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Since my possibilities to do textile art are somewhat limited for the near future I’ve been looking for ideas to keep me active on the creative front. Although I’m not a great producer of sketchbooks and it was a nightmare for me to have to produce one to accompany Dolly for the Freedom exhibition I’ve bitten the bullet and signed up:
I’ve chosen the theme “Travel with me”. I was taken with “In fifty years” as that would cover most of my life story, but as it’s going to be a creative journey for me I thought travel with me was more appropriate.
I’ve not read in the rules anywhere that you can’t blog about your sketchbook so there may be more to follow.
This morning I received a FedEx parcel. It was much smaller than I was expecting.
Funny how the mind plays tricks on you. I had forgotten how small the quilt was. This is what came out of the parcel:
The packed up quilt is almost smaller than the exhibition catalogues that were included in the package.
And this is me when I discovered that my quilt was featured in the catalogue for the main venue in Houston. Pity my name was spelt wrongly in the credits. Everyone always wants to add a second “e” into our surname. Obviously 4 letters are just too few. Didn’t stop me grinning like the Cheshire Cat though.
Now the quilt can be taken to the house to be packed away ready for its journey to Spain.
This is the reason for the lack of new textile work appearing on my blog:
The first stage of our move to Spain has been completed. We have moved about ¼ of our house contents (the discards from our furnishing plans for the house in Spain) into a 52 m² flat in Kronberg. This will be where I live for the next few years while I continue working and Sqeze too until the house is completed, but then I suspect I shall see much less of him. Who wouldn’t prefer a nice sized bungalow in Spain with garden and swimming pool over 52 m² with not even a balcony? Still I can boast an Apfelwein Wirtshaus just across the road from me with a nice shady beer garden.
The move took place on Monday. It didn’t take long to unpack again into the new flat – I had a plan for where everything was to go and apart from two minor changes it all fitted in perfectly.
The rest of the week has been spent in the house packing up the remaining ¾ of our possessions ready for the move to Spain. The photo above shows what used to be my studio, which is now almost full with packing cases. And no they don’t all contain my art supplies, although a few of them do  I shall have my main studio in Spain, but not be there most of the time in the beginning. I don’t have much room for stuff here in the mini flat, but have taken my portable sewing machine and also intend to learn how to make bobbin lace. I shall have to find a new medium for the interim until I can get into my new studio.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is currently showing the exhibition Savage Beauty.
The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, celebrates the late Alexander McQueen’s extraordinary contributions to fashion.
 Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010) Dress Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010 Gray wool and silk/synthetic knit printed in jellyfish pattern Courtesy of Alexander McQueen Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce I read about it on Jeanne Williamson’s blog. She was lucky enough to visit the exhibition in person, but I think you can get a good impression of the exhibition by visiting the museum’s website. There are selected images of some of McQueen’s creations and also a selection of videos from some of McQueen’s runway shows and of the exhibition.
The objects on display are certainly works of art and the work of a master of his profession. Reading some of the information provided it appears that McQueen was able to mark up on cloth with tailor’s chalk and when cut out and assembled the fit was perfect.
The neighbours probably think we are losing our marbles. It’s not the normal thing to do – hang portraits up on the outside walls of the house.
Especially as it’s been raining most of the day. We kept nipping in and out between the showers. Why? We were trying to get some decent photos of my Dad’s portrait. The light was quite good when the rain let up.
The first news I received this morning on opening my eyes was that my entry for the Text on Textiles juried exhibition has been chosen as one of 26 finalists. DH&PA was reading email in the small hours of the night. That was good news at the end of a week that hasn’t exactly been full of it. The sun is shining too so my spirits have risen somewhat, after having been seriously crushed. Without going into all the boring details it looks like I shall be looking for a new contract in the short term future – just goes to show you should never count your chickens before they are hatched. Assured work until the end of 2013 was really too good to be true.
Anyway back to the positive things in life. The TOT exhibition will be shown at all three of the IQA events in Houston, Cincinnati, and Long Beach in 2011 and 2012. Other venues may follow. The quilt will be on its travels for 3 years. That makes it rather tricky giving a return address as I’m not sure where I will be in September 2014. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
No pictures allowed until its debut in the exhibit at the festival, but I thought I would give a little teaser describing the design process. I decided to explore the idea of words as a design element quite literally. My inspiration came as a result of taking the course Working in Series with Elizabeth Barton at QU where I learnt about Notan, the Japanese concept involving the play and placement of light and dark next to the other. I explored the balance of the positive and negative shapes in letters and words. (The importance of the negative space in design was also something Elizabeth mentioned in the classes.) I developed my own alphabet font with the intention that the viewer should be uncertain which shape is the positive and which the negative. At first glance the words should not be instantly recognizable.
I think that is all I can say now and not give anything away. It’s such a shame that the venues are across the pond as that almost certainly means I won’t get to see the exhibit. I haven’t seen the 2010 one either and have been unable to find any mention or images much on the www. In the end we didn’t make the trip the Open European Quilt Exhibition in the Netherlands, because there was never any mention on the website that the exhibit was going to be shown there. It would have been interesting to see how the other artists approached the theme of text on textiles. The positive side is that it left me with no pre-conceived notions when I started off on the design process for my 2011 entry.
I uploaded my entry to the Text on Textiles exhibition a couple of days ago – with only a week left until closing. I was assigned artist and quilt number 8. Last year I was artist #39 and quilt #149. Unless a lot of quilters are leaving everything to the very last minute or submitting their entries by post there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in this exhibition this year. I’m beginning to wonder if it will even take place.
The weather wasn’t co-operating and rained most of the time so that we weren’t able to get the photos taken outside. We ended up shifting the furniture around in the lounge, opening the terrace doors and hanging the quilt inside the room near the doors. My long suffering DH photographer had to stand out in the soaking wet bushes to get far enough away to get the full sized image of the quilt. And then I had problems uploading the images to the website, probably due to our useless “high”/low speed internet access. I hope it will have been worth all the stress to get finished that comes on top of all the other stress due to (we hope) imminent removal projects. (Half the house contents into a small flat for me here in DE and half the house contents to our new home in ES.)
If all plans do come to fruition this may well be the last large quilt I make for some time. I shall have to find a more portable form of creative expression to keep me occupied in my evenings and weekends without visits.
… according to the Daily Mail. They are reporting results published in the Journal of Public Health by the University of Glasgow. The results of the study show that all hobbies, particularly those that promote creativity are good for our well-being. It would seem that quilting helps your cognitive, creative and emotional well-being.
Just as well, as I have just spent another 3 days slaving over the sewing machine, working on my entry for the exhibition “Text on Textile: Words as Design”. I have made good progress. The largest part of the quilting is now done. The results are as I imagined them. Without all the public holidays there are this year in June I would have been hard pushed to complete on time. Now, at the end of the second long weekend this month, I am confident that I will be finished for the submission deadline of July 1st. I feel I have a strong entry. I tried it out on Tess yesterday at the end of our English conversation session and got exactly the reaction I was looking for. So that gave me an added impetus to keep the nose to the grindstone.
here on the blog for reasons I mentioned in my previous post, but I had a very productive weekend. Last Thursday was a public holiday here in Germany, so I took the Friday off too and made a long weekend. I spent a large part of each day in the studio and have finished the quilt top for my latest piece. It has a background of different sized squares that I developed directly on the design wall. I had a sketch of where I wanted the main elements of the quilt to be placed, but even there I didn’t force myself to follow it slavishly. I made some alterations as work progressed. I completed the quilt top using fabrics I already had in my stack, which was a relief as I had set myself the goal of finishing the top over the weekend. Had I needed to start dyeing additional fabric, it would have completely thrown my schedule off course.
On Sunday I dyed three metres of fabric for the backing and the binding. So I’m all set up for this coming weekend, when I intend to get started on the quilting. I shall have to take a trip into town on Saturday to stock up on thread as I don’t have all the colours I need. I’m looking forward to that because I’ve found a new shop via the internet that looks very promising. I think it may the same shop I’ve used in the past, but moved into bigger and better premises. After the trip I should be set up with everything I need to complete the quilt. As the coming weekend is also a long one (Monday is another public holiday here in Germany) I’m hoping to make good progress.
It feels good to be working on a large piece of textile art again.
Update (2011-06-11):
Been to the shop this morning. It is the same one as I have used in the past – TOKO Kurzwaren in Frankfurt am Main. They moved to the new premises at the beginning of the year. The new shop is double the area of the old one and also much lighter and airier. They have added some fabrics and buttons to the range of goods they sell. A big improvement – I hope they continue to stay in business.
I spent 57€ on thread a few other bits and pieces that I needed. It’s amazing how it all adds up.
This is a question I have been asking myself for a few weeks now. It’s been quite some time since I posted anything, which is of course the one thing you are not supposed to do on a blog if you want a loyal readership. But since this blog is about my textile art and related topics I don’t intend boring my readers (if I still have any) with day to day chit chat.
The problem is not that I am not working. The problem is that I am working on a quilt for an entry to a juried exhibition. The rules forbid you to enter any piece of work that has been published anywhere before – including on blogs and websites. As I don’t have the time to be working on more than one project at once, this unfortunately means that I have nothing to show my blog.
I can’t say that I really understand the reasoning behind this entry condition. Textile art is so difficult to photograph so that you really appreciate the piece to the full, that even if I had seen a piece of art on someone’s website or blog I would still leap at the chance to see it in person. I can understand that organisers want to have new work in their exhibitions and not pieces that have been touted around the exhibition circuit, but having to keep the wraps on entirely is a bit frustrating. And should I get this quilt finished in time and it does get accepted into the exhibition, it will be a good few months yet until I can reveal all.
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Ruth | Category: 