Yesterday we took the train down to Stuttgart to visit the Color Improvisations exhibition in the Haus der Wirtschaft. It is an exhibition of quilts that highlights the work of a group of quilters that have studied with Nancy Crow over a number of years. Nancy Crow is the curator and her co-director of the exhibition is Ginie Curtze. The exhibition comprises 50 works by 26 artists from the US, Europe and Canada.
Unfortunately photography was not allowed so I can’t show any photos of the quilts here. I can only point you to this Flickr site with photos from the opening, which also doesn’t really show any of the quilts in detail. I had to buy the catalogue as I really wanted a record of the quilts I had seen. For those in Germany there is also a special issue of Patchwork Professional available from good newsagents covering the exhibition. (I bought a copy at the station in Frankfurt and read it for most of the journey down on the train.)
The quilts are about 2m x 2m so they are large! Not the size of work that many private individuals are going to have hanging in their homes as most would not have the room to display them. In the exhibition they are well hung so that it is possible to view them from a distance to gather an overall impression and then to get up close and enjoy the details. There weren’t very many people visiting at the same time as us, so we were able to examine each quilt in peace without other people getting in the way. I was talking to the lady selling the tickets and catalogues and she told me they hadn’t had much support with press coverage or marketing from the town of Stuttgart. She thought there would have been around 1000 visitors by the time it closes next weekend. What a missed opportunity!
I found the exhibition very inspiring. Most of all, because all the quilts were of an abstract design, not a figurative design to be seen. I am personally not drawn towards figurative work, so it was wonderful to see 50 works that were all abstract but were so different from each other. It was also comforting to see that not all of these very large works hung flat against the walls. In fact most of them had undulating sides or bottom edges. It made me feel much better about one of my quilts Farbenfroh, which resolutely refuses to hang straight, but has a very wavy bottom edge. And that even after I removed the binding, straightened all the edges and and then reapplied the binding.
Here are some of my notes to self from the exhibition:
- Possibly try using the twin needle with two colours of thread and a satin stitch. (But watch out the zig zag isn’t too wide to avoid breaking needles)
- Try using larger stitches for the quilting and quilting in parallel lines. This forms interesting texture on the quilt surface.
- Revisit my class notes from Symmetry Play at QU
- Experiment with using paler and darker threads to create highlighting and shading with the quilting.
The exhibition is open for another week. I can highly recommend it to anyone who has the possibility to get to Stuttgart to see it. Afterwards the exhibition will travel to Europe, Japan and the United States, but I have no information as to the next venues.
