No secret squirrel

Friends, when you leave comments on my blog I read them!!  Although it may take a while, I try to respond to any questions that you ask, because the whole reason I do a blog is to have conversations with other people.  So when Other Kathy in New Zealand asked a question before Christmas I knew I had to get back to her eventually.

I had written a blog post about collage, and O.K.i.N.Z. wrote:  "Is your work secret squirrel at the moment, Quilt National prep or other things we can't look at?  I noticed that I've not seen much sewing lately in your posts."

O.K., you are one astute reader.  You're right, there hasn't been much sewing in my posts because there hasn't been much sewing in my life.  Hand-stitching, yes, and one of these days I need to show you a couple of pieces that are either finished or nearing completion, but no piecing or quilting.  Truth is, I haven't felt much like embarking on a big quilt.  I am feeling very ambivalent toward the quilt world as the outlet for my artistic yearnings.  I have no desire to devote the next six months to making three huge things for Quilt National, not to mention no brilliant ideas. 

I have to make a baby quilt for the grandchild of a friend who died last year.  Our local textile and fiber art group, of which she was a member, went over to her house and cleaned out the studio at the request of her husband, who talked about the baby due in June.  I knew that Linda would have loved to have made a baby quilt, and felt that I needed to do this task for her and her family.  So I went through her fabric stash and picked out some appropriate pieces, but I haven't started working on the quilt yet.

What has happened to make me totally uninterested in big quilts?  I've been asking myself the same question.  I have been getting disillusioned with the juried-show business model, in which the artist pays the venue for the opportunity to show her work.  Entry fees keep inching up every year, as do shipping costs.  More troubling, when you show in these venues people never have a chance to see a body of work.  Those with very good memories may recall some things from the past but otherwise it's hard to distinguish between artists who make a lovely one-off quilt and those who have been building a body of work over some time.

I know one answer is to seek out solo shows where you can display many works, but that takes a lot of work and perhaps a lot of politics.  I have not summoned up the energy to go in that direction.

But more important, probably, is that since I have joined PYRO Gallery, a co-operative, I have a venue where I can show some work all the time, can be in group shows once or twice a year, and will have a solo show this fall.  The gallery is not conducive to showing huge quilts, so I have put up some smaller ones, but I have been much more excited about the chance to explore some new mediums and formats.  And this summer, instead of chaining myself to the sewing machine for Quilt National, I'll be chaining myself to some other piece of equipment in the studio for my solo show.

Maybe it's just time for something new.  Whatever I come up with, I'll share with you.  And I'll still be teaching and writing about quilts, because I love them and I love sharing that love with others.  Maybe there will be new quilts in my future again, but not this week.

Found poetry 8

Daily art report 4 -- I've been there!

I've written before that because my daily art project this year has no rules regarding format or medium, I can explore lots of approaches to the theme "maps."  Recently I've started a new approach, finding a reference in the newspaper to a place that I've been, then illustrating it with a map.  Here are the ones I've done so far.

Some are faraway places from foreign travels, such as Brazil and Germany:

Others are run-of-the-mill US places that many of you have probably been to also, such as O'Hare Airport, although I'm willing to bet that I've been there more times than most of you (unless you live in Chicago). 

And still others are out-of-the-way US places, such as Quincy IL, where I spent a trimester of graduate school living in the Lincoln-Douglas Hotel, an establishment without a public ice machine, necessitating my learning to drink scotch neat.

I'm mounting these on 5x8 index cards, and at the end of the year I'll probably make them all into an accordion book.  But should it be horizontal or vertical??  Or both???

Found poetry 7

Art and fear this week

I wrote last year about making collages on wood painting panels, or perhaps they would be better described as assemblage because I added a lot of found objects to make them 3-D.  Check them out, with lots of photos, here and here.

For the last couple of weeks I have been working on a new batch, and I took them to my critique group a few days ago.  As I pulled them out of my bag and started to pass them around, I said "Clearly this one isn't finished yet...."  And somebody said "Why do you say 'clearly?' I think it's finished right now."

I was taken aback by the question and stammered around for a bit, trying to figure out why I had said that.  The answer took more soul-searching than I'm usually asked to provide; I'm usually pretty articulate about what I'm doing with my art.

What I came up with was that I am still struggling with the whole concept of making art on a painter's surface, because I feel very insecure about doing anything resembling painting.  And so I have probably been adding the 3-D elements as a protective barrier between me and anything painting-like.

My friends all agreed that two of the pieces were finished.  A couple more coats of matte medium to seal everything and give it a uniform surface, and they can go on the wall.

I'm still not sure I have internalized what they told me and I agreed with.  I do love minimalism, so the blank spaces don't scare me.  I guess it's the two-dimensionality that does.

You will note that I still can't bring myself to call them "paintings."  Having wrestled for a long time with calling myself an artist, and my work art, I guess this is my next wrestling match.  I'll let you know who wins.

Valentine's Day in first grade

Because the parents had to take the baby to the pediatrician at exactly the wrong time, we needed a grandparent to attend the Valentine's Day party, and that was me.  I discovered several things that have changed since the previous generations were in grade school.

First, no paper valentines.  Instead they had a whole sheet of Valentine stickers, distributed to everybody in the room.  Many people got two.  Some of the kids affixed their stickers to their faces instead of to their clothing.

Second,the messages on candy hearts have been radically updated.  Yes, you can still find BE MINE and LOVE but you also get TEXT ME, LOL, TTYL and CRUSHIN'.  (I also learned that first-graders don't yet have good chopstick skills.  Don't ask.)

Third, little girls wear valentine outfits.  Do you think they sell those tutus in grandma sizes?