Posts Tagged ‘landscape’

A Gold Nugget Soft Sculpture?

Tuesday, July 25th, 2017

Sure, why not?  Memories of this particular achievement of mine came flooding back as I browsed in some old photo files recently.  This group relate to a project I was involved in and blogged about in a 2009 post.  Gloria Currie had emailed them that week, although I had seen some of them before on paper.  

This first pic shows the letter side of the 36 double-sided quilts, each letter forming part of the entry signage to the Australian touring bicentenary exhibition of 1988.  Every banner quilt was designed and produced in a major regional centre of Australia, with a designated letter on one side and on the reverse side a depiction of something typical from that particular region.  It was all wonderfully coordinated by someone in Canberra, home of the Bicentennial Authority of the day.

Entrance to Australia’s  Bicentinary travelling exhibition of 1988

The main centre of the huge gold mining industry in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields is the City of Kalgoorlie Boulder.  Gold is still produced there today, even after nearly 130 years of continuous gold mining; and as the chief economic activity of that area it was obvious that gold and it’s history there would be the theme on our quilt’s reverse.

Members of Goldfingers Embroiderers and The Patchwork Pollies formed a group to carry out the big project, led by quilter Margery Goodall.  With a desert landscape colour scheme throughout, our assigned letter was H, for which we chose traditional crazy patchwork, seen here with Margery standing in front. For the other side we settled on a traditional medallion-style design featuring a soft sculpture of the most fabulous gold nuggets ever found in Australia –  the legendary Golden Eagle Nugget  here with yours truly standing in front of it.

Margery Goodall and Alison Schwabe in front of the sides of the quilted banner.

I was happy to use my experience with free machine embroidery to depict some typical landscape, mining buildings and headframes on the surrounding red-brown fabric.  When someone asked if I could do a gold nugget for the centre? I blithely agreed, having no real idea of how I’d do that, and knowing there would be no pattern source.  I’m an experienced procrastinator with a finely tuned sense of just when I really need to just get on with it 🙂  So, after weeks of procrastinating and agonising over the folly of agreeing to make such a thing, and facing a fast approaching deadline, I finally got down to experimenting with samples, naturally. Once I focused under the pressure, the Golden Eagle Nugget took me about a day to figure out and make.  I cut the shape from gold lame, toned it down in places with brown paint, layered that with batting and free machine quilted it to give the lumpy surface texture.  I then backed that and stuffed some fibre filling between those layers and sewed it up like a little pillow.  Phew! I was hugely relieved and just a bit proud of the result.


The Golden Eagle Nugget, soft sculpture by Alison Schwabe, 1987    ~ 25cm  x ~ 15cm 

Below the eagle is a little pic of the main street water fountain statue of the prospector Paddy Hannan whose discovery of gold nearby led to one of the most fabulous gold rushes the world has ever seen.  What a joy to wander back in time through these photos, enjoying the memories and reminder of the proven value of making samples whenever entering uncharted territory! 

Following A Trail – aka Making Samples

Saturday, July 22nd, 2017

Earlier this week I had a studio visit from local textile artist Lilian Madfes, and while she was here I gave her a demo/lesson in the basics of freehand patchwork piecing   Next week I will go to her studio for her demo of the basics of silk painting, at which she is a master in a very creative way.  When I had given her plenty to use to explore the technique if she wishes to, I talked about the dome-like shapes I often use in my designs and showed her how I do one.  Sewing it up therefore made it a sample – and my readers know I’m keen on samples for trying out any new ideas and materials!

That first one is on the RH end of this pic.  I liked it, so made more, and love where this is apparently going.

Insights Into A Gridaholic’s Creative Process

Friday, June 9th, 2017

I think most of us have the impression a grid is made up of squares, but other general words come to mind including network, lattice, matrix, reticulation. It all depends on how you’re using the concept, but I suspect the most common one has been used to make maps and charts which for centuries have been drawn out on some grid scheme, though not always rectangular. Long a student of geography, I understand the different ways a mapmaker can present known locations of geographical information in a system that relates everything on some system of reference. These different systems are called projections, chosen for the usefulness of their final result to the task in hand.  You can check them out right here – and some will amaze.

I confess it, I am a gridaholic who usually thinks in rows of squares, but occasionally breaks out into triangles 🙂

I like the order contained in rows of repeated patterns, although within each of my repeat units there are always variations that make each unit unique compared with all the others around it.  This is of course, anathema to makers of  traditional quilts.  Take these nine patch block patterns for example. Though creatively used with other elements and sometimes in a minor way, each Nine Patch unit is made with precision and accuracy to result in exact repetition of every block.   It was this lovely strict order which drew me initially but briefly to traditional quiltmaking.  I love traditional designs overall, but have left them to others since the Flying Geese wall hanging I made in c.1989.  I am one of many art quilters whose work has evolved from influences of traditional quilt making.

Especially when I’m thinking of new work that I want to include some kind of patterning within repeat units, I take a printout sheet like this one, get my pencil and start  doodling.  I have this grid on file and can print off a few whenever I want.  A bit OCD I guess, instead of just freehand drawing the lines as I do in my sketchbook pages; but somehow it helps me focus my attention onto ‘fillings’.  They are just patterns, and could be hand marks, stitch marks, seams, whatever, but things do grow out of my putting them down.  It is about a year since I put pencil to this paper, and now certain things stand out, giving me more to think about.

These and some other mark patterns from another sheet, made it onto mylar backed nylon applied to leather in the small sample piece I made and donated to the SAQA anniversary trunk show collection   and, pleased with that, I made a 120cm x 90cm size wall quilt.

7″ x 10″ Sample piece submitted to Anniversary Trunk collection, SAQA, 2016.

 

Art Quilts Exhibition – Touring Australia

Friday, May 5th, 2017

In 2017 I made the following quilt “Purnululu #7” in a series of works with the same landscape scheme.  While working through it, I blogged and showed more images here and here,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Purnululu #7” Currently travelling with SAQA exhibition “My Corner Of  The  World”

 

Australian landscapes such as Purnululu and Uluru, known in the past as the Bungle Bungles and Ayers Rock respectively, are distinctive examples of weathered sandstone landforms or karst topography. To the Australian Aboriginal people these and other similar places have always held strong cultural and spiritual significance.  Today non-Aboriginal Australians and foreign visitors find Purnululu and similar Outback places great destinations for travel and education.

“Purnululu #7” is already quite well travelled in Canada and USA with the juried SAQA art quilt exhibition “My Corner Of The World”.     Made while I’ve been living here in Uruguay, it’s already gone to places I never have visited.  But starting later this month it will travel to places I do know well, appearing with the others in this collection at textile and craft events in these Australian cities on the following dates:

My Corner of the World
Craft & Quilt Fair, Perth, West Australia, Australia • May 24 – 28, 2017
Craft & Quilt Fair, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia • August 10 – 13, 2017
Intocraft Handmade Expo, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia • August 17 – 20, 2017
Craft & Quilt Fair, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia • September 11 – 12, 2017
Intocraft Handmade Expo, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • November 24 – 26, 2017

 

What happened Brisbane? Why no Hobart?  Darwin – are you there?

Revisiting Older Works, or ‘What Was I Thinking?’

Friday, June 13th, 2014

Earlier this year, an article about my four Quilt National quilts appeared here  http://quiltnationalartists.com/journey-landscape-alison-schwabe/  and it seemed a good place to start a broader study for a powerpoint presentation I was asked to give to a  meeting of Ozquilt in Perth WA last month  (May 2014).  It was suggested I might talk on inspirations, themes and my processes.  Naturally, revisiting mixed media work and quilt making done over 35+ years led to  the rediscovery of many works I’d pushed to the back of my memory – some for very good reasons indeed!  Here’s a pair of works made 7 years apart on the theme of water as a major force of nature shaping landscape:

floodwaters #2

Still Waters #2,  1993.   That year we were living in the USA, and early summer  floods occurred all down the mighty Mississippi River valley, leaving thousands of people flooded out, destroying many homes and much infrastructure.  There were many dramatic and harrowing stories in the media, all of which prompted this piece.  Now, the ‘What Was I Thinking?’ bit may be obvious to you, but didn’t occur to me at the time: floodwaters, whether seeping or pouring over a tiled floor are not clear and sparkly!  I still have this piece, and now put it in the category of ‘not a great one’ but a work I had to make, nevertheless.

 

 

Flood,  2000  125cm x 110cm    This flood piece got the swirling muddy waters right – because by this time I was more focused the powerful force of water in/on landscape.  I don’t think this is an especially wonderful a quilt, either, and hardly surprises me it is still ‘In Artist’s Collection’   Again, it had to be made, probably so I could move on.  The murky green main fabric is quilted with freehand water current lines, though they’re hard to see in the clear nylon thread I used in the twin top stitch needle.  Although I have revealed something about this work, it still amazes me that I actually made this one – another ‘What Was I thinking?’ piece.

 

 

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