount for contributing artists.  If you are one of the artists with work in the book, you can place a one-time order for up to 25 copies at a 40% discount.  You just need to pay standard freight.  SAQA will email the artists on Monday to let them know about this discount offer."

Perhaps not the ideal solution, but definitely a good thing to do now.  I'm glad the SAQA leadership apparently was listening to the opinions of us members and observers who called them out for not giving artists the respect they/we deserve.

I hope the next time a big, important book comes out SAQA will do the right thing from the start.

Update:  An anonymous reader, who identified herself as one of the larger donors to the SAQA book project, left comments on my blog post yesterday suggesting that it was unreasonable for me to suggest that SAQA pay for rights to publish artists' work.  She wrote:  "There are 240 artists in this book.  240 x your suggestion of $50 for rights of usage? $12,000....  If you think everyone is entitled to a copy, either pony up $12,000 or join the SAQA board and start doing the work for the next compendium."

Actually, if we're doing arithmetic, according to Martha's email last night, Schiffer Publishing is willing to forgo $19.60 per copy (40% discount off $49 list price) up to 25 copies per artist!!  That adds up to $19.60 x 25 x 240 = $117,600!!  And this offer seems to have come about within 24 hours, so apparently it didn't require a whole lot of hardball negotiation.  I am amazed at this sum -- clearly there's more profit sloshing around in the publishing business than we had thought.  Or perhaps Schiffer doesn't want to kill the golden goose.

Crabby about SAQA

I feel guilty about being crabby twice in one week, especially when it's Christmas and I'm feeling generally cheerful and happy.

And I feel guilty about being crabby about SAQA, which just a few days ago did me the honor of including my refugee quilt people in its new exhibit, "Forced to Flee."

But I'm going to do it anyway.

Entropy -- in QN'15 and now in a new SAQA book

Almost two years ago I was invited to have a quilt included in a SAQA book "that compiles the significant art quilts and artists from the 1960's to today."  I sent off my images, signed the permission form, and forgot all about it.  This week I happened to search my email inbox for "SAQA" because I needed to confirm the info about the "Forced to Flee" show, and there at the top of the list was this very old email.  Hmmm -- did the book ever get made?

I went to the SAQA website and found that sure enough, it came out six weeks ago under the title "Art Quilts Unfolding" and is available for $49 through the SAQA store.

I was surprised (a) that I had not received an announcement that the book was published, and (b) that I had not been sent a copy.  I've had my work published in many different books and magazines and it is standard practice to send a complimentary copy, especially when the publisher did not pay anything for the rights.

I wrote the SAQA staffer in charge of the project and asked if copies were going to be sent to the artists, and the response was NO.

I don't know if this chintzy decision was made by the publisher, or by SAQA, or both in concert, but I think it was a bad one.

SAQA makes a LOT of money off its publications, which are made possible by the cooperation of us artists who graciously provide images, sit for interviews, lend our quilts to tour for years, and in the case of juried shows, pay entry fees.  Yes, it's a nice ego trip to see our quilts in a book, but since we've done our part for free, the least they could do is send us a copy.

There's always a lot of chatter and angst on the SAQA email list over copyright, with people in a flutter over how much they should be paid if their quilt is reproduced on a CD album cover or a fundraising brochure or the side of a barn.  Usually the consensus is "we deserve to be paid!!!"  "we are professional artists!!!"  "we shouldn't give our work away!!!"  "people should take art quilters seriously!!!!!"

Seems like the shoemaker's children when SAQA avails itself of free publication rights to its own artist/members' work and can't even send us a copy of the publication.

What do you think?

UPDATE:  After I complained to Martha Sielman, executive director of SAQA, I got this response:

Maybe when SAQA negotiated the deal with Schiffer Publishing they should have put free books into the agreement.  Just my two cents worth.

The refugees have a place to go

Good news for my refugee quilt people -- they have somewhere to go next spring!  They have been accepted into the SAQA "Forced to Flee" exhibit that will be shown at the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts in Melbourne FL in May, and with any luck will travel to other places.



My husband was sorry to hear that the show wouldn't be up during the winter, since he would love an excuse to go south in the cold weather.  Me too, since I hate going south in the warm weather.  Such first-world problems!  But refugees are happy to go anywhere, any time, if people will welcome them.

Refugee quilt people -- the entry

I wrote recently about a SAQA exhibit called "Forced to Flee," about the world refugee crisis, that I wanted to enter.  I spent much of the summer making people out of old quilt fragments, enjoying the bedraggled, faded and distressed quality of their clothes.  I decided to enter this competition because 3-D work was encouraged, and my first thought was to stand the people on some kind of base, arranging them either in lines or in a crowd.  So I constructed each one around an armature of aluminum wire that could be inserted into a hole in the base.



When I visited my art pal Paula Kovarik in September I had my bag of quilt scraps and people with me, to work on during spare moments, and when I dumped them out on the table to show them to her, she thought it might be more powerful to just have them in a heap.  "Huddled masses" should come to mind in this presentation.  The more I thought about this suggestion, the more I liked it.  That would also make it easier to ship the piece if it were accepted.

But I didn't want them to be lying down in the heap, implying they had died or given up; I wanted them to be alive and looking us in the eye, holding us to account for what happens next.  That argued for displaying the people on a vertical support, emerging from the wall like a bas relief.  I happened to own some pre-stretched canvases that weren't actually canvas, but burlap, and thought the rough texture was appropriate to the subject matter.

I checked my supply and found two 12x12s and one 8x16.  The short, wide one seemed to be best, and I started to arrange the people on it.  Then I quite by accident went back and read the call for entries: the minimum size was 12x12.  That seemed to rule out the 8x16 canvas.  So what next?

I rearranged the heaps.  One 12x12 canvas was too small for the number of people I had made; two of them seemed too big.  Too late to make more people -- I had had to wait till my show was open before I could finish the project.  The  opening was Sunday afternoon; the entry deadline was Wednesday night, which wasn't a lot of time.

Finally I had a brainstorm: use the 8x16 canvas and let one guy be falling off the bottom, at least 4 inches worth!

As I sewed the people to the canvas I ended up not only with one guy falling off the bottom but several sticking up above the top, so the finished height was 17 inches, well above the minimum.

Interestingly, the most difficult thing about photographing the entry was to get a side view, required of all 3-D work.  Although I had a big piece of gray felt -- 45 x 72 inches -- for my photo station, it proved very hard to get the whole piece into the frame without also getting annoying background where the felt ran out.  That took an hour on Wednesday evening, as the clock ticked, but I got everything done and hit the "submit" button four whole hours before the deadline.

Now comes the part that always seems unnecessary -- waiting six weeks for the juror to make up her mind.  Now that online entry programs do all the sorting and recordkeeping for you, there doesn't seem to be any reason why show organizers can't have the juror ready to go the week after the entry deadline, and make decisions a few days later.

I think the six-week turnaround is a holdover from the olden days when show entries used slides, which had to be manually taken out of the entry envelopes and arranged in trays, and reshuffled as the juror(s) narrowed down their choices.  And the high-end shows that bring multiple jurors into town for in-person presentations still need more time for human logistics, if not photo logistics.

But why should we be tied to six weeks lead time when the only non-computerized task is for a juror to sit down at a computer screen for a day or two?  Just wondering.

SAQA show opens at Indianapolis Museum of Art

I'm off to Indianapolis this afternoon for the opening of the SAQA-sponsored exhibit, "Dialogues," in which artists were asked for new interpretations of the century-old applique quilts by Marie Wilson in the permanent collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  I have a piece in the exhibit, and will also be on a panel discussion as part of the opening festivities.

IMA is a big-time art museum and it's exciting to see that SAQA's focus on getting art venues for its exhibits in addition to the usual quilt shows is paying off.  I've heard wonderful things about the "Stories of Migration" exhibit at the National Textile Museum in Washington DC, and I hope the IMA show will be as well received.

I'll take notes and pictures and report back!  Meanwhile, here's my quilt from the exhibit:

Zoe and Isaac Stargazing (detail below)

Very afraid

During the SAQA conference a couple of weeks ago I heard at least four presentations in which the topic of fear played a prominent role.  Yes, in the final reckoning fear was always vanquished, at least temporarily, but I had an uncomfortable feeling about the whole subject being brought to our attention so frequently.

Several trains of thought left from that station.

First, I wonder why fear is such a popular subject for artist presentations.  Maybe starting with the famous "Art and Fear" book, there seems to be a pervasive assumption that yes, of course artists suffer from fear, and that overcoming fear (aka self-doubt) is the major task one has to accomplish in order to unlock one's full artistic potential.  If only we could get past our fear of success, or maybe our fear of failure, or perhaps it's our fear of being liked, or being disliked, or something....  then we could MAKE ART!!!  In 20 years of working among actuaries, and in 40 years of working in communications I never once heard a professional development talk in either field exhorting people to overcome fear, so I wonder just what is there about artists that makes us so fragile.

Second, I wonder whether this fear of fear is gender-related.  Let's have a thought experiment.  Let's imagine a professional group called the Heavy Metal Sculpture Artists, of which Richard Serra is the president, and let's further imagine that it's 90% male, because you know those welding tools are really heavy.  At the HMSA annual conference, how many presentations do you suppose will talk about conquering fear?  I imagine not very many.  (After all, a guy packing real heat with a welding tool is almost as well-defended as one packing mere metaphorical heat.)

Third, I wonder whether all this talk about the need to overcome fear really helps people overcome fear -- or whether it actually encourages and enables fear.  People who do have doubt and fear are comforted: apparently everybody has doubt and fear, I must be just fine, I'm like everybody else, it's OK to be afraid.  You could walk in to a conference fearing nothing, your self-esteem at an all-time high, and by the time you sit through four or five of these talks you could start thinking geez, I'm not afraid, what's wrong with me????

All together now, let's sing:

Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect
I'm afraid.

While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows
I'm afraid.

The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people I fear
I fool myself as well!

I whistle a happy tune
And every single time
The happiness in the tune
Convinces me that I'm
Not afraid.

Make believe you're brave
And the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are.

So if I were organizing the next SAQA conference I would tell all the presenters that there will be no talk of fear.  There will be talk of hard work, and continuous learning, and rigorous reading and thinking, and brave self-evaluation.  Focus on those things, and maybe fewer people will be afraid.