Sign of the week

Lace invasion

What could be more fun on a beautiful spring day than to go to your favorite museum and apply doilies to trees?  I was invited to participate in this "lace invasion" by my fiber art friend Bette Levy, whose show opens this evening at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN.  Bette's work includes a lot of crocheting, and the bright idea was had to do a crocheted installation on the lawn and steps of the museum.

Bette and some others had worked ahead, crocheting between doilies to make large expanses of lacy coverings, so that all they had to do was wrap the expanses around the tree and close up the back side.  On my tree we were more improvisational, simply applying the doilies to the tree with push pins and then crocheting cords between them.

Because our tree was small and had several branches at working level, we were able to work up quite an intricate network of cords and doilies.

By contrast, the people with the largest tree just made a single big wrap.

People also put doilies over the architecture.

There were unexpected obstacles to working in situ: where to put your hands and your thread! When there's a branch in the way you have to be able to adapt your stance.  Here's me in action, trying to make my wrists bend in ways my grandmothers never taught me.  (thanks to Suzi Z for the last two photos)

Stuff I liked at FNF 4

My favorite quilt at "Form, Not Function" was made by Pat Pauly.  Who knows why judges choose one thing over another, but if I had been in their shoes I would have given this one a nice prize.  This is the first year FNF has not specified a maximum size, and opening the show to larger works has made for dramatic display. 

Here's the long view of Pat's quilt, hung at the end of the neoclassical Carnegie Library (if you have a Carnegie Library in your town you know exactly what this building looks like).  From 85 feet away, you can't see much detail but the complementary colors have enough presence to make you want to stroll across to see more.

Pat Pauly, Pink Leaf 4 (Yellow)

The quilt, the largest piece in the show, is a surface design extravaganza.  Pat has dyed, stamped, screened and painted designs of varying scale onto her fabrics, both  before and after piecing, as well as incorporating some commercial prints.

It takes a sure hand to combine so many different motifs, scales, techniques and colors and still have a cohesive and appealing composition.  But Pat has clearly showed everybody who's boss. 

dense parallel quilting in some areas, "drawn lines" in others

it takes guts to apply surface design on top of already-pieced work

fine-line piecing, commercial prints, with surface design over the top

sometimes the motif was on the bottom layer, not the top

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 ---