While I am visiting family in the US, some of my creative works are also travelling, but in different directions.

Below is #Fairy Bread”, one of three small works I have in the Petite Miniature Textile Art  Biennial Exhibition, showing until July 17th at the Wangaratta Art Gallery (Victoria, Australia) – gallery information at http://wangarattaartgallery.com.au/

My wall quilt, “Purnululu #7” is hanging in the Stratford Perth Museum, (Ontario, Canada) with a juried collection of contemporary art quilts entitled “My Corner of The World” .  This Studio Art Quilt Associates touring exhibition runs until September 5th 2016, .

If you´re near one of these venues over these dates I hope you’ll take time to visit one of  these collections of contemporary textile art.

I recently spent about a week in Kansas City MO, a small but culturally lively modern city with a wild west frontier past.  In the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art there, a huge sculptural wall hanging by one of my favourite artists, Nigerian El Anatsui, loomed high above me, literally stopping me in my tracks.  Like much of Anatsui’s work this is all metal, but the way it is presented I always think of it as ‘fabric’ meaning I think of him as a textile artist, therefore.  I forgot to ask the title of this piece, which was not on any nearby placard – but in one way it doesn’t matter, as his work is highly distinctive, quite unmistakable.

I’m only guessing that laid out flat this piece might be approximately 5m square – but it was hard to tell because of the draped and folded nature of the installation which looked like magnificent shimmery heavy tapestry or furniture fabric.  It is undoubtedly quite heavy, being made as it is of flattened metal bottle tops and and labelsconnected with wire.  Anatsui’s sculptural art includes often gigantic wall hangings but includes free standing 3D works, too, always up-cycling thousands of units of durable discarded waste materials.  Many of his wall hangings can only be described as ‘vast’ and some have been presented covering whole building facades, so judging by some of the images here , the piece I saw in Kansas City is quite modest.

There are many online links and articles about his work, but this one caught my attention showing a lot of his process carried out by studio hands, flattening out and joining said labels, caps and tops into units he calls ‘blocks’ which he then moves around. (Note the many large heavy duty bags around his studio containing his major raw material the bottle tops and metal bands from the recycling centre)  He takes digital photos to keep track of the changes in the composition until he is pleased with their arrangement, and then all the blocks are fastened together – and here, so powerful is the effect of his work on my fabric focused mind, that I almost wrote ‘sewn together’.   This is absolutely akin to the process of designing a contemporary or traditional quilt from fabric units, so if you know quilts, I think you’ll find the handing and assembling of these units quite wonderful.

A few years back I was critical of curled edges on art quilts hung in an exhibition in Santa Fe NM.  Regular readers might wonder if at last I am going soft on this standard of art quilts hanging flat against the wall.  I’m not, but at issue is a matter of intent.  Those I commented on were clearly meant to be flat but weren’t, but they may have once been blocked to flatness and became curled in the humidity that day. There’s a common misconception that blocking a quilt is useful for straightening and flattening.   I’ve found myself considering what ropes and pulleys, or smoke and mirrors I’d need to use to bring about a draped, carelessly folded or wrinkled look to the mosaic stuff I’m exploring, and whether that would be interesting or even relevant …

William Shakespeare’s character Juliet Capulet asked “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This morning on Pinterest I found mixed media abstract art by US artist Jeanne Myers   There were several lovely images of her abstract art on that page, and looking closer to see if they involved stitch, and wanting to know more, I went to her website.  I was immediately struck by her current work titles, seemingly plucked out of thin air, like these examples –  ” Sparkling Cider”, Frayed Edges”, “Mr. Dodd Said”, Collapsible Landscape” and “Dressing For Dinner”.  I love the works, and I love the titles. There is a cohesiveness about her vision – but the titles don’t coalesce into any meaningful ‘story’, at all, or do they by their unrelated strangeness?  And does this matter? No- but it’s highly relevant when you know how she thinks, as they do tie in with Jeanne’s vision+process outline in her artist statement.  It begins “Alchemy – a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious way”  This driving concept underlies a description of her process she likens to archeological excavation, of digging through layers, peeling layers away to reveal something which is mysterious, not known or understood.  (It does not involve stitch, by the way)   She knows that when the painting has finally been revealed – the collapsible landscape has emerged – and that excavation is complete.   I wonder how she chooses a title.  Does she open a book and just choose a phrase from that page?  Does she choose a favourite word and put another with it – like ‘Collapsible Landscape’ for instance?   Perhaps she shuts her eyes while reading the newspaper and takes a pencil stab at some text? The possibilities are infinite.

I recently wrote of Richard McVetis who gave the collective title Units of Time to a group of 3D cream wool covered 6cm cubes embellished with fine stitchery, and each one had the subtitle, if you like, of something like “20:45” – this being his record or estimate of how many hours and minutes it had taken him to make that one.  I thought that was clever.  You could use the same rationale with completion date, perhaps.  Either approach offers unlimited possibilities, but what happens when you make two or more works that each took 43:15?  Do you then go to 43:15 #1 and 43:15 #2, …. ?

One of my series of art quilts I call “Colour Memories”  some of which are here,

“Ora Banda” 1992.    127cm x 150cm. Collection Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, Golden CO.

Most are named after a particular place that I’ve lived in or visited that I associate with that group of colours.  It was reasonable at the time, but as my focus, chosen techniques and colour palette changed, it seems no longer applicable.  With later series I’ve gone with for example ‘Tracks’ and then added the sequential number.  A bit boring maybe.   I really feel its time for a new approach to the challenge of finding or devising titles for new work.

When talking of inspirations, a fellow art quilter wrote today  “I have a million ideas and only a few are taken to the next step”.

Just yesterday while looking through old photo files for something I couldn’t find, I found and actually labelled these two pics as “things that didn’t go anywhere” #1 and #2 , and it doesn’t matter which is which!

In the immortal words of  Kenny Rogers’ song The Gambler – “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, Know when to walk away, know when to run.”  though I’ve never done anything so awful I had to run!