So continuing with the clean out upstairs I found the poster I mentioned in yesterday’s blog ! I think I was able to order or wander into the PO and buy it, can’t remember now, but at least I was able to have this even if we were not able to be in Aus that year and missed it all.

The top 3 rows are the letters – they had to be a certain minimum height within the proscribed area.  A huge variety of techniques were used by the different groups.  The lower 3 rows are the pictures/scenes/designs that related to the regions.   So, 0ur ‘H’  is 3rd in from the left on the 3rd row down, then the nugget on the diamond is bottom row, 3rd in from the right.  Seen as coming and leaving.  Several people have written to me offering pictures, related and unrelated information – thanks to all who’ve responded.  I’ll act on some of the advice.

With some difficulty I moved aside some furniture to access my book case yesterday and thanks to my orderly filing system instantly found the  March 1998, first ever  issue of Down Under Quilts Magazine.  The centrefold was an article on a quilt produced as a community project in the Eatern Goldfields of Western Australia.

It was part of a nation-wide project in which regional fiber crafts people all round the coutry were asked to band together to produce these double sided quilted banners to form a huge sign welcoming visitors to the travelling bicentenary exhibition that travelled all round the country in the year of of the bicentenary of white settlement of Australia, 1988.  One one side was the assigned letter – ours was H, and on the other was to be  a design that reflected something important about the region/town/city from which it came.  So, The Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, semi desert and a very rich gold mining area since the discovery there in 1893 provided the theme and the colours chosen for our quilt.  It was all coordinated by my good friend Margery Goodall (who’s now here in Perth and now a prominent Aus contemporary quilt maker)  The crazy patchwork blocks making the letter provided hundreds of people in the area the opportunity to sew a bock or embroider a few, or many, stitches as their contribution, and then it was all assembled according to the detailed instructions provided by the whatever-depatment it was that orgnanised the whole thing from Canberra.  When fully assembled on this structure at the entry to the exhibiiton read Australian Bicentenary Exhibition 1988 or something like that, and as visitors left looking at the other sides of these quilts, those provided a fantastic array of the diversity of environments and life of our country.  I don’t know where these are now stored, and haven’t heard of them since the show was demounted at the end of the year, but hope they are in some national archive somewhere – makes mental note to inquire, and would love to hear from anyone who has information on this.

So – the centrefold of the magazine shows yours truly, October 1987, in front of the soft sculpture of my design and creation,  modelled on a very famous huge gold nugget found near Kal, known as  “The Golden Eagle”.  The background of the nugget is red earth colour on which I free machine embroidered lots of trees and landscape features including a statue of the discoverer of gold there, Patrick ‘Paddy’ Hannan, and top and bottom some more  fme against the red, also.   And all this before I had any connection with quiltmaking!  Imagine my delight when my friend Gloria Curry, who took these pics and submitted them.  She sent me a copy of this brand new magazine to which I immediately subscribed, which ever since has served Australian piecers and quilters, traditional and innovative.

Well, not mine, sorry – I mean, don’t be greedy! there’s one just before this post, that will keep you going a while.  I’ll put it in the Ebb&Flow gallery on my website shortly.  No, someone else’s new work: on one of the lists I subscribe to someone recently announced she had put up new work on her blog or somewhere – as happens daily.   If I have a mo. I pop in to the link, often backing straight out again too – it doesn’t take up a lot of time mostly, and as in this case, I left no comment.   What came to mind immediately was  ‘Oh, so you recently studied with Nancy Crow then?’  truly – several of her hallmarks were blatantly incorporated but not nearly so well done as Nancy’s works.  But, worse, the several quilts featured are to go in a book that this maker is co-authoring with someone .  This  person clearly paid a lot of attention in Nancy’s workshop, or perhaps it was in one of her acolytes’, but instead of  internalising and absorbing what she now knows into something that will emerge later in some fresh individual way after being processed for a while, she is just regurgitating it AND perpetuating it in book form, asap.

This is one of my beefs with the state of the ‘art’ in contemporary art quilts today.  The books and workshops/courses that sell – and everyone wants to make money, fine – they are so heavily weighted towards what the the artquilter wants – classes on technique-de-jour rather than design; magazines and books containing masses of projects with how-to-do-one-just-like-this recipes instead what many still really need – of inspiring photos of works and interviews with artists just devoid of technical explanations about how the stuff you’re admiring is actually made.  So many quiltmakers and indeed the organisations that represent them are caught in this bandwagon, it all gives the false illusion that all you have to do to become an artist is attend workshops with the hottest teacher names, and enough of them, and, bingo! an artist is born and fledged all in one movement.  Sigh.  I think I’ll go off and make some new work while I listen to the footy.

Greetings from Perth Western Australia, where I am, with occasional sorties, for the next few weeks.  Coming back to a place is always interesting, you notice all at once the sum total of change that has taken place in small daily increments since the last visit.  This is certainly how I feel – the skyline of Perth is cluttered with many cranes and half done buildings – of course the recently subsided mining-based economic  boom generated a lot of this activity, but I understand most is still going on to completion.  A year ago here everyone was talking about the boom boom boom – waving aside any words of caution  that every boom is followed by a bust.  Then the great financial crisis set in late last year and now many are really feeling the effects – same as everywhere, but not so mortgage driven as in the USA however.  DH and I in our married life ( 40 yrs and counting)  have been through several mining-generated booms and busts here, and know that even when things are really grim eventually things do stabilise and cautious growth/recovery begins.  They say people in Aus have begun saving again – about bloody time – nationally people were spending more than they earned for some time.  On average of course – there’s always cautious people like me around who watch every penny…

And, too, I notice some of my friends and neighbours look older – so I guess I do too, appearing suddenly among them.  The young teenage daughters of one of our neighbours have both visibly blossomed suddenly … there’s talk of learning to drive… good grief !  when they first came to live in this area they were mere toddlers, and one still carting around a blankie.  One day driving through the city I noticed a good looking oldish guy riding a push bike, with a eucalyptus leaf-stuffed basket on the front, and on top of that sat/clung a large yellow crested white cockatoo, totally at ease with the traffic all round them.  He’s probably a well known local character but of course I hadn’t seen him before.  Another who is probably well known, possibly for different reasons since he seemed a little bewildered – an oldish guy, tramping through a city arcade rugged up in warm clothes topped by a this-colour-purple polar fleece woodsmans style hat, you know, with fold down flaps over the ears – those were up.  No self respecting woodsman wold be seen dead in such a colour, of course.  The cap was festooned with glittery silver bits – in the quiltmaking world ’embellishments’ – which relates this post to my textile oriented blog.  I wished I had just been walking along with my camera up to my face and managed to capture him in pixels.

I went to an exhibition of the work by WA fibre artist Nalda Searles over at the John Curtin Gallery, stunning to see a collection of her work including some from the 80’s and 90’s together with recent work.  A great catalogue too, and this show will tour Aus nationally over the next couple of years.  Well worth however far you have to go to see it.  I periodially have ‘discussions’ with friends, Wendy in particular, over the matter of artist statements, claiming as I often do that the best statement of all and in many cases perfectly adequate, is a seriously well chosen title.  I tend to agree with Wendy though, that in the case of Nalda’s work it might not be as fully, deeply understood at first glance by a viewer who knows little of her vision and ethos.  You could read ‘ fascinating, beautiful, possibly  short-lived works comprised of collected fibres and natural objects, collected stones shells and other objects, incorporating what are often gifted or inherited pieces of textile…’  but that’s only the thin outer skin of the collection.  Soft sculptures of dried grass fibre or hay is vulnerable over time, but that risk/eventuality is not a negative in her work – the processes of decay and change are part of Nalda’s multifaceted and deeply developed vision.   I was very impressed.

Another exhibition I popped into the other day was of etchings by Jorg Schmeisser with shibori textiles by Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser at Gallery East in N Fremantle.  I am sure people far more ‘qualified’ than I have commented on the superb prints of complex dream like and memory based inspiration and in incredible fine detail, and the beautiful textiles of beguilingly simple appearance, the Japanese aesthetic.   They enhance each other’s work – no real surprise there.  A friend was telling me how she listened agog as someone  (I have no doubt this ignoramus must have been a quiltmaker) commented on the shibori textile works, saying she didn’t think they were that wonderful, nothing much really in them…. clearly had absolutely no idea of the shibori processes and the applied gold paint to those parts where the resulting texture from the shibori process was thrown into sumptuous golden metallic fields of dune-like texture – uncluttered by shifts in colour or the presence of stitch – just  texture.  I thought it was wonderful.

While staying down in Busselton for a few days with my friend Kitty, we visited our dear friend, ceramic artist Helen Foster, at Margaret River.  We did the trips down memory lane of course, as you do, but equally and  maybe more important to me, was to spend time with and see the work of an artist whom I greatly admire.  Some of her latest work is exploring texture of natural objects and landscape, exciting to see.  She is represented in key galleries in the area (Jah Roc and others) and at times other places around the state including up in the Goldfields, so keep an eye out for her work if you are travelling in WA.

In addition to having my entry for the upcoming Ozquilt exhibition photographed, I had this utilitarian quilt photgraphed for the record.  I pieced it about 3 years back, the light fabric being cream rather than ecru.  When it was assembled, however, I felt the overall effect was rather bright and wanted to tone it down a bit – so, great idea, tone it down in a bucket of tea – that’s worked before, wonderfully.  I dunked the top in, moved it about every now and then and a few hours later took it out.  What I didn’t realise was some of the fabric was a different brand/composition? and grabbed the tea dye more strongly (look down at the LL area)   So, totally annoyed I put it away, at the back of a cupboard for a while and forgot about it.  A year ago I was taking another quilt top to a long arm quilter in the US (generous king size, too big for these aging shoulders to wrestle with)  I was teaching an experimental creative quilting w/s while there, and thought I’d take the troublesome quilt along to use as an aid to class discussion on choosing quilting design as part of the overall work.  The whole aim of the class was to enlarge options beyond doing quilting just in the ditch or echo quilting, or mindless machine stippling and meandering everywhere – I wondered what would they suggest for this one?  I don’t recall the discussion details now, but after that class I took it to the longarm quilter ( Jan and Steve at Johnstown CO,  http://www.quiltedexpressions.com )  and together we worked out the ginko leaf in a variegated thread would be the go.  DH sat in on the process of deciding on thread and pattern for each quilt, and found that most interesting.  I added the red print binding.  I love it now, and am going to keep it for use in our own home.  It fits within the Ebb&Flow series of work, but I am not giving it a number since I am keeping it, will probably never seriously exhibit it, so it’s “Ebb & Flow, Scrap” for ID purposes in my photo files.  I’m teaching over at Esperance the end of August, at Patching By The Port and will take it, and a number of others over for that.  Looking forward to seeing you soon, Esperance!

 At the highly successful opening of my exhibtion at the Centro Balear in Montevideo on June 23rd, are pictured, standing in front of ” Bushfine 4″ , l-r, Virginia, my generous friend and organiser, Alicia (Centro Balear) friend Mindy and Maria (Centro Balear)

Despite the frigid weather, around 130 people turned out to see this showing, and many lingered for some time,  talking to me and each other about this art form which is little known in Uruguay.  Several of my Uruguayan quilter friends came on the evening, and during the 4 days it was open several more called in to see it, including one from Rivera – a good 5 hours’ away by road.  One friend indicated she would like to buy one of the works  – and a couple of days came back to do just that.  Interestingly, it  will travel to a family member in Australia shortly .  I’m pretty sure this is to be a surprise gift -and so I won’t mention the work or the name of my new collector, just in case this blog post lets the cat out of the bag.   But it is one of the several burnt ,or as my son calls them, “post apocalyptic lace” works… the recent Timetracks series, of which another example is the one in Quilt National just now.  Another small piece  I blogged recently and it will be in the SAQA online 12″ Squares Auction, commencing September 11 at 2pm Eastern  (USA) time.  For further information go to www.saqa.com