Tomorrow, September 11th, at 2pm Eastern Standard Time USA the annual SAQA online benefit auction starts. It runs from September 11 through October 4. This year there are nearly 500 pieces, and about 1/3 of them will be auctioned each week until the end of the auction. But, tomorrow, September 11th, Day 1, for just 24 hours, every one of those donated 12″ square quilts goes on sale for the price of US$1000.
My quilt this year, is auction item #17. If it doesn’t sell tomorrow, it will be in the second group auctioned the week beginning Monday September 21st at which point the bidding starts at US$750 and drop in price each day until it sells, or the end of the week passes after which it will be for sale through the SAQA online shop. For further information on how the auction works, and how to make your bid on my quilt 🙂 go to https://www.saqa.com/auction/auctionFAQ.
The money raised by this annual auction helps fund the exhibition programs, publications, and education outreach of Studio Art Quilt Associates. Additionally, every purchase helps increase the recognition for art quilts and the artists who make them.
Except for one year, I have always suported SAQA’s program by making and donating one of these small textile art works for the auction. Many collectors use the annual auction to collect up-and-coming-names in the art quilt world. Others collect to a theme, and I’ve seen some lovely collections on walls. Two of my collectors own 2+ Alison Schwabes, which is very pleasing to me.
Details of my most recent landscape inspired quilts: both hand applique over raw edged shapes.
This morning I listened to most of a webinar as several artists from the latin world talked about their textile art and how the COVID19 pandemic has impacted their artistic process. I had to leave the webinar before the end – a load of firewood was being noisily delivered, my cleaning lady was approaching this zone with the vacuum cleaner, and I couldn’t find any headphones to fit into my sound system. The recorded session will be accessible for replay soon, but I might not have missed much substance – there was a bit of waffly philosophising.
However, by the time I left the zoom meeting, a theme had developed through all the speakers who, with some variation, were united on these points: (1) that the restrictions imposed by the pandemic offer unique opportunities for us as textile artists to reflect on our work and what we were doing with it. (2) Through video, photography and writing about it, documenting our process can help us reach deeper understanding of our own growth as artists. (3) Additionally, both making and documenting of our processes can be very healing in any troubled period such as the one we’re all living through.
I was recently telling a friend about something I was doing, and she launched into a bit of a lecture on how I should be sure to document it. She’s not an artist herself, and hasn’t known me long, so she had no idea that documentation of my process is one of the driving forces behind this blog, the nearest thing I will ever have to an artist’s notebook or a visual diary. Both of those quilts, of which you can only see details above, are well documented herehere and here
My documentation always includes photographic images including some of mine and finally Eduardo Baldizan’s of the finished work and a brief written statement of <100 words about it or the series to which it belongs. I just finished a medium sized wall quilt that I named Pandemic Pattern, and feel sure that several ideas other ideas I have on this concept will comprise a series in time. Stay tuned.
Tropical Waters, 2004, 10cmh x 148cmw, aka “Ebb&Flow 1“
I love this line from Australian’s national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair” though plenty of people can’t stand it. They have a real problem with the wonderful word ‘girt’, past participle of the verb ‘gird’ meaning to surround, secure, enclose, strengthen … and other synonyms. Of course, for most people around the world, hearing our own national anthem played invokes all the wonderful feeelings of being part of our country, some of them enhanced by being forced to remain overseas rather longer than intended, thanks to the current Covid-19 pandemic. But this is no rant about the painful troubles and inconveniences brought to us by the virus that has turned the world upside down this year.
Next April there’s a SAQA virtual Oceania Region regional conference. And naturally there’s to be an exhibition of work by SAQA members of this region. It will open in New Zealand during the conference in mid April, then travel to a number of venues around the region in the following two years. Naturally, being Aussie, I am part of this region even though I’m currently in Uruguay. Although the prospectus details are just being finalised for immediate release, a few days ago we learned that the theme is “Distance And Diversity” and have confirmation that the dimensions are 60cmw x 100cmh. As you realise, there’s a short lead time until entries close, so even as I write, there are probably a few who have already started their intrepretation of this broad theme. Though I’m thinking about possibilities, I’m not ready to start yet. I need to rationalise and put away lots of fabrics from the latest works that I delivered to my photographer this morning. As I’m on the organising committee I do feel I need to submit at least one work for jurying!
In South pacific region known as Oceania, there are 14 independent nations, and one thing we do all have in common is that we are all girt by sea 🙂 There are many other things to think about for inspiration, too, like communications, history, flora, fauna, colonisation, cultural and economic differences, tourism, envoronmental challenges and so much more … but I still can’t get the girt by sea thing out of my mind!
It’s been quite a long time since I produced something watery …
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month – or hares and white rabbits, whatever you say to bring a bit of luck on the first day of the month. It is the first day of spring in the southern hemisphere, and is celebrated as National Wattle Day in Australia – if you follow that link to a plethora of images and information about the flowering Acacias that Aussies call wattles, you’ll learn more about them and their place in our history than you ever thought you could know about wattle.
The Golden Wattle was incorporated as an accessory to the design of our national coat of arms in 1912.
The Golden Wattle was incorporated as an accessory to the design of our national coat of arms in 1912. And that has absolutely nothing to do with what I have been up to in the month since I last posted here. I haven’t been posting much anywhere – I am perhaps as active as normal on Facebook, but posting a bit less on my other blog, pickledgizzards.com Keeping in touch with our far flung family members also needs a fair bit of time, and that that seems all the more urgent in this dreadful pandemic.
Detail of a corona pandemic related quilt approx. 75cm x 125cm, covered with hundreds of appliqued fabric strips ~4.5cm x ~ 1.5cm
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed everyone’s life in an infinite number of ways. Touch wood, so far there have been no cases in the families, and I’ve not heard of deaths of anyone I personally know. Mike and I are in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, where we’ve been living for many years. Now that he is retired, this was to have been the year we found ourselves a new home in Australia, got our stuff there out of storage there and settled into retirement living with a bit of travel. But, sigh, we’re still here, so thank goodness for our own house and garden. Uruguay’s handling of the crisis is very good, with a low number of cases and deaths, a well organised health system that has never been stressed, and clear concise updated information through one voice to a people who trust the system. The country is surrounded, though, by Argentina and Brasil, where the virus is ravaging the populations. Clearly, any lapse in the well controlled closed borders could bring similar catastrophic effects here.
We are all shocked daily by stories and images of the painful hardships and death totals that this virus has brought to people all around the world. Certain images are sticking in my mind, and this quilt is the first of what might become a pandemic inspired series.
I’m starting a new larger piece, aiming to submit to Quilt National. Entries have been open for months, but I’ve only just focused in the past few days. Most of the times I have been selected for QN, I’ve made my entries in the last few weeks before closing, so I’m more or less on my accustomed schedule 😉 With the book club and my mahjong group in recess for the duration, there’s little social activity to interfere with it !!
Auditioning from the scrap bag
Late last week I began dabbling with samples and fabrics, but for one reason and another, none of these urged me to continue in this vein.
Left – strips of pieced stripes; Upper right: what can I say; Lower right: segments oversewn with (a) cream and (b) flourescent red – too much wrong with this idea.
At first I thought cream background with cream thread would be great … but the result is quite blah, though it took me 3 different samples to be convinced. I do think that would look lovely in greys or gentle sunset/sunrise colours, even though ‘soft colours’ aren’t my thing. Never say never. Slices of pieced strips aren’t ‘it’ this time, either, though I sewed one piece with cream, another with gold and the third with light silver/gold. Metallic threads definitely need a dark background to literally shine. Finally, the upper right hand sample needs more experimenting: there’s no drama, although there could be, and this idea needs more work, which would take time I don’t have.
Late on Sunday afternoon, I found some marvellous overdyed fabric that I thought a whole lot of red and purple/darkish shapes would look great on. I assembled the reds, called it a day and was all set to start stitching today. But in the shower early this morning, a different image came to mind; one with serious meaning and an apt title. The result was I felt I had to totally change my fabric ideas again, for the third time. I think this might be the first time I have ever had a title for a quilt before the quilt is actually under way.
The fact that I found some fabric I’d completely forgotten about, and by sheer fortune had a reel of matching thread, convinced me I had done the right thing by changing the fabrics/thread combo yet again.It took several hours to put the previous lots of fabric away, and then turn out the scrap bag to pull pieces of the things I now needed: hand dyed fabrics in warm earthy colours, with no commercial prints and, interestingly, no commercial plains this time- they just won’t work, even though I normally mix them all. However, I found lots of scraps of hand dyed fabrics plus some yardage of several colours, so now I have plenty of ironed fabrics gathered ready to do a sort of mosaic type of design using the oversewn technique that I’ve recently found so agreeable.
This quilt has a dark theme, one to do with this dreadful pandemic, so there will be no clear bright colours, and nothing with any white in the fabric. It’s not that I’ve become stricken with depression or anything, it just wouldn’t be appropriate, given the title and imagery.
