Mike and I are planning to sell this large house and move into an apartment sometime soon. So I’ve started a gradual process of clearing out surplus and unnecessary stuff we’ve accumulated, and my personal goal is the removal of 2-3 bags of ‘stuff’ per day. Many drawers and cupboards have already been processed. Yesterday while cleaning out some of the unwanted magazines and old books on my studio bookshelves I found several catalogues that I’d completely forgotten, books I hadn’t opened in years. Some I’m happy to pass on to one of several well-placed people ro inspire them or help them teach, but there are others that I will never part with.
One which I had not looked at for a long time both surprised and pleased me very much. It’s a hard covered catalogue of an exhibition I attended in 2005 at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, Golden CO.
In full colour, it begins with a very well presented history of the art quilt movement, and the museum’s decision in the early 2000’s to begin adding a collection of contemporary art quilts. The museum’s organisers decided to concentrate on 50+ artists with some connection to Colorado, including yours truly because I lived in Denver while producing Ora Banda, which was my first quilt selected for Quilt National,1993. Donors were also asked for a statement about our work and several other images, and two of those also appeared in this book; plus the introductory text essay contains a quote from my statement. It was so interesting to re-read this book’s outline of the history of this modern medium, and note how my statement about my work still holds true today. The plan for this collection included preparation of this important catalogue for the 2005 exhibition of the donated quilts, which I attended on opening night. I’m proud to have been included in this particular project.
There were plenty of other books, too, that I haven’t delved into for years for whatever reason, but I know they’re past their time with me, and I’m ready to let them go. One is Layered Textiles by Kim Thattichai. I know it will be great for someone new to these techniques (using the heat gun and burning tool, and various bonding adhesives, soluble stablisers and other materials now widely used by mixed media artists) but opening it reminded me of why it has languished on my shelves for several years. The illustrations are mostly in the same limited earthy colour palette of dark and medium browns and oranges, and despite the different processes and tools the reader’s introduced to, most of the end results look much the same, despite being samples made by different people other than the author – students in her workshops, perhaps? My own colour choices have changed a lot in recent years, so even with excellent and thorough text instructions, my interest’s faded and I’ll pass it on to a friend here who teaches.
A few years ago on a trip to the US I bought Shelley Rhodes’ Fragmentation and Repair, from the same publisher, Batsford, and I’ll never let that one go, as I open it every few months to enjoy, and never get sick of being inspired, it’s fabulous. Perhaps having done a StitchClub workshop with Shelley in 2020 is a factor, too. Another book I will never let go is Needlelace and Needleweaving by Jilly Nordfors, which I bought in Darwin in 1976, over 50 years ago! It was one of the first needlework books I bought while enrolled in creative embroidery class at the community college that I took there to help keep myself sane during the Wet Season. While I haven’t done much with those techniques in the past 30 years, the book remains inspiring and, who knows… never say never.
