It was terrific, if anything exceeding my expectations although I am not quite sure why I feel that – I do know that there are a lot of other quilt and fiber things on n various parts of the country around this time and I think drew several people away from this marvellous event. It kicked off with a beaut welcome dinner up at the Tragers’ in Boulder and began what for me was a 3 day meeting of faces from the past and putting some new faces to names and images that have been impressing me. Not being a name dropper I won’t be listing them here – well maybe I can let you know that Arturo Sandoval whooping up out of the crowd just as I was being photographed with my quilt ruined the snap ( eyes shut tight mouth wide open in surprise returning greeting) and it had to be re-shot, no problems with digital of course.

Thanks to good planning by the committee and generous help from an army of vollies, the whole event was well organised, from the beaut tote bags with bottles of water among the literature including health notes for the newly-arrived-at-altitude, to comprehensive schedules, maps, and shuttle buses. The initial collection of art quilts was unveiled looking wonderful – goodness some of those oldies are goodies, and the catalogue is in one word fabulous. Send for one to the RMQM – its great. Exhibiting artists got one free of course, but I bought a couple more. And there was so much catalogue signing we all quickly felt celebrities. The speakers were interesting, one or two droned on a bit – whose showing slides always err on the side of too many – and it was difficult to choose between excellent topics listed for the discussion panels. Ours on regional diversity was lively to say the least, and after what looked like a total divergence of approach came back to different aspects of the same thing.
And it was interesting to see several collectors present and attending sessions, meeting with artists and thereby outwardly demonstrating their support for the art area in which they are collecting. Several quilt magazine people were there, one actually sought me out to write some articles, which I will now that the exhibition that has been focusing my attention is up. I stayed with my friend Janet Jo Smith and had a wonderful opportunity to go through her hand dyed fabrics – she is one of my preferred dyers, the other being the well known Aussie Dijane Cevaal. Ooops – careless – just dropped a couple of names from the bundle I am carrying around in my brain just now.

Anyway it is now time to get dressed etc for the day – I fly out ack to BWI for toorow’s floor talk at my exhibition. Packed last night, and triumphed over a 3m piece of batting managing to get it consolidated enough to fit in my travel carry on tote bag, with still enough room to slide a few things down in amogst the folds, magazine for plane etc.

Yesterday I went into the aus embassy for a few hours to join the professional hangers at work putting up my quilts, sorting out the final decisions of where to hang each piece, and deciding that one piece just did not fit well with all the others; and since I have not heard today I can only deduce that all is finished and in hand for the opening tomorow evening, wednesday 1st. i took some people at work shots and will take others and put them up for readers to see, and will give an account of how things went.

Before that I spent several days out in Ohio at Athens, where the Studio Art Quilters Association had their conference and the opening of Quit National 05 took place also. Many marvellous quilts, and this time only one or two I felt did not belong, and not too many that seem to be a rehash of previously exhibited works – but there are always a few – or maybe I am just missing something. It was terrific to meet with several people I have not seen in many years, and meet people whose work I have been admiring in catalogues and on line in that time. The conference program was absolutely full and in manyways useful.

So, tomorrow morning I repack, because after the Opening tomorrow I head out to Colorado for the Rooted in Tradition symposium at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, plus a few days of hanging out with family and friends there before returning to Maryland for the public floor talk at the embassy thursday 9th at noon, and then on the weekend I depart to return ‘home’ to Uruguay.

One thing that I always notice about people is their hands, and another is any jewellery they are wearing. These fabulous fingernails and jewellery were on the hand of the woman sitting next to DH at the lunch counter yesterday, down at Mercado del Puerto. She apparently has a nails business over in Buenos Aries. Dear Daughter would love this lot….

I was asked to provide a quilt as a guest artist in a weavers exhibition themed on Tree of Life, opening here next week. Over the many months since I was first asked, I have been thinking of Jose Gurvich, a famous Uruguayan painter designer and ceramicist of the deconstructivist school. A friend took me to an exhibition of his ceramics a year or two back, wonderful primal pieces many of them covered with little symbols and 3-d little living things, people, animals, fish, all kinds of things, exquisite. …bought a book about him which is delightful to read. So, I thought, well the tree of life, with Adam and Eve, the first two humans, and the leaves and fruits to hold the symbols of life, the serpent lurking etc.

Communication with the organiser over along period had been a little intermittent and complicated by language assumptions and difficulties so that what seemed a distant deadline became urgent and then three more days even more so, on account of a public holiday monday. Typical Uruguay though…. you just have to go with the flow. So I did. On tuesday I made the decision to start all over, and was thinking calico/muslin background, paint it again, but better . But on wednesday morning I sat bolt upright in bed and thought ‘BLACK…Eureka!’ and, further, for once, had plenty on hand. I did a few little testing samples, realised black marker pen on organza over black would be fabulous , and achieved the bonding and fusing wednesday which makes me a new bonding fan, thursday sewed around all the edges of organza that were beginning to lift a little !!!!! and so by thursday night, ie 24 hours ago, began quilting, continuing into the wee small hours this morning, and after a few hours sleep I put on the the binding and sleeve, did the hand sewing and finishing off while the book selection discussions were on, brought it back, signed and put it on its rod, in a bag and finally got it, paperwork, spanish and english versions of my statement, price, contact info etc etc all to the delivery point downtown, with just 10 minutes to spare… hurtling through pouring rain and late friday traffic with a taxi driver who understood my need get there and balanced that with incredibly good driving in bad conditions. Why was it important to me to do this and just about knock myself out over it just days before we head off up to the US ? … because I said I would, and because who knows where this invite may lead, and heck, I just love last minute pressure ! For pressure, this piece ranks up there with ‘Lilydale’ juried into Paducah the year the theme was triangles ?1991? Anyway, the decision to do a last minute effort and make that deadline was made just after Xmas with the deadline merely 3 weeks away… I told the family take care, talk amongst themselves quietly in the background, I was going to be busy a while. From GO to WHOA that quilt, 84inches by, what, 68 or so ? took two weeks to make. And, years later, I still love it… that’s the test IMHO .

This is the first version of Arbol de la Vida, the Tree of Life, painted in a freat flurry in february, but something intervened, and mentally I abandoned it, and with good reason, I think ….. so when the deadline loomed I had to toss up whether to do something or anything with this before quilting it, or start all over again with the basic idea. Following are details of the one I did complete, and finally, the full view of Arbol de la Vida, as presented for exhibition. Maybe I needed this total failure to force me to look at the whole idea again. Properly.