I made this diptych, “Sweat Of The Sun; Tears Of The Moon” in 2071. It didn’t make the cut for some exhibition I entered it into and the only place, so far, that it’s been shown is the quilt festival at Gramado, Brasil, where I taught in 2019. I love it, so much so that I took a row of 4 blocks of the sun side for my most recent business card image. It’s a simple design, and the above link shows how it evolved from a quick little demo.
Possibly because with the Pandemic Pattern works I’ve done lately, I’m ready to work with some larger shapes for a while. I’m considering something using this design large enough to go on our dining area wall, which needs a 220cm – 225cm wide work.
“Sweat Of The Sun; TearsOf The Moon”, 2018. 125cm x 60cm
To think of colour possiblities and the larger scale it’s easier to go to black/white. 225cm doesn’t sensibly divide by 6, so making rows 7 units long, would give 7 x 32cm finished units – 224cm, close enough to what’s there now.
Possibilities include:
The current hanging on that wall is black and gold. I could replace it with something using black fabrics marked with gold dabs and marks, and do some cream or other plain light colour with black markings; then cut half moons and the other segments out of those and assemble, before quilting in gold, bronze or coppery metallic.
I have some lovely colours from purple through red to orange – and could then quilt in neons.
I could make it in earthy colours and quilt in cream.
I could make it in dark black-grey neutrals with quilting in neon green and yellow.
Anyway, that’s in the future – there’s still a fair bit of work to go on the black/light gold applique one which I’ve taken up again to finish while I make one or two neon samples each day. And though we’re all set to receive our covid vaccinations between this week and mid June, we’ll be living with the pandemic and the limitations it’s brought for some time to come, at least.
Moving right along with sample making, I was thrilled to discover my nylon will bond with MistyFuse (r) to the polyester green fabric (of which I have some black and a medium grey) The nylon has a backing layer of something that makes the fabric weatherproof.
Left: square within a square bonded into place. Top right: the first little test of bonding. Lower right: nylon folded showing the backing (water and wind proofing)
This means that hand appliqueing segments of design will be much faster, because they won’t need to be pinned or stitch basted into place, and stitching won’t make the surfaces wrinkle. Also, whether to remove the stitching that you can just see in the zig-zag segments below, is no longer an issue. Even though the fine orange neon thread is a precise match to the nyon, that process leaves holes which, though they can be closed, are really time consuming to ease back into place. Pljus, pins are hard to work around when you’re hand stitching. So all in all, a happy discovery which makes a largish piece perfectly possible.
One of the interesting SAQA conference programs I selected to listen to was on the 100 Day Project, which finishes this week. I’d never taken much notice of this, being pretty busy following my own nose so to speak, but as there was a 1/2 hour slot on the program, and I wasn’t interested in the other two options, I tuned in. It’s rather amazing in that people who joined the project undertook to do something small and creative every day and post it on the designated FB page. Participants undertook to make a sample, perhaps, or manipulate a photo on their ipad, or sketch designs – just something small, and creative, every day. Nothing had to be finished off, mounted or anything. What each person does is up to them – no one teaches or instructs anything. In the comments afterwards, one person said “Well I’ve joined the FB page, so now what’s next?” and I don’t know whether this person realised that what is next is up to her – it’s a voyage of exploration, development following a technique or design idea you want to explore and perhaps develop. We saw some lively, interesting examples of what people had done in the current100 day period, which ends this week. Quite a good proportion of people who started out stayed the course, some missed occasionally, as Life can get in the way of the best intentions, but clearly it it helped get or keep people focused. It seemed to be a sort of Group Visual Diary, very like my own blog, though I have never undertaken a one sample per day, as I tend to do a group per project then go ahead. So this is a bit different, and I will give it a whirl, it may become a good habit, though in the pandemic I am already pretty focused on my textile artmaking, as there is so much time available. Anyway, I have joined the FB group and will take part in the next one that runs through the 30days of June. And as I’m already turning my mind to new work and doing samples, I am aiming to start my (at least) one per day right now.
I had a little time this morning after I delivered my quilts to Eduardo for photography, so this pic is of what I did yesterday on the left, with today’s square within the square one, ~5cm x 5cm.
Neon fabrics and threads; landscape segments and ‘holes’ are a thing I’m exploring at the moment.
The virtual Studio Art Quilt Associates’ annual conference opened on April 15th and continues until 25th April. Over 400 attendees are enjoying informal meet ups on the conference platform, organised zoom discussions, studio tours, lectures and several kinds of slideshows. Approx. 4000 SAQA members around the world are organised into geographic regions, and although I am geographically located in the Latin America and Caribbean region, I’ve also chosen to list Oceania as my second region. The region covers members in New Zealand, Australia, PNG and the island nations, though we don’t currently have any members out in the middle of the Pacific. This conference’s theme is Oceania so presenters for the most part are Aussies or Kiwis. Two virtual exhibitions were organised to coincide with it, and slideshows of them are part of the program. I have Dreamlines in “Oceania: Impressions From Around the World”, for which you only had to submit images, and there was no date limitation – I have posted this quilt before
Dreamlines 3 2015 70cm x 40cm
The other exhibition I’m part of is themed “Distance and Diversity”, and is available virtually only through the conference app, but will open in real time in New Zealand next month (gallery information at the end of this post). I don’t normally make works for themed shows, with my interest in little landscapes, I was able to produce a work to the design requirements – 60cm x 40cm landscape orientation. It was shown one evening accompanied with lovely regional music – some didgeridoo segments were interspersed with sounds of nature, birdsong and so on – perfect. The quilts themselves are a fine and varied collection I’m proud to be part of. From when the SAQA conference organisers approached the regional group to put it on, we only had 8 months to form the committee, write the prospectus and entry form, arrange jurors. collect the selected quilts and prepare the catalogue for printing. As a volunteer member of the organising committee, I felt honour bound to submit an entry, and at such times the stirring words of Dorothea MacKellar’s poem My Country always spring to mind.
Sunburnt Country 2021 60cm x 40cm Distance & DiversityExhibition
My statement about this work reads: “Australian born in 1885, Dorothea Mackellar wrote her iconic poem My Country in 1904 while her family was living in England. A highly emotive expression of homesickness for her country, it includes terms such as ‘sunburnt country’, ‘wide brown land’, ’sweeping plains’ and ‘far horizons’, some of which are standard descriptive adjectives for Australia today. Inextricably entwined with the harsh landscapes on the antipodean continent that produced it, Australian Aboriginal civilisation suffered greatly as English colonists arrived and spread out across the land. Those English influences have in turn been diluted by more recent waves of change brought by immigration from many parts of the world, resulting in the culturally diverse country we are today. My miniature landscapes attempt to express in fabric the vast open distances, varied colours and textures of landscape that make up our huge island continent.”
Sunburnt Country, detail. Fused landscape segments onto black background, sprayed sky and hand drawn iconic Australian images. hand quilted.
The images, artist statements and jurors’ comments are now in the hands of a printer, and a catalogue will be available by the time Distance and Diversity opens in real time on May 14 – 16, 2021: The Great New Zealand Quilt Show, Rotorua, New Zealand. Other New Zealand dates and venues are July 5 – 25, 2021: Estuary Arts Gallery, Orewa, New Zealand and November 1 – December 2, 2021: Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand. It will travel to Australia in 2022, though the event at which it is scheduled to open may yet be cancelled – this wretched pandemic is a nightmare for event organisers – so I’ll give more information closer to that time.
The two pieces I intend to enter into Art Quilt Australia are ready for their photography appointment this week, and the recording of the Artist Interview for Quilt National 21 is done and sent to the Dairy Barn. Yesterday I felt free at last to unwrap my neon orange rip-stop nylon and start to learn its potential by making a few samples.
All of my art is based on inspirations I get from Landscape, and as I love repeat units too, I often see things in terms of rather diagrammatic plans. The brown squares on the second row are of a ~4cm sample square of brown suede I made about 10 years ago, the middle cut out and trimmed smaller to leave space, and then holes punched in parts. It’s not landscapey, but it is an image I have so often thought about but never actually used – yet. I love the idea of a repeat block surface design using this idea in some way – and its time may have come! Either leather or ripstop nylon would be perfect …
A scanned page of some of my images I gathered onto a word document page and printed off.
I do keep going back to certain things – I don’t believe it is lazy on my part, I have different things to say using some of the same ‘diagrams’ as I guess these are. Another approach to this length of nylon (which does tear with a satisfyingly loud, sharp sound, actually) is to explore textures with/without using the exactly matching orange thread. I used neon green in this very early sample (since I do still have about 2,800m of it) and found the circles were easiest to handle by first making a tube, attaching the cut length into place using the fine matching orange, and then couching/oversewing is manageable, though requiring a hoop or frame. So, a large textured piece? Something pandemicy? Samples give small concrete platforms that show possibilities.
Some more exploring will involve holes, and I was recently reminded of using a heat tool to melt/burn synthetics. ( I only use this technique outside on a windy day with my back to the wind to avoid breathing in any fumes)
