Archive for the ‘gold’ Category

2011 SAQA Auction Quilt

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

This 12″ square textile, just completed but as yet untitled,  is my offering for this year’s SAQA Benefit Auction  At this link you can see some of the early submissions to this year’s auction list, and find full details of how you can particpate and acquire a fine small art quilt for your textile or quilt collection  (I suggest mine of course! )

The Auction will run online from September 12th to October 2nd.

This piece fits in with the Timetracks series, and yet I think I may have another title in mind, but am thinking it over.  No rush.

Two New Collectors

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

It’s always a joy when someone wishes to exchange their hard earned money for some of my art. Since I enjoy creating and making textile and fibre art I don’t think of it as ‘work’, even though it is, and as ‘work’ is occasionally frought with difficulty or stress even, between concept and completion.  Today I am hoping that my two newest collectors will have many years of enjoyment with my works in their collections.

This week I was pleased to see my 12″ square in the online 2010 SAQA Benefit Auction was purchased by a collector in the USA, Francie Gross.  I am embarrassed to say I forgot to photograph it before sending it off, but it is in the style of Timetracks 11

  a portion of which is shown here.

It is still up on the auction pages, 2b, at the SAQA online auction which enters its third week this week with the works shown on pages 3a and 3b – just click the link on the page above the pics andyou will go to each in turn.  Perhaps you’ll make a bid for some of the interesting pieces still to come under the hammer in the next few days.

A few weeks ago I sold two works to an international collector, a personal friend, who chose “Timetracks 16” and also this one:

 

It’s not shown in my website, partly because I haven’t ever decided just which category it belongs in, or exactly what name to settle on it.  For a long time it went as ‘Untitled’ which I always think is an artist’s cop out. 

Yet it is an important work, because it took me into the “Desert Tracks” works that followed and will probably be added to over time. It is a work focused on those aspects of the traditional ancestors of modern art quilts that appeal to me and appear repeatedly in my own work – blocks/units, repetition, and hand quilted surface patterning.  The finished edges are applied with a gold metallic fabric, double layered and cut on the cross, left ufinished – also from a time when I was beginning to consider less conventional bound edgings on my work, and burned edges appeared soon after making this one.  It has always looked good in local exhibitions here, and I know it will be well placed in  its new home.

It just occurred to me that someone with some clout in the art world should declare a day each year to be designated “International Art Collectors’ Day”.  I still have the very first painting I bought, nearly 55 years ago with 8s 6d of the 12s pocket money I was given to spend at the annual school fete.  It is a postcard-size watercolour of a landmark mountain range in northern Tasmania where I grew up, and I remember choosing it from a whole table of perhaps 50 or so little watercolured landscapes, probably done by the art teachers at the school, and certainly framed by one of the parents’ framing business – handy use for the their framing offcuts, probably!  It’s still in the original frame – I think I will do it the honour of having it framed in a more modern frame next time I’m back in Aus – I have always loved it.  In addition my parents had several watercolours painted by a cousin of my father’s, John Nixon Gee.  Dad took me along to JN’s house one morning when I was maybe 6, and I remember watching him paint a little while I was there.

Muestra Fusion, Part A

Friday, December 14th, 2007

Regular readers will have seen the invitation I posted to the joint exhibition of my work with gold jeweller Petra Eberl. this first photo shows her her work is displayed and the organic finish she achieves in her designs. As it was taken with the glass cover in place, DH caught the two reflections, but look past those to wsee the gold. I’ll try to replace it some time without the glass.

Beginning our rental period at 8 am and opening to the public all set up at 2pm, we did very well considering the wedding from the night before went until 5 am and the cleaning up had barely been started when we arrived… but we all pitched in to help despite the staff ‘s protests – we wanted them and their mops out of the way pronto so we could really get moving on our transformation of the space.

UL shows how the 2.8m cream fabric we bought was hung from existing battens on the ceiling (nails ) and two helpers using the steam vaporiser thing to de-wrinkle the fabric. Compare these pics with the ones below which show the completed installation – Caco and his assistant put up the fabric and all the lights in a masterly well coordinated operation between, effectively 9am and 2pm. It was amazing, all well planned out, I saw his working diagrams – he had been there the week before, thought about things, bought electrical cable and the light fittings, measured and assembled them according to his plan as he went. LL shows Petra filling her containers with paper on which she put fine white gravel – see picture above -and on that surface she then put slices of travertine marble with pieces of jewellery on each – several pieces to each of these large shallow bowls – they are assembled in LR – and each with a round sheet of glass over the top and a small light suspended over each. UR is showing the last quilt to go up, at which time Mike and I left, rushed back to our house, changed into some better clothes and got back just before our first visitors arrived – and giving me time to add a few stitches, LR, to the quilt I had finished only the night before leaving an unquilted area 2″ x 2″ bang smack in the middle at the classical eye height!!!

Our first visitors arrived shortly after we opened, figuratively speaking, for in fact the doors were open all day and all night – we were blessed with warm dry weather, which was kind – at this time of year it is often hot and very humid, and and therefore rather difficult to endure in a non-airconditioned venue like this, with many of the windows cut off by the false walls!

One party of early visitors, some rels of one of my closest friends here, sailed through the show en masse, and, as if swooping in on a department store sale, picked up the hem of every quilt pulled it up and looked behind at the each of my quilts. If they had been paintings I wonder if they would have done that? (well maybe they might have …) I was a bit gobsmacked – but didn’t say anything, out of deference to my friend – and once satisfied they settled to some wine and nibblies. I couldn’t think of anything witty or clever to say, but, I’ll be ready for these particular people next time we do this kind of thing….interestingly, they were the only ones I think, who did that. And, although I had alerted everyone in case we were blessed with children sucking sticky lollies or icecreams and sporting itchy little fingers, there were almost no children to be on the alert for.

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Crazy Lazy days of summer ….

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

Dear Reader -greetings for the new year -a little belated for sure, but what with visiting family coming on top of recovering from major surgery late last year, computer problems and distances from cyber cafes as we holidayed by the sea, the lack of writing for some time means that there has been in some senses a textile-free three months in my life.

Certain physical restrictions resulted in my spending a of of time on the beach, either gently bobbing in the water or working on the suntan while reading quite a few good books. Visiting grandchildren meant some long noisy games of monopoly – not much tv since the set in the hose we hired and spent quite a bit of time at had no cable, therefore was mostly in spanish – they wearied of that and lost interest.

I have certainly not stitched a stitch, well apart from hand sewing on a button to a shirt, and my current piece calls to me from where it is pinned up on the wall. In my recovery period I did assemble some tiny abstract landscapes, mounted them on sanded acrylic sheeting, and without taking a pic of them, placed some of those plus several quilts with a local gallery, and will shortly hear from them if anything sold over the first month. In another separate development, a local designer and maker of 18ct jewellery, Petra Eberl, and myself have agreed we should and will exhibit together in the next few months. I could do it tomorrow but with Montevideo half empty during the summer holidays there is no point. It is true that what they say, ” nothing really starts until after Easter here,” and so we will be looking at a date in June or July probably, talking with the manager of the Museo Zorrilla gallery at the end of january to finalise this. I am very keen to continue on with the leather on fabric works and will expand the small abstract landscapes. We are both pleased at this opportunity since we feel our high priced works in different fine craft media will complement each other well with organic design lines.

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