This second post on the topic of themed exhibitions was prompted by my acceptance into the SAQA Oceania Region’s themed quilt exhibition, “Opposites”. I’ve been a Juried Artist Member in SAQA for a long time, and every couple of months we JAMs have a zoom gathering, or YAK, to discuss issues and news in the professional part of the art quilting world, and these sessions include a wealth of proven ability and experience between us. We recently discussed themed exhibitions.
Although I live in South America, I wanted to support this exhibition in my native region, despite frankly struggling with the theme. I don’t normally enter themed shows unless I already have a finished piece that fits the entry requirements, or that I planned to make with that theme, anyway. It took me several months until I came up with a design that comfortably fit within my portfolio. This time, the experience made me think more about the matter of themed exhibitions, and these are related to the popular kind of small groups that exhibit together every year or two showing works they’ve created in response to prompts/themes taken on assignment by the members, commonly every 2 months, and members commit to completing a show-ready art quilt in that time.
While I lived in Denver CO, I was active in a small group of like-minded quilt makers, ‘Quilt Explorations’, who explored the medium beyond traditional quilt making, We met monthly to show what we’d done with each topic or prompt that members suggested. While it wasn’t mandatory to produce an actual quilt every time, most of us did and even if we hadn’t finished one we all did the necessary design and research/planning for one, anyway. Each year we exhibited somewhere local like the library or council chambers. It was a very stimulating time in that group, which I had to leave when we returned to Australia, but I’m sure that fairly soon I’d have moved on from that group, anyway, as my own themes and ideas gradually took more attention. That time was influential though, and some of the themes from that time continue to appear in my art to this day, albeit in modified technical form. This 1990 one for example, prompted by the ribbed headlamp glass in the B/W photo of a gorgeous vintage car, led to a huge part of my portfolio exploring the effects of lines on shapes. In the early 90s fine strip inserts became a signature of my designs, increasing in curvature as my piecing skills refined. Wandering lines still apppear in my surface designs, but since Green Dimension, 2023, they’ve been appliqued rather than inserted.
Rounded cutouts reappeared fairly often, like this 2018 diptych –
My point is here that being involved in themed study groups and exhibition groups can be very helpful to emerging artists in any medium; and some of these artists are possibly still developing their own voice, too. It naturally follows that themed exhibition calls for entry are keenly welcomed by many art quilt makers, including some well known, award-winning names.
I include links to previous posts and other websites to help my readers find more detailed information, helping me keep my posts reasonably coherent and concise 🙂
