A couple of posts back I blogged that a work, “Out of Order 3,” was accepted for the SAQA “AI: Artistic Interpretations” call for entries.

The rapid appearance, acceptance and desirability, indeed the allure of Artificial Intelligence is phenomenal, as is the amount of energy needing to be drawn by computers to use it. I’m not sure if this aspect will be touched on by any of the selected artists, but we’ll all have to wait until the exhibition opens in Baton Rouge LA in February next year to see all the works and their statements.

The prospectus for this SAQA Global Exhibition read, in part: AI: Artistic Interpretations unites the creativity of fiber artists from across the globe with the algorithms, data, and machine learning of Artificial Intelligence. This exhibition will showcase the boundless creativity that emerges when human artistry combines with the potential of technology. Use artificial intelligence as a tool in your artwork or express your response to it. Combining artistry and technology developed from human inputs, AI: Artistic Interpretations encourages artists to explore what they can make when blending AI generated material with their own creative styles, resulting in works of art inspired by, or responding to, artificial intelligence and digital media. Wall-hung, ceiling-hung, and 3D artwork are all acceptable.” Thus, artists had a fairly wide range of angles from which to approach this interesting topic in rendering their ideas in fabric and thread.

My own approach was to enter a work on which the grid of gold printed squares was clearly impacted by some major disruptive force, echoing the early computer generative artist Vera Molnar’s designs. In her algorithm she’d inserted a small amount of code that made the plotter print increasingly out of kilter linear squares, and by these generative designs she’s known as one of the pioneering artists of the 60s to use the computer as a tool in her art. One artist who announced her acceptance into this exhibition told how she’d used a program to insert heself into some well known digital meme (which my cultural gap re US media didn’t allow me to recognise) and I’m sure there will be some artists who gave AI an assignment to design something for them from some provided data. Each angle is a valid one to meet the entry criteria – as long as you see AI as just another tool which can be used various ways.

It was interesting therefore that on a related art quilt site in the last few days, there was a fairly heated discussion about one of Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s recent works, with the whirling shapes and bright colours that characterise her designs. I can’t find that discussion now, but there was a considerable number of people who felt that by using her computer to design the work, then sending that file off to a fabric printing company to print onto fabric and return it for her to then layer up and do her incredible machine quilting on, was all in some way ‘cheating’. Caryl has always been an absolute whizz at piecing, and her lessons in that are now freely available on line. She could have pieced the work, but chose to go the whole-cloth quilt route, for whatever reason, and the quilting was superb as ever. That discussion reminded me of a woman I met in the Arapahoe County Quilt guild I joined as a P&Q newbie in1988. Trudy Hughes’ methods of rotary cutting and machine piecing had revolutionised the craft of patchwork in the previous few years, and this woman commented with a slight sniff in her voice, that she always used her scissors to cut out the patches, and only hand stitched the shapes together. I don’t think she used the word ‘cheating’, but that is clearly what she thought.

Today there was a reminder from the newsletter editor of the SAQA Oceania region, about the current call for submissions to the “What’s Inside?” themed virtual exhibition. She suggested some of us might have some suitable oldy-but-goody pieces lurking in our portfolios, and as size and the date of manufacture weren’t important, I thought I should at least have a look, though I wasn’t really expecting to find anything suitable that I could write a fitting statement for and enter this call. The usual stipulations applied – (a) good quality photographs, with a mimum number of pixels on the longest side, and (b) a full image to show the entire work plus a small amount of neutral background, plus a detail image.

And top of my list is one of my first art quilts, “Distant Shores” (I won’t go into the story of my several ‘first’ art quilts here) I made it in 1985 (forty years ago!) and showed it as a wall quilt in my first solo fibreart exhibition, “Sunburnt Textures” in Perth, Western Australia,1987. Back then we still lived in Australia, and I self identified as a ‘Creative Embroiderer’. My documentation of that show is by 24mm slides, and the only image I have is a small scan of the full view slide, with most of the bound edges cropped; and I can’t access that slide to get a better modern scan. I was a bit disappointed, because I think it would be perfect, and I’d even written the statement for it before I discovered the slide was deficient, so I’m showing it all here:

I don’t have a detail image, but no matter. I can tell you I painted what I hope is obviously sand ripples onto undyed calico/muslin; and in the dark areas I quilted and stitched lot of french knots. The shell is hand painted satin, constructed in two stuffed and quilted pieces, with the space showing a painted and stitched beach scene ‘inside’ the shell. The edges are finished with a ~1cm binding (some visible near the top right corner of the image.)

My statement reads – “We’ve all held a large shell close to our ear and ‘heard’ the sound of waves breaking on a distant beach; but what if we could look into that big shell and ‘see’ that distant beach?”

I did however find a couple of other, much more recent smallworks to enter, and whether either of them make the cut for that virtual exhibition, or not, I’ll post the link to that here in a few weeks’ time.

Back in March I made a work specifically to enter into the SAQA Global Exhibition “AI: Artistic Interpretations”, and today received word it has been selected, which is very pleasing. Inspired by the algorithm used by Vera Molnar to disrupt the geometric arrangement of squares printed out by her computerised plotter.

My Out of Order series interprets the impact of rapid social, political, financial, technological changes currently unravelling some of the rules-based order that since the 1950s has guided the world’s major, and relatively stable political, social and trading networks.

The exhibition will open in Baton Rouge, LA, in February 2026, and travel for an itinerary yet to be advised.

I’m currently playing around with stuffed forms which I’ve always liked, and in the past did some shallow 3D bowl pieces with needlewoven structures in/on them. But in addition to needleweaving, such bars could also be wrapped, buttonholed, or even beaded, like this detail from “Below The Tideline” – think belt loops.

think belt loops perhaps

Needlewoven bars – only one I regard as successful – possibly the puff wasn’t stuffed fully enough. Someone commented this reminded her of a chicken… 🙂

Recently I saw an interesting fibreart piece online, in a grid made of something flexible (rope?) totally covered/wrapped with fabric and some stitch. All the crossover points were contained different sized 3D elements like blobs, which I wasn’t able to handle to examine throughly. The whole work, ~1.5mh x 1m was an irregular grid structure hanging 10cm in front of a wall, making the shadows it cast an integral part of the work. With grid structures being so important to me, it’s on my mind to explore something like this, but I’d make the blobs larger in comparison to the vacant spaces than I saw in that work, treating each blob or some key ones as a small embroidery with some stitched texture.

Also on my mind just now is the wonderful gold and pewter vinyl that I bought here in Montevideo late last year. It’s magic stuff, and looks like metallic finish leather, and while it’s softer, stretchy and easier to stitch through, it’s probably not as durable. It could have a bright role in top class sports gear or theatre costume. My figure’s too lumpy to wear some skinny pants made of it, but they’d look fabulous on the right person. I’ve used it in several works and found it’s terrific for raw edge applique, as sample making earlier this year showed:

SAQA is currently running a challenge like the one I took part in during 2021. As participants set our own agendas, on most days during this challenge I’ll be doing a small sample of some element of a bigger idea. Elements like those above could be applied to a blob about the size of an egg, I think, and whatever the material, the gathered edges at the back would need covering over, making a perfect site for some kind of stitched texture element.

Because I am always open to the creative potential possibilities of non-traditional fabrics and materials that I sometimes come across, sample making is a very important part of my practice. This challenge began while I was still working on my entry for the mask exhibition here in Montevideo, and so first up I posted a few pics of it on the challenge’s private FB page. I haven’t yet blogged about that mask here, as the entry date is still open for a few more days.

This week I had the opportunity to visit the 4th Biennial of Artisanal Objects from South American countries, in The Cabildo one of Montevideo’s Old City’s finest and most interesting old buildings, now a historic museum, overlooking the Plaza Matriz, a beautiful square with fountain that’s lovely any time of year. The day I went there were strong bitterly cold winds blowing, but even with lots of little branches and masses of autumn leaves strewn everywhere, it was nice to walk through.

This is a wonderful exhibition, featuring 110 artisan crafted works in several categories by artists from Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. I checked out absolutely everything, and though of course my personal focus is textiles, there are other fine pieces in woodwork, metalwork, jewellery, weaving, crochet, ceramic, felting and basketry. Of course, such is the exciting state of craft today that there are a number of hybrid or crossover pieces skilfully combining materials and techniques from several distinct craft areas in the one work.

There was no catalogue, so my descriptions might be a little off in some of the notes I made, but no matter – it is a lovely exhibition, and here are some of my favourites:

The Cabildo museum is located at Juan Carlos Gómez 1362, Cuidad Vieja, Montevideo. Opening hours are M-F 11-17.45, and Sat. 11-17.00. The museum’s website has not yet been updated to include this exhibition, which only opened this week, so I am not sure how long it will be on view. I recommend you make plans to visit sooner rather than later, then have a wander around the plaza before heading to your favourite restaurant for lunch!

(I provide direct links in my text where I think readers might like further information, and always welcome readers questions and comments in reply)