Friday, September 16, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Road trip
Over the weekend we trekked to Indiana for the opening reception of the 18th Annual Juried Art Exhibit at the Jasper Community Arts Center. I've had work in this show a few times before and have always enjoyed visiting this small but pleasant gallery and its town. And of course every fiber artist loves to have work accepted into an all-mediums show.
I had some major satisfaction out of this show, because my quilt Crazed 5: Camouflag received an honorable mention award. I made this quilt in 2008 and it's reaching the end of its shelf life for juried shows, yet it had never been out in public before this spring. To see it not only hung in a gallery but winning a prize was sweet!
I liked the way they hung this quilt and its sister, Crazed 6: Low Water, on invisible line about six inches out from the wall. The quilts hung beautifully flat and cast intriguing shadows that moved just a hair as the quilts trembled in the breeze.
I was a bit disappointed that the quilts were placed in strange corners of the room. And that they misspelled Camouflag as Camoflag. But that's being petty, I guess.
Among the other works in the show, I was intrigued by the way this large painting was hung. Rather than stretched conventionally, the canvas was fitted with grommets and then suspended between big nails that went on an angle into the wood below. Perhaps a way to display quilts??
Stephen Fessler, Plans for Parallel Worlds
I had some major satisfaction out of this show, because my quilt Crazed 5: Camouflag received an honorable mention award. I made this quilt in 2008 and it's reaching the end of its shelf life for juried shows, yet it had never been out in public before this spring. To see it not only hung in a gallery but winning a prize was sweet!
Among the other works in the show, I was intrigued by the way this large painting was hung. Rather than stretched conventionally, the canvas was fitted with grommets and then suspended between big nails that went on an angle into the wood below. Perhaps a way to display quilts??
Monday, September 12, 2011
Art and memory 2
I wrote yesterday about a long series of quilts that I made about the wars following 9/11. But as that went on and on, I started to think less about the images of destruction and more about the people who were killed.
Having lived in Kentucky for many years, I have been familiar with a famous quilt called the Kentucky Graveyard Quilt, which lives at the Kentucky Historical Society. It was made in 1843 and depicts a cemetery with coffins, each inscribed with the name of a member of the quilter's family. Some of the coffins wait outside the cemetery, apparently ready to be embroidered and moved inside when that person died.
Kentucky Graveyard Quilt, Elizabeth Mitchell, 1843
photo, Kentucky Historical Society
In the summer of 2006 there was much public hoohah about the flag-draped coffins returning from the battle zones and whether it was appropriate to picture them in the media. It occurred to me to update that quilt, and in my cemetery the coffins were flag-draped, each inscribed with the name of a Kentucky service member who had died in Iraq.
Kentucky Graveyard (Iraq), 2006, 60 x 71", detail below
As with the original, I left additional coffins outside the graveyard ready for future casualties. Was it just a coincidence that I completed the quilt on 9/11/06?
The deaths continued to mount, and two years later I wanted to make another quilt to stand in witness. By this time I had started making "postage stamp" quilts out of tiny bits of fabric held together in fragile grids, and had the idea to make the bits in the form of flags.
I needed a cutoff date to count my flags, because I didn't want it to be a work in (perpetual) progress, and thought of Memorial Day, when it's traditional to put flags on veterans' graves.
As of Memorial Day 2008, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq stood at 4,083 and I made a little flag for each one. Some of the flags came from a commercial fabric, but most of them were constructed out of whatever red-and-white-striped and navy-blue-with-white-dot fabrics I could find. This quilt was accepted for Quilt National '09 and has not yet come home from its tour.
Postage 3: Memorial Day, 2008, 100 x 86", detail below
I haven't made a war quilt in the last three years. Do I have it out of my system yet? Maybe, now that it seems we're finally on the road to bringing our troops home. But I still have lots of dyed and discharged fabrics left in the drawer that remind me of war and the World Trade Center, and a lot of red-and-white stripes. I hope I don't have to use them again.
Having lived in Kentucky for many years, I have been familiar with a famous quilt called the Kentucky Graveyard Quilt, which lives at the Kentucky Historical Society. It was made in 1843 and depicts a cemetery with coffins, each inscribed with the name of a member of the quilter's family. Some of the coffins wait outside the cemetery, apparently ready to be embroidered and moved inside when that person died.
Kentucky Graveyard Quilt, Elizabeth Mitchell, 1843
photo, Kentucky Historical Society
In the summer of 2006 there was much public hoohah about the flag-draped coffins returning from the battle zones and whether it was appropriate to picture them in the media. It occurred to me to update that quilt, and in my cemetery the coffins were flag-draped, each inscribed with the name of a Kentucky service member who had died in Iraq.
Kentucky Graveyard (Iraq), 2006, 60 x 71", detail below
The deaths continued to mount, and two years later I wanted to make another quilt to stand in witness. By this time I had started making "postage stamp" quilts out of tiny bits of fabric held together in fragile grids, and had the idea to make the bits in the form of flags.
I needed a cutoff date to count my flags, because I didn't want it to be a work in (perpetual) progress, and thought of Memorial Day, when it's traditional to put flags on veterans' graves.
As of Memorial Day 2008, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq stood at 4,083 and I made a little flag for each one. Some of the flags came from a commercial fabric, but most of them were constructed out of whatever red-and-white-striped and navy-blue-with-white-dot fabrics I could find. This quilt was accepted for Quilt National '09 and has not yet come home from its tour.
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