Squares, grids – important parts of how I see the world around me – All around the world people are facing disruptions to long-established patterns of traditional and rules based order, evident at local, national and international levels.
This small piece is an example of my current interest in disrupted grids as symbolic of the chaotic state of the world today. If you take notice of the news from around the world, your own country and your neighbourhood, you understand what I’m talking about, and I don’t need to spell out my own strongly held political views on any particular situation in every direction we can look. These are the thoughts behind my interest in grids.
A couple of months ago I made a small 6″x8″ textile piece, different from this one below, and gave it to a friend Victoria, to mail from Miami FL to Dayton OH for me, as UY’s mail service El Correo is notoriously unreliable, and I could not justify putting such a little snippet into a courier envelope at a cost of ~US $80 or $90. Time passed and the organisers in Ohio kept a lookout for it , but I felt it had been lost in the mail, so with just a week and a half before the cut-off date for submissions to arrive, I made this replacement piece to hand over to someone this week. But on friday night came the news that the original one, mailed 6-7 weeks ago in FL had finally arrived in OH! So, this replacement one will be for the 2026 auction!
The Spotlight auction is of 6″x8″ textile pieces so small I can’t think of them as ‘quilts’. Members of SAQA make and donate them each year for the auction, held both online and in person, at the (SAQA Studio Art Quilt Associates) annual conference. Anyone can bid and I’ll put details up later – you don’t need to be physically present or a member of SAQA. Proceeds help pay the costs of SAQA’s exhibition programs. I always paticipate, and regard these auction offerings as high quality samples, and while making it this second one I learned a great deal. It has already prompted me to start a larger work on this theme, with the back, thin batting and front already layered and pin basted. I’m currently deciding the size of the grid as I scale this idea up to something like 120cm x 90cm.