Last week I was in Pittsburgh for a family reunion and got to spend two delightful days at museums. My first stops were the two venues of Fiberart International, the fine exhibition held every three years. I've seen several past shows and was sometimes disappointed to find few pieces in the traditional quilt format, but this year had several.
Two of the best happened to be made by friends of mine, so I may be prejudiced, but I liked them! Both were big, bright, intricately machine-pieced and quilted, beautifully composed, making strong statements.
Maria Shell, Mosh Pit @ the Goldern
Judy Kirpich, Anxiety No. 11
Gregory Climer, Men Kissing (detail below)
I liked the way this quilt combined the low-resolution pixelated photo with the hard edges of pieced prints. I really liked the different grids, with piecing and quilting set at varying angles.
And finally, this calm and simple quilt that reminded me a bit of my own work, with very skinny pieced-in black lines and dense, shiny quilting in many different colors.
Carolina Oneto Tapia, Igualdad (detail below)
And here's one quilt that wanted in the worst way to make a big impact, and almost did, but not quite.
Luke Haynes, [Sewlebrity] Obama
The gimmick here is the anamorphic projection, portraying a distorted image that reads right if you stand obliquely to the quilt. But if you don't get it exactly right, it leaves the viewer frustrated.
When you look at the quilt straight on, the left shoulder is much fatter than it should be, but when you look at it from the side, the right shoulder is fatter than it should be. I couldn't find a sweet spot in between (nor did I think it looked like Obama from any angle).
So much for the quilts -- I'll have a lot more pieces to show you in subsequent posts.
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