Unfortunately in English we don’t have many nouns with gender specific forms so in English the title of the exhibition at the Schirn gallery in Frankfurt has to be Women Impressionists - not so concise. We went to see the exhibition last Thursday, which was the May Day public holiday here. We thought that as it was lovely weather and father’s day that there would be few visitors. Seems other people had the same idea!

The exhibition shows the work of Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès and Marie Bracquemond. It includes some 160 works from international museums and private collections. It was interesting to see how different the subject matter of their paintings is compared to the male impressionists. Most of the works displayed showed portraits of women going about their daily lives - getting up, sewing, bathing children, taking tea with visitors, hardly any landscapes and very few still life paintings. This can be explained in part that women were not allowed to go out unchaperoned and so could only paint things within their own homes.

The work of Mary Cassatt appealed to me most. There were a series of colored drypoint and aquatint prints, she exhibited in 1891, that were inspired by the Japanese masters shown in Paris the year before. This is one of them:

The Letter

Although she wasn’t married and had no children of her own she produced a number of wonderful paintings of mother and child.

Sleepy Thomas

Or this lovely painting of a young girl, who looks completely natural and unposed:

Child in a Straw Hat

I was particularly interested in the part of the exhibition devoted to Marie Bracquemond, because it brought together studies and sketches that she made for her paintings, from various museums and collections, so that you could see them with the final work. This gave quite an insight into the work behind the scenes that leads to a finished work of art. This is not something you often get to see.
This was one of the studies for the painting from the Musée d’Orsay which show three ladies with umbrellas:

Femme a l’ombrelle

All images are press photos from the Schirn Gallery website.

Over the last week I have been following the debate on the Guardian newspaper website that has been triggered by the publication of Delia Smith’s latest book “How to Cheat at Cooking” and her new television series on the BBC. The most amusing article was the Delia Taste Test. The whole debate has since been taken up by more of the dailies in the UK.

I’ve never seen Delia on the TV. My first introduction to Delia Smith was when my mother-in-law gave me Book 2 of Delia’s first BBC Cookery Course. I was hooked and bought Book 1 and Book 3 too. My mother-in-law continued to be a big fan and bought most of her cookery books. I have them all now and they do get used a lot. The reason being that the recipes are interesting, don’t contain a large number of impossible to obtain ingredients (here in Germany) and are quite healthy too. Although her later books did start to contain “exotic” ingredients that were not so easy to find here.

So I have to say that my sentiments do echo those being put forward by the majority of commentators. I feel cheated too. I just can’t imagine how horrible tinned fried onions must be. And tinned mince takes me straight back to childhood holidays abroad, where the high price of meat compared to the UK, meant that my Mum took tinned meat with us for our meals. We were either in self-catering flats or later in the caravan. It was ok as a compromise - spend the money on travelling and entrance fees rather than on expensive food, but we never ate the stuff at home and I really wouldn’t want to start now and not just because in the meantime I’m an almost vegetarian

I was browsing the internet as you do - me I’m always googling words for inspiration, both text and images - and came across this “what if” blog. That really made me smile because if one thing stuck in my mind from my Self Expressions class with Myrna at QU it was to keep asking yourself what if? And here is a whole blog devoted to what iffing. Stop by Jude’s Spirit Cloth blog too, because it’s worth the visit.

I shared my find in the yahoo group that was set up to keep our Self Expressions class together and learnt from Linda that Myrna now has her own blog too. That lady is amazing, I don’t know where she finds the energy to do all that she does. But we can be happy that she does and shares her discoveries with us.

Whilst browsing Myrna’s blog I saw a link to Marjie’s blog. She was my dyeing teacher at QU and it’s thanks to her great teaching - lots of fun and lots of real practical help - that I got so involved in dyeing. My quilting and dyeing has taken over most of the cellar in our house - 3 rooms and the stairwell - ok one room gets to have the washing machine and the wine rack in it too but the rest is mine!

Just shows how the whole world is rapidly becoming interconnected by the internet.

On the last day of 2007 I discovered this: The Miniature Earth I should have picked it up a few weeks ago but it got past me. I’m not very diligent about reading all my emails - especially those that come regularly. Perhaps it’s appropriate that I found it today. Food for thought to start us on the way in the new year.

I’m hoping that there are some readers out there who may have some opinions they would share with me. As regular readers will know I have been taking online classes on a regular basis at the Quilt University. I have taken some excellent classes and had some excellent teachers, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to find classes that are going to take me a step further towards becoming a more accomplished and professional quilter.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review Jul-Aug 2007 “The Making of an Expert” got me thinking again about what my next steps should be. Apart from practice, practice, practice - it takes 10 years of it to become an expert and then you have to do the right kind of practice - the authors also stress that to become an expert you need a mentor who will offer you honest feedback. This is something that I have felt to be a bit missing from the courses at QU. These are more classroom situations where you are naturally only one of many students.

So once again I have been considering taking an online course for the City & Guilds Patchwork and Quilting Level 3 Certificate. The course content sounds interesting to me. I think it would probably stretch me and I hope the teaching situation would be more of a one to one contact. The courses aren’t cheap though, so I find it difficult to make up my mind. If I invest that money will I gain sufficient benefit to be able to push myself into being something more than just a hobby quilter or will it just turn out to be an expensive hobby?

I have many years experience at sewing and other handicrafts and consider myself to be reasonably accomplished. I don’t have any kind of formal art/design education but have done some self study. Would this course be the right one for me? If anyone out there has experience of the course I would be interested to hear from them. Any other opinions are also welcome.

Although I enjoyed making my last quilt and think it turned out better than ever (photos coming soon) I also asked myself why I was doing all this. Having too much time on my hands causes me to think too much and then those doubts as to the whys and wherefores of life start creeping in.

Having tormented Sqeze with the products of my over active brain, he pointed me at this article. Nothing really mind bendingly new in there, but still worth reading. If only to be reassured that staying motivated is a problem for all creative type bods.

I was moseying around the web looking for pictures of faces for my face quilts and masks and came across this site about abstract painting. It has some good information on how to paint an abstract painting that is certainly also of interest to quilters.

Not only that but there is a short history of abstract art. It took me back to Salamanca and our last Spanish course there. One of the teachers gave a series of talks about Picasso and was explaining how he developed his Cubist style. I was pleased at the time how much I understood and obviously some of it stuck!

Third bonus point for me is that there are some good faces in the paintings on the site to provide food for my imagination for my face series.

And finally I love the use of yellow on the site and in the paintings.

I have added some new quotes to my quotes page. I discovered one of them while browsing Beate’s Fabric Art. I like the collage she was inspired to make. Take a look!

I’ve not been doing any sewing since I finished the cushion cover. Instead I’ve been reading up on the theory of design. My first introduction to it was on Jim Shaw’s website. He has an online series of lessons on 2D design, which are well worth reading.

My latest acquisition on the design front is a book by Steven Aimone:

I can highly recommend this book. It has lots of colour photos used to illustrate the points being covered in each chapter. The examples are taken from many different mediums, which in my eyes makes it a more interesting and informative book than one that is aimed at a particular craft. It also has a number of different exercises throughout. And this time I might even be inspired to do some of them. I’m not usually a doer, more of a reader and then jump right in. But this time I feel I might learn something from them. We’ll see.

I’ve not been doing any quilting or dyeing this weekend. I did cut down an old pillow to make a new inside for my Ulu Fruit cushion but that’s all the creative stuff I’ve been up to.

Instead I’ve been doing an exercise from the book “The Visual Dance” by Joen Wolfrom.

I discovered the book in the description of a course on QU that I may take next year. After browsing the reviews on Amazon I decided to order it. Although Joen uses a rather unusual colour wheel in her chapter on colour (the only references in Google refer back to her book) the advice on colour and the other chapters make interesting reading. The book also contains lots of colour photos of a wide selection of quilts by various artists.

The exercise I am doing - I’ve not finished yet - is aimed at helping you discover your own style. The idea is to flip through books and magazines with photos of quilts and without much inner debate, order them into categories from “love” to “hate”. Then after a space of time you go back at look again at your choices and analyse what it is about each quilt that made you place it in its category. From the notes on each quilt you can summarize to give yourself a good idea as to your intuitive personal style. Joen’s advice is to spend your time making quilts you like. Sounds like good advice to me.

Although there were no big surprises, it did help to harden up my instincts so far. I’m not a pictorial quilter. I like geometrical shapes such as in most traditional quilt blocks. Apart from gaining more insights into your own style the exercise helps you define your personal characteristics of a stunning quilt over a good quilt.