Q = A = Q 5 -- more pieced quilts

Q = A = Q had several stunning pieced quilts, probably too many to list, so I'll tell you about some that stood out in my mind.  I need two blog posts to cover them all, so let's divide them by -- color!  Today, mostly neutrals; tomorrow, brights.

Valerie Maser-Flanagan, Cave Murmurs #1, 45 x 43"

What could be simpler than brown and cream stripes, enlivened with a few slivers of brown and black stripes?  I liked the many different variations of that simple formula, some with skinny stripes, others with fat ones, the rhythms swelling and shrinking as you read across the lines, like music (and maybe the stripes represent piano keys?).  Playing the straight stripes against curvy horizontal seams was another nice touch.

Lee Sproull, Right Brain / Left Brain, 38 x 77"

One asymmetrical block, white-on-black at the left, black-on-white at the right, turned in different directions to yield a surprisingly complex pattern.  Pinwheels in the center of each four-block set, but no two of them alike.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the plan and decide which was the figure, which the ground.

Jill Ault, Black and White, 62 x 75"

The path to this dazzling composition was complicated; first the artist designed a black-and-white pattern and had it printed onto yardage.  Then she cut the yardage into carefully planned blocks and pieced them to resemble the fracturing of a view by a faceted windowpane.

Rosemary Hoffenberg, Winter Woods, 40 x 33"

A small composition of blocks and skinny stripes, conjuring a forest; I believe all the fabrics were painted or screenprinted by the artist.  Lots going on in the surface design and the composition, yet the overall effect is calm.

Harue Konishi, SYO#73, 49 x 63" (detail below)

One of the more unusual of the pieced quilts: it started out conventionally pieced (from antique Japanese fabrics) and densely quilted, then got sliced into wedges that were repositioned and machine appliqued onto the"foundation" quilt.  I liked the fact that the grid was kind of freehand rather than precise, and one of those subtle Japanese palettes that somehow end up more sophisticated than when we Westerners use the same colors.

Q = A = Q 4 -- more winners

Well, you knew that I couldn't be a juror without finding some great pieced quilts to put in the show.  Much as I enjoy seeing the wide variety of surface design techniques and the imaginative use of applique, I get all misty at the sight of a neatly pieced quilt, nice and flat, all the raw edges sewed under, preferably enhanced by careful quilting.

Kathleen Probst, Dipped Dimension, 47 x 40" -- Juror's Choice

What could be simpler -- or more elegant -- than two forms in conversation, one somewhat ominously descending into the other one's territory.  Only five seams in the whole quilt, but perfectly matched where the yellow one "dips."

Andrew Steinbrecher, Line Study #1, 42 x 56" -- Honorable Mention (detail below)

As a lover of piecing AND a lover of stripes, I had to give this one a prize.  The stripes came from vintage sheets, and I sure wish I had been in that Goodwill store before Andrew got there!  Or maybe they came from his mom's linen closet.  I liked the way the pastel striped fabric was combined with dark solids to make a wild, strong abstract composition, enhanced by the jaunty curved bottom edge. I'm waiting for more in this series.

Kate Stiassni, The Seven Spirits, 40 x 67" -- Honorable Mention (detail below)

Kate had two quilts in the show, both pieced, and my fellow juror, Valerie Goodwin, and I argued for a while back in September over which one should be accepted.  We compromised and let them both in. Valerie liked this one better, and since she couldn't be there for the opening, I made this award for her.  The solemn palette, with its several different grays, gives a bit of mystery to the strong structural image; the close values of the deepest blue and purple vibrate on your retina.

And by the way, here's the quilt I liked better:

Kate Stiassni, Opposites Attract, 40 x 47"

Great color choices, especially the orange against the green; almost-but-not-quite symmetrical composition; unconventional shape; strong figure-ground tension.  I see huge doors opening in the center.

I'll write more about pieced quilts tomorrow, because there were lots that I loved.  Meanwhile, Quilts = Art = Quilts continues at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn NY, through January 4.  It's certainly worth a visit if you're anywhere nearby.

Photo suite 150 -- visiting Landshut

Q = A = Q 3 -- handwork and surface design

Q=A=Q gives two awards for specific techniques: one for handwork and the other for surface design.

The handwork award was a no-brainer -- Beth Miller's map of Canberra, the capital of Australia, executed largely in hand-stitched black and grays on white.

Beth Miller, Canberra: The planned city, 39 x 23" (detail below)

The scale was modest, but that meant the stitches were quite petite: running stitch, fly stitch, french knots, cross stitch and probably others that I didn't take the time to identify.  By varying the thread color and the stitch density, she achieved a wide range of tones and patterns appropriate to a map.

Update:  thanks to Brenda Gael Smith, who points me to an old blog post here in which Beth explains how this quilt came to be made.

But there were plenty of contenders for the surface design award, and I probably spent longer on that decision than on all the others put together.  In the running were all the usual techniques: painting, screenprinting, shibori, phototransfer.  In the end I chose Ayn Hanna's piece, which combined deconstructed screenprinting with direct dye drawing.

Ayn Hanna, LineScape #36 (Bridges), 42 x 96" 

I loved the jaunty freedom of the drawing line, with its changing width and occasional blotchy nodes.  I liked the little sections where she drew in red, a change-up from the predominant black.  And I liked the subtle, mostly muted background, its rectangles referencing traditional quilt block construction.

Two others from my surface-design short list were so appealing that I gave them awards too.  Juror's Choice went to Judy Hooworth.

Judy Hooworth, Creek Drawing #9, 34 x 67" (detail below)

I was drawn by the calm palette and equally calm design, nothing more than ripples on the water, although it could also be nebulas in space or an aerial view of the desert.  The two vertical seams cutting the design provided just enough tension and interest to give us three places to look, and to note how the background was slightly different in each.  I loved the wavery lines, drawn wet-on-wet to give an out-of-focus, transitory look to the design.

I've followed Judy's work for many years, having first seen it in person at Quilt National 2003, I think, and have been fascinated as her methods have gotten more austere in both technique and palette.  (The QN piece had lots of raw edges and dimension, and was a wild abstract design of hot reds and yellows.)

Honorable Mention went to Randall Cook.

Randall Cook, Will-o'-the-wisp, 35 x 79" (detail below)

The vivid red, fuchsia and orange dyes on stark white, called from across the room; the exuberance of the design made me think of a cross between Jackson Pollock's paint-flinging and Terrie Hancock Mangat's long series of pieced fireworks.

Sign of the week

Q = A = Q 2 -- more big winners

I wrote yesterday about the best in show winner at Schweinfurth; today I'll talk about the three next important prizes.  First prize (confusingly named; it's actually the second best award) went to Judith Martin; second prize (actually the third best) to Bonnie Bucknam; and the Schweinfurth Award for Design (fourth best) to Karen Schultz.

Judith Martin, The Canadian Pioneer, 64 x 48" (detail below)

Unlike anything else in the show, this piece is a masterpiece not only of color and design but of process, made of vintage wool blankets, cut in strips and pieced together, mended here and there, felted, hand-stitched and embellished with little bundles of wool bits.

Judy describes it as a metaphor for transcending the effects of time and its ravages, by painstaking effort.  I suspect she had a very good time making this quilt, serenely stitching and stitching and stitching.  It made me happy, exhilarated and calm at the same time.

Bonnie Bucknam, Sea Cave, 72 x 60" 

Bonnie has been on a roll this year, taking best in show at the Carnegie this summer and getting accepted to Quilt National.  In recent years she's been working in a series of similar compositions in which zigzaggy lines depict geologic or topographic forms.  This piece has an unusual subdued color palette that you wouldn't expect in work about underwater forms. Strong, spiky geometric arches convey a sense of space receding into the far distance and make me think of the famous rocks at Etretat that the impressionists so loved to paint.

Claude Monet, The Manneport

Claude Monet, Etretat, the Beach and the Port d'Aval

Karen Schultz, Beckoning I, 50 x 44" 

Since Julius Schweinfurth, the benefactor and namesake of the museum, was an architect and designer, the show always has an award specifically for good design, divorced from craft, color, technique and the other factors that usually enter into judging consideration (although Karen Schultz is no slouch in those departments either).  Donna Lamb, director of the museum, chose this piece for its strong, blocky constructions that conjure up ancient standing stones and steps.

More winners tomorrow.