{"id":1205,"date":"2011-03-29T08:44:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T13:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1205"},"modified":"2011-04-05T08:49:34","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T13:49:34","slug":"art-quilt-magazines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1205","title":{"rendered":"Art Quilt Magazines"},"content":{"rendered":"

For several days now, debate has ranged back and forth on the Quiltart<\/span><\/a> list in response to\u00a0a writer who\u00a0commented how disappointed she was that the well known magazine\u00a0 Quilting Arts<\/span><\/a>\u00a0was so heavily technique\u00a0and specific project\u00a0focused (materials, patterns, instructions)\u00a0rather than on the ‘art’ inspiration, design concepts,\u00a0etc implied in\u00a0its title.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not a subscriber, but \u00a0from time to time when visiting the USA I have picked up a current copy to see what’s going on there, and\u00a0have always known \u00a0it is not a magazine for me to take regularly.\u00a0 However, it suits a lot of people, and so I went to the website Quilting Arts<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and found this\u00a0mission statement:\u00a0“Welcome to the online community just for comtemporary quilters.”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 That seems fine to me – the magazine lives up to the expectations of the many contemporary quiltmakers who for various reasons are making quilts not\u00a0only in traditional styles but branching out into other ways of working, some\u00a0of which depend on modern technology, digital and mechanical.\u00a0 Many of the articles are ‘how to’ use these new techniques.<\/p>\n

The Quiltart<\/span><\/a>\u00a0list\u00a0is “an internet mailing list … for contemporary art quilters – as a means for those interested in innovative contemporary art quilting to share learn and grow”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With around 3000 members,\u00a0 naturally they represent the full spectrum of quilters from\u00a0careful skilled technicians to exhuberant but possibly not technically gifted makers, \u00a0and everything in between.\u00a0 As someone said, if Quilting Arts magazine is not for you, don’t read it – and the same can be said for the books, videos and tv programmes that the quilting industry makes available for people to follow and learn from current trends in this particular area of quilting.<\/p>\n

So there’s a lot of hot air exercised over the ‘art’ in quilt making – and those of us who aren’t too fazed about this just get on with what we’re going to do, anyway!\u00a0 But in all the hooha expressed this week, one of the silliest, vaccuous, reasons I read of why someone declared she was a proud subscriber of this magazine was\u00a0 something along the lines of her rarely if ever actually reading her copy, but she continues her subscription as ‘an expression of\u00a0\u00a0support’ .\u00a0 Ye gods, with sentimental emotive claptrap like that flying around, I think the magazine and others like it have a good future – quilters as a group are very sentimental. \u00a0\u00a0 But, seriously the magazine is a good one if you are wanting to learn some of the popular techniques being used in contemporary\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0 ‘how to’ publications.\u00a0 I predict as long as quiltmaking thrives, so will magazines like it.\u00a0 While the makers will stick with the innovative project articles, which do after all sell,\u00a0more mature artists\u00a0will probably drop such publications altogether as their vision grows –\u00a0their\u00a0need for technical information diminishes, and their works increasingly depend on\u00a0 exploration, observation and reflection of the world around them.\u00a0 Rather than read about what others are doing,\u00a0 people who want to make\u00a0make art will find\u00a0some way to get the effect they want or need if it is really important to what they want to achieve.<\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT:<\/p>\n

This discussion is settling down, and magazines such as Quilting Arts\u00a0are part of the Quilting Industry in just the same way as quilt shops,\u00a0pattern designers, assemblers of kits, people who design gadgets and tools to make the job of the\u00a0 modern quilter easier, writers of articles and people who demonstrate and teach, historians, valuers, judges, fabric designers and manufacturers, event organisers, and many more.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, all these people\u00a0tend to have detractors from within the\u00a0Dedicated\u00a0Traditionalists Group\u00a0– (by which I mean those who proudly declare they only ever<\/em> piece by hand, and then make a delicate little sniffing sound to\u00a0confirm their purist statements, LOL, as if anyone gives a hoot!)\u00a0\u00a0 The point is, there is room for all of them in the Quilting Industry.<\/p>\n

Now, the Quilting Industry and all that goes on there is not necessarily anything to do with Art.\u00a0 It can be of course, but isn’t necessarily.\u00a0 Because of the traditional crafts background from which many modern quilt makers have come to the more innovative even artistically inspired quilted textile works, many\u00a0motivated art quilters \u00a0still have angst separating, cutting the apron strings if you like, from\u00a0ties\u00a0that bind\u00a0them to their traditional background.\u00a0 If you want to make textile art, it can even be an advantage if you don’t have any quilting heritage at all\u00a0in your background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For several days now, debate has ranged back and forth on the Quiltart list in response to\u00a0a writer who\u00a0commented how disappointed she was that the well known magazine\u00a0 Quilting Arts\u00a0was so heavily technique\u00a0and specific project\u00a0focused (materials, patterns, instructions)\u00a0rather than on the ‘art’ inspiration, design concepts,\u00a0etc implied in\u00a0its title.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not a subscriber, but \u00a0from time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-jr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}