This biennial exhibition is showing in Athens, Ohio, until September 13th, after which the collection will be divided into 3 groups, which will travel to other art gallery and museum venues in several countries until the end of 2025.

The Dairy Barn has various projects related to the QN23 exhibition.

One is that all exhibiting artists are offered the chance to record a short video on their art and work to submit for editing and posting on the Dairy Barn’s YouTube channel. You can see the video I recorded for QN21, which of course was at the height of the pandemic, and as an older person I didn’t even consider travelling to the opening. For various reasons I didn’t go up to the recent opening of this year’s QN23, either. This past week I’ve been preparing a video about “Abstract Landscape Textures”, and was almost ready to send it to them when I decided to have just one more serious look for any kind of planning diagram I’d drawn, feeling sure I would have done something. In that video I said I’d taken a ‘large page and drawn a few lines on it’, and that was what I’d been looking for. I actually found the diagram, but it turned out to be approximately 7″x5″, a really minimalist doodle taking about 1/3 of a standard A4 page in the blank paged book I do such things in… I’ll post the link to my video on the Dairy Barn’s YouTube channel when it goes live.

It’s a typical of the diagrammatic pics I use to plan my works, but has no annotation this time. I often add lists or numbers that show what I’m needing to think about… but here, the only clue is that the lines extend quite far to the right, indicating that I was intending rows of repeat patterns in the kind of style I diagrammed on the left end – and blank areas indicate I hadn’t actually decided what to put in those parts. I did all the horizontal lines first, then the arcs and beehive shapes – and still not being sure, put it aside for a while and worked on a couple of other projects before taking it up again 4-5 months later.

I think because it took so long to make in fits and starts with other things in between, that by the time it was eventually finished, I felt slightly ambivalent about it, and hadn’t even decided on a name for it beyond the working title ‘large black with gold lines and arcs‘. I had it photographed in the same session with two others, and when it was time to submit for QN, I put details of those other quilts on the form, then, as the entry fee covers three works, I decided I might as well put this one in, too, meaning I had to commit to a title for it! We’ll never know of course whether the jurors would have selected one of the others I entered if there had only two….

On the evening of Thursday 29th of this month, just days from now, I will be giving a virtual slide lecture, “Timetracks: A Guide To Exploring Influences” with Q&A session to follow, as part of The Dairy Barn’s Quilt National workshop program. I’ve finalised the power point slides and sent them a copy, and we’ll have a pre-presentation check next week, to make sure there are no technical problems. Registration is required, and further info is at https://dairybarn.coursestorm.com/course/timetracks-a-guide-to-exploring-influences It will be recorded and available to participants for 6 weeks after that date, which will be helpful to any friends in time zones around the other side of the world who may want to watch it.

So I finished my wool quilt, named it “Moth Buffet”, drafted up the brief statement needed, re-read all the directions one last time, and sent in my entry with fingers X.

One of the entry requirements is that what’s visible on each side of the quilt must be at least 60% wool. I was pretty sure that by making the hanging sleeve out of the black coat fabric (70% wool) ensures the back side complies, but to be quite certain I added a couple of ~15cm black patches to the larger red (50%wool) sections. It’s an unusual layout for me, I know – but remember, both black and red fabrics came from unpicking two old wool coats, and the back is patched together from the most useful of what I had left.

It was quite fun to do, and I felt a bit naughty to be chopping into knitted woollen fabric. In my first post on this project I considered the role of wool in my background and why the mentality of “… but I don’t work with wool” had to be conquered.

When I was given those knitted samples, my first reaction was to unravel some of one and crochet or knit some elements to use on the work. However, my arthritic hands and lack of practice these last 30+ years soon made it obvious that approach would be needless torture. My needles these days are large hand sewing or machine ones, depending on the task at hand, and so I took a deep breath and cut into one knitted sample. The results were so exciting, the fabric unravelled beautifully, and there was no going back.

Unravelling this sample to knit, I abandoned that idea after just a few rows – but found the yarn easily separated out into 6 fine strands, and those turned out to be marvellous to stitch with.

The Quilt National 23 exhibition opens today, Friday 26th May, and although I will not be present at the opening, my quilt “Abstract Landscape Textures” will hang with some very good company there:

I offer all my fellow exhibitors congratulations of being selected for this important exhibition, and to whoever’s announced as the award winners – congratulations! I look forward to hearing who those people are, and seeing their works in the catalogue.