Last week I finished the 12″ square I am donating for this year’s benefit auction.  “Tidelines 7” is now on its way; it may have already arrived.  This is unusual for me, I am normally up against a deadline, but I don’t think this year’s work is any the worse for having been produced at a more leisurely pace in plenty of time, either. 

These small pieces are often in effect studies for larger works, in which I resolve issues and anticipate others that might arise from changing to a larger scale.  I hope it does well in the auction, which is held each year to help support the exhibition and education programmmes of the Studio Art Quilt Association, of which I am a professional artist member, PAM.

Three days after the  evening on the beach where Sally and I observed the goings on for Iamanja’s birthday, an article appeared in the local paper El Pais describing the event with pics of the particular beach we’d been on.  (well, it was just down and along a bit from the newspaper offices) Although probably the action began just after dark, certainly things were well underway when we arrived just before midnight, and we saw new groups coming and people leaving all the time we were there.  Nevertheless, I would not have described the crowd as ‘thousands’  but perhaps they meant all along the coast that edges the metropolitan area, then it would be so, I guess.  The article referred to the 100.000+ adherents of this faith system currently active in Montevideo itself.  Interesting.  I believe I have found someone who will soon talk with me about the symbolism and basic principles, and will write more on that after I have met her.

After any good party, there is always mess to be cleaned up!  The next day, according to the paper, from 8am that day, over 100 city workers plus machinery were cleaning the beaches of debris, and certainly the beaches on the edge of the city had been all cleaned off wonderfully before midday.  Our local beach , Carrasco, was cleaned as far east as the casino, but not further along, where I walk from the casino to the naval school – it was a terrible mess, captured in the collaged pics above.  A couple of days later there was even more mess, but for the technical reason that I had forgotten my camera ! I can’t show you the heavy line of small bits of styrofoam shapes and other bits of junk that were washed up.  I was astonished to see an almost elderly couple who had parked their chairs on the dry sand, and were standing knee deep in the rather unhealthy shallows – I hope they were deciding not to swim….  I didn’t wait around watching them – there was no one else around, and it would have been a bit obvious I was watching them.   A lot of the gifts were organic in nature and therefore will be biodegrading as I write.  Perhaps it is safe now to swim there.   Yesteray, 10th feb, there was nothing much along the tideline, it seemed to have all been sucked into the water and on its way down to the Atlantic where some of it will end up in one of those vast whorls of plastic rubbish in several parts of the ocean, of just floating around out there being so harmful to marine life.  

I have said before one of the goddess’ likes is anything pretty and blue, and she is very vain.  So perfume (the label on the bottle above says Touch of Love) and blue predominates in the offerings, plus white, the colours of the sea.  Even the glass that might have toasted her was partly blue – and was just left dangerously lying in the sand ….

A friend and I went along the coast a little to the beach where a great deal  is said to happen on Imianja’s birthday – and so it proved.  After midnight we spent an interesting hour plus, wandering among groups  large and small, on the sand, most of their participants costumed in roomy satin gear with head caps or tied bandannas mostly white, too.  A couple of also had figures dressed in yellow, red and blue, and I hope soon to talk with someone who can explain a significance I sensed and some of the things I am curious about.  My friend Sally commented how calm and  focused people were.  There was a lot of soft drum beating, and frequently tiny little bells ringing in  some kind of ritual over the boats that people had built and brought to the beach to be loaded with the goddess’ birthday gifts before being floated out to sea.  In addition to things I have often seen on the beach and written about – fruit, vegetables, pop corn, blue and white flowers, ribbons, beads, silvery glittery things, there were often mirrors ( she is known to be vain) small bottles of perfume,  meringues, and lots and lots of candles, blue or white.  Preparations we saw included honey being either added to the boat or poured over what had been placed in there.  We heard group members checking to make sure this and that item had been added – someone had definitely put in a small amount of money – in one of the boats I spied a cheap watch.  Wonder if it was going, and if it still is.   Most boats were made of styrofoam sheeting sealed with blue tape.  Some were elaborately edged and trimmed with tiny blue beads or fabric trim.  You can see some of these things in the photos I took for which the following is the link:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Alison.Schwabe/February2nd2012BirthdayOfSeaGoddessImianja?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCO_13qviudKTiAE&feat=directlink

So I got to bed after 1-30.  I woke and went down to the local Carrasco beach a few hours later, at 7am, and goodness, the beach was strewn with wreckage from the night’s activvity.  I can’t tell you how many dead chickens were spread out along the beach, most of them headless (we saw none anywhere on the other beach the night before)   No one in their right mind will go swimming in this bay for at least a week, maybe more, stomach churning!  I took photos of wreckage sites, and a disturbing thing was the amount of plastic – which of course includes the ubiquitous styrofoam.  I truly wish all plastic was rapidly biodegradable – there was a lot of it around.  I met a neighbour walking his dog and he made it clear how angry it all made him,  saying something like ‘it’s all phony anyway – this stuff belongs in brasil – they’re just stupidly copying it here.  I hate it’.  He has a point about the plastic, and the myriad of candles, but whether he’s correct about the validity of this, um, belief system, which has swelled in recent years, I’m not so sure. 

Anyway enjoy the photos.

Some new catalogues came in this morning’s mail.  One is  Portfolio #18,   (2011)  an art quilt source book published periodically by Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA,  in which images of quilted textile art by many of its Professional Artist Members, PAMs, are presented in categories of abstract, nature, figurative, colour work, landscape, representational and sculptural.  There’s some marvellous work in it, and I am proud to be there, too, (p 174)  with Ebb & Flow 17,  pictured below.  

Ebb & Flow 17, 178cm x 95cm, 2009

I don’t remember who it was several years back, while commenting on the current state of the art quilt world, ruffled quite a few feathers by saying that there were many art quilt makers who could just as easily or more effectively do in paint on canvas what they are presenting in fabric and thread, and perhaps more easily.   Of course artist’s canvas is a fabric too, but we don’t think of it in the same way as those fabrics we cut, sew, print, dye, pleat, burn, paint, rip, stitch  and do all other manner of things to in the name of making “art” quilts.  The ensuing fuss contained a lot emotionally charged comment such as how fabric is placed next to our skin right after our entry to this world and covers our bodies all our lives; therefore the tactile experience of fabric is innately familiar and important to humans, and that handling it as a raw material in making art caters to primordial emotional needs.   As I looked at some of those Portfolio #18 images I found myself wondering why fabric and thread had been used for some particular works, some of which indeed were more like paintings, seeming to me less related to their quilt heritage than their heritage of the art of painting.  Some of them are no doubt enhanced with some wonderful quilting, appropriately designed and well executed, an additional layer of texture like mantle over an already interesting image, and unfortunately for the technical enthusiasts there are no detail shots, but perhaps that is as unimportant as a close-up of a painting in which you can see the brush or knife strokes.  But it got me thinking, why did this and that artist do what they have done on fabric – and really, is the quilting that is on top of the image necessary, or could it have been left out? Or, to put it another way:  Would this work of art have had as much credibility (in the wider art world) as it appears to have in the art quilt world by virtue of being a layered and quilted textile presented as a wallhanging?  Sigh – some did not come up positive there. I felt a bit jaded.

Then I opened the Sightlines catalogue, another SAQA publication for an exhibition of installation works created especially for this exhibition by 14 selected PAMs, who in the words of curator Virginia Spiegel were described as “….artists … who were making art about Something.  Not necessarily momentous or earthshaking, but definitely artwork about something that motivated the artist to create artwork of the highest standards both in its materiality and it meaning.  We have all seen art that is gorgeous and technically brilliant, but so mindless and without depth that we do no more than glance at it and then glance away, disappointed.”     Concluding her curator’s statement, Virginia says:”Each of the artists has brought  to her Sightlines artwork knowledge, wit passion, maturity and a point of view. These artists are indeed telling stories about Something.”   This claim is especially true when one reads each artist’s own comments about their particular work and the motivation to produce it.  But without those statements, some stories were were less readable, less comprehensible than others.   

As often happens to me when I look at recent books, magazines or catalogues, I turn to yet another examination of my own rationale for making art in fabric and thread plus whichever of the above processes I’m using at the time.  On one hand fabric is just another medium like paper or canvas, using whatever additional materials, processes and tools that I select.    On the other, I find myself thinking yet again whether I am just making something “gorgeous and technically brilliant, but so mindless and without depth that we do no more than glance at it and then glance away, disappointed”?  I am confident (and modest too) of the technical qualities of what I make, but not always so sure that my story connects with the viewer in significant ways….does it have that elusive Something?

Both catalogues can be ordered online from www.saqa.com bookshop.  Within the next few months, ie the northern spring, the images of Portfolio #18 will also be accessible online from the SAQA website.