Favorite blogs

In this just-post-Oscar month I'm pleased to reveal that I too have won an award given by my peers.  It's the Liebster Blog award, a sort of chain letter among people who have small blogs.  I was given the award by Sara Kelly, whose blog is here.  The rules of the game are that I pass along the honor by naming some blogs I enjoy reading.

One of the nice things about this kind of pass-along is that you have a chance to see blogs that might not already be on your radar screen.  When I looked back to see who else Sara had chosen, I found two blogs I already follow, but also two new ones that were fun to sit down and read. 

About a year ago I had the pleasure of being given this same award, from an entirely different geographical direction. I suppose if people are passing it along every day or so, it's inevitable that it will cross paths with itself sooner or later -- my son the actuary could probably tell us how long it would take before every blog in the world is touched (except those so awful that even the bloggers' mothers wouldn't nominate them for an award).  To avoid this kind of cybergridlock, I don't feel that I should pass along to quite so many people as I did the first time. 

Instead I'm going to simply name Uta Lenk, a fine fiber artist from Germany whom I met some years ago at a Nancy Crow workshop.  Uta deserves some kind of blogger brownie points because she has blogs in both German and English.  Occasionally I haul out the dictionary and try to read the German one, but I never miss the English version.  So if you aren't familiar with her blogs, take a minute and check one out, depending on your language preference.

Thanks, Sara, for the great compliment, and thanks to the entire blogwriting and blogreading community out there who get a lot of pleasure out of getting to know one another and occasionally passing along a pleasant little honor.

Stuff I liked at FNF 3

Returning to the subject of detail and how the close view often enhances the viewer's (and juror's) appreciation of a piece of art, I present another exhibit for the defense, seen at Form, Not Function, which was on display until about a week ago at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN.

Take a gander at this work from across the room.

Brooke Atherton, They Melt Like Mist, the Solid Lands















Step closer and you see a pale composition, like a mountainous landscape but with indeterminate rectangular shapes in the background -- buildings? billboards? 

You have to get a bit closer to see that the misty, sheer seafoam green mountains are actually an old blouse, its decrepit sleeves, placket, buttonholes and pockets overlaid by lots of tiny hand stitching and attached bits of fabric.

I don't know what the message is -- perhaps the former inhabitant of the blouse is casting her misty shadow across the landscape of the artist's life -- but I'm drawn into the drama by the subtle details, and stood in front of the quilt for a long time looking at the tears and shreds in the fabric, the intricate stitching and the little bits of stuff sewed on.

This is a piece that grows on you; the more you see, the more you get.

Photo suite 11 -- TV studio

Last week I was invited to tape a segment for Quilting Arts TV, the PBS series hosted by Pokey Bolton.  It will probably be broadcast in late summer.  The taping was great fun, with an all-star crew of pros on both sides of the camera.  Join me in the green room ---



Sign of the week

Stuff I liked at FNF 2

I was happy to see another quilt by Mary Ruth Smith at this year's Form, Not Function show.  She has been in the show in the past and her work never fails to amaze! 

Mary Ruth Smith, Crossover


















She constructs a two-layer ground of sheer fabrics, french-seamed together to conceal the raw edges, and embroiders obsessively until almost the entire surface is covered with stitches.

From across the room you're not sure what method was used to execute the subtle cross pattern interrupted by white lines.  Up close you see the handwork.

I'm intrigued by the interplay of small patterns (each little segment has its own motifs and color scheme) and large (the dark cross shape overlaid with light rectangles).  And since I am doing a lot more hand-stitching myself this year, I can't help be impressed by the sheer time and effort that goes into all this handwork.

Walk into a quilt show this decade and you're overwhelmed with surface design -- all the ways you can put pattern or image onto fabric with painting, printing, dyeing, discharge, etc.  It's nice to see somebody doing it the old-fashioned way, and with such masterful technique and results.

Another reason to hate THEM

I haven't had a good rant on this blog in months but today's the day.  I woke up this morning, sat down at the computer, and discovered that while I slept the people at Google (I think -- although you can never discount the possibility that it's the people at Microsoft) had totally screwed up my settings for the internet.

In the olden days (and I don't mean the days of manual typewriters, just the good old days before the war in Iraq) you would set your computer the way you liked it, and it stayed that way.  If something got updated, it was up to you to find the update and if you wanted, install it.  Perhaps you missed something nifty for a while, or forever, but if you liked what your software did and how it was configured, you got to keep it as long as you liked.

Now your computer is never safe from THEM.  While you sleep, they sneak in and make things better.   Whether or not you think they're better or not, you're stuck with them, at least until you manage to turn them off.  Which is not always possible. 

Today's "improvement" has changed the way my internet screen looks.  The tabs aren't where I look for them.  The blogger interface works different.  I can't find the "history" listing at all, so if I want to reconstruct where I read that interesting blog post day before yesterday, I'm s.o.l.  I suspect there are other features of this update that I will dislike when I discover them. 

I hate it when THEY decide that I need help.  First THEY came up with automatic capitalization while I typed away on Word.  Since I often like to make lists that begin with lowercase letters, this was a pain in the neck.  Through several updates I was able to turn that feature off, but then THEY took away that option.  Lately my email program won't let me write, for instance, comment(s).  When it sees the character string (s) it replaces those characters with a smily face, and I throw up.

You may be old enough, or addicted enough to old movies, to remember the old James Coburn flick "The President's Analyst."  The vast conspiracy at the heart of the caper traced back to The Telephone Company (and you may be old enough to remember life before AT&T was busted).  Now we have no Telephone Company, just 12,000 telephone companies.  But THEY are smart enough to regroup as the world changes. 

I hate THEM.  Makes me wish I had a gun so when THEY sneak into my office in the dead of night, I could blow THEM away.  No jury would convict me.