This second post on the topic of themed exhibitions was prompted by my acceptance into the SAQA Oceania Region’s themed quilt exhibition, “Opposites”. I’ve been a Juried Artist Member in SAQA for a long time, and every couple of months we JAMs have a zoom gathering, or YAK, to discuss issues and news in the professional part of the art quilting world, and these sessions include a wealth of proven ability and experience between us. We recently discussed themed exhibitions.

Although I live in South America, I wanted to support this exhibition in my native region, despite frankly struggling with the theme. I don’t normally enter themed shows unless I already have a finished piece that fits the entry requirements, or that I planned to make with that theme, anyway.  It took me several months until I came up with a design that comfortably fit within my portfolio. This time, the experience made me think more about the matter of themed exhibitions, and these are related to the popular kind of small groups that exhibit together every year or two showing works they’ve created in response to prompts/themes taken on assignment by the members, commonly every 2 months, and members commit to completing a show-ready art quilt in that time.

While I lived in Denver CO, I was active in a small group of like-minded quilt makers, ‘Quilt Explorations’, who explored the medium beyond traditional quilt making, We met monthly to show what we’d done with each topic or prompt that members suggested. While it wasn’t mandatory to produce an actual quilt every time, most of us did and even if we hadn’t finished one we all did the necessary design and research/planning for one, anyway. Each year we exhibited somewhere local like the library or council chambers. It was a very stimulating time in that group, which I had to leave when we returned to Australia, but I’m sure that fairly soon I’d have moved on from that group, anyway, as my own themes and ideas gradually took more attention. That time was influential though, and some of the themes from that time continue to appear in my art to this day, albeit in modified technical form. This 1990 one for example, prompted by the ribbed headlamp glass in the B/W photo of a gorgeous vintage car, led to a huge part of my portfolio exploring the effects of lines on shapes. In the early 90s fine strip inserts became a signature of my designs, increasing in curvature as my piecing skills refined. Wandering lines still apppear in my surface designs, but since Green Dimension, 2023, they’ve been appliqued rather than inserted.

Rounded cutouts reappeared fairly often, like this 2018 diptych –

My point is here that being involved in themed study groups and exhibition groups can be very helpful to emerging artists in any medium; and some of these artists are possibly still developing their own voice, too. It naturally follows that themed exhibition calls for entry are keenly welcomed by many art quilt makers, including some well known, award-winning names.

I include links to previous posts and other websites to help my readers find more detailed information, helping me keep my posts reasonably coherent and concise 🙂

I am very pleased with this week’s good news, that my entry ‘New From Old’ was juried in to SAQA’s Oceania regional exhibition “Opposites”, yay!!

I remember that on our return from USA in early 1994, the ‘art quilt’ was still relatively new, though, and most Australian quilt shows did not yet have an art quilt section in their prospectuses; Ozquilt Network was being established and is now very important on the textile art scene in both Australia and New Zealand; and I was on the committee the West Australian Quilt Association formed to organise that state’s first art quilt exhibition, The Razor’s Edge, 1995, wich is now the well established and highly important binennial Stitched and Bound .

I’m sure that there will be very exciting pieces in the collection, judging by the names of Australian and New Zealand artists on the list whose work I do know, but there are a couple I’ll have to look up. As I’ve been out of Aus for such a long time, it’s a bit hard to keep up with that and everything else in the art quilting world as a whole; but thank goodness for the SAQA network, of which I am a juried artist member, JAM.

The collection of 50cm x 70cm works will apear at the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, Australia, from April 9th -12th. It will later travel to some other venues, and I’ll post that information as I receive it.

One interesting image in today’s Pinterest updates was of collages, and following a link took me to a group of little works in small boxes arranged and fixed to the wall; I pinned it to my presentations board as I’m always interested in how other fibre artists present their works. Following that link took me to a whole page of such collections of small boxes of fibre and paper art in various sizes and arrangements.

Following links online can take one down lots of rabbit holes, and one I mentioned in yesterday’s post was the German artist Beate Hien who’d created a framed work I saw on Pinterest, and thinking it was stitching, went to her website where I found that pic on the prints page . As I looked around I found her lovely, interesting work is not stitch as I’d presumed, but paper in various forms and techniques. I was a bit disappointed there was no artist statement on her site.

I was not only browsing in Pinterest, though, because for a new Instagram post I was looking in my own photos for more beach sand pics that have inspired some of my works https://www.instagram.com/schwabealison/p/DU3h_IOicK1/ and then came across this photo of a quilt I rediscovered some time back:

Although I finished it completely at the time, I’m sure I must have known back 14 years ago that this was no major opus 🙂 I photographed it in 2023, just after I’d unfolded it but it’s back in the cupboard again. Now there’s a heap of critical comments I could make about it because its blindingly obvious I didn’t give enough thought to the finished texture results, as (1) the sand ridges should have been painted in a lighter colour than the background to stand out, and (2) they could have been given a bit of trapunto treatment before the piece was layered and stitched, which would have also enhanced the dimensional effect.

Looking back at older works periodically is always useful, I’ve found.

I have several things on my mind at the moment, all of them to do with the lines and shapes formed by Nature and Human Activity on the Earth’s surface.

First, my latest stitched Suffolk puff soft sculpture is almost completely assembled – it’s part of the Growth series in this website and I love how these puffs provide a really nice surface on which to stitch. Moving on further, it might make some sense to embroider first before cutting out the circles. I’ve filed each photo I’ve taken of this group of forms “Grey and gold puffs” and this one has added “Grey and gold puffs with basting blog” because it has been resized to fit on this page. That however will probably not be the title of the finished work, in which case I’ll need to rename the several pics for consistency.

Second, sheer fabrics I pinned an image on Pinterest the other day because that pic reminded me of the love affair I’ve always had with the design potential of sheer fabrics (I also follwed the link to the wonderful work of Beate Hien which I’ll explore in depth sometime soon) I used nylon organza in several of the Timetracks series, and one I made after our trip to Egypt titled“Gift of The Nile” scroll down because there are pics of others in that post, too.

Third, grids. My regular readers know that grids are my default design layout 🙂 That pinterest image reminded me of the potential of double needle stitching a line. About fifty years ago, when the Princess line with A-line skirt was in vogue, I made myself a lovely special occasion dress (the races? a wedding? I forget…) The bodice featured silver metallic lines of double needle stitching I did on the fabric before cutting out the pattern piece, and there a fine ridge formed between the two lines visible on the surface. How could I forget this – it is a perfect technique for my next Out of Order piece…. I want to produce much more distortion in the grids as the deteriotation of the state of the world seems to have accelerated markedly over the past year, and this will be the perfect technique to lay down the grid for #4, coming up soon.

My inspiration always comes from natural and man-made patterns in and on the Earth’s crust. My regular followers and collectors know that I’m currently very interested in stuffed Suffolk puffs. Several tabletop installations of these 3D units, in the “Growth’ series were presented in my recent solo exhibition, “Elements of Landscape”. Originally based on anything roundish as it grows in volume; think of some coloured dye dropped into water, or the rapid development of a huge storm cloud, and the volcanic magma solidifing as it runs into the sea forming large nodules known as pahoehoe (which inspired two wall quilts of that name) and just look at these mushrooms in our own garden today :

These puffs make a lovely surface for further stitch embellishment, and I’ll continue to explore it intil I feel it’s run its course, or that I just need to take a break from it. That’s exactly what I did with my “Ancient Expressions” series, last added to with A.E XIV, 1992. I’ve alway felt that it’s still ‘open’ and that one day I might resume making A.E. works – never say never! Recently another fibre artist, can’t remember in which group or SM page, apologised for being a bit obsessive with her current theme – but I feel that a certain degree of obsessive focus on one theme is the situation out of which innovation occasionally emerges as we artists periodically review and question our work.

In conversation with several other textile artists this week, the importance of meaningful stitching has come up in several ways. On Tuesday, our embroiderers circle held its fortnightly zoom meetup I’m no longer in StitchClub, but all the others in the group still are, and several showed some delightful samples from the recent stitched portrait workshop, with show and tell being an important part of our get togethers. StitchClub is about learning and trying out stitch techniques on sample piece with a topic the teacher selects. Some members leave them unmounted, but others methodically mount and catalogue them in albums as a record, and others incorporate them into a finished project by framing or incorporating into a cushion cover, and so on.. A couple of Pinks said/confessed they didn’t like stitching portraits so they’d skipped that workshop – and we all agreed it’s important to stitch something that has personal meaning.

As an experienced member of SAQA, each year I volunteer to mentor a fellow member who has applied for mentor guidance to help them work towards a particular goal they’ve identified n their practice. This year’s partnership has just commenced, and my new mentee is looking for guidance on focusing and refining her vision and style, in other words developing a recongisable ‘artist’s voice’. If I’m successful, the process that has just started will continue long after our contract year ends. My own personal experience developing my own voice rather than work to someone else’s theme began with a slide presentation by an American art quilter 35+ years ago. As she showed us her works in chronological order, she talked about what they told her about herself and her vision. Much of my work at that time was still creative embroidery, but all had been professionally photographed for my 1987 ‘Sunburnt Textures’ exhibition. So next day I did as she did, and it was an eye opener. Through this blog and lots of other bits of writing (lists, quotes) and sample making that my dear readers never see, I’ve continued with ongoing self examination with research of all kinds of things, ranging between my lifelong personal interests and newer, often tech driven interests. Through my own Life Story (see pickledgizzards) and jottings in this blog, you may see how some of my personal views have long been expressed in stitch of some kind.

And also in the last few days I was discussing my recent solo exhibition with a friend who strongly suggested that I now need to make and show some installations. They’re big on installation art here in UY, but it’s my opinion that too many fibre or textile art ‘installations’ are essentially large sized collections of fabrics or fibres, too often lacking real manual skill or craft. I admire a number of installation artists who do spend a great deal of time and effort using their best skills to present their vision, and my own portfolio shows that I could do the same if it helps me achieve what I want to create, but I’m not interested in working large just for the sake of it.