Just Thinking, recently won the Janome Prize for Innovation in Artistry​ at the 2021 International Quilt Festival. and will now be touring with the Festival until late 2022. This was a great honor and a validation of a piece where my goal was innovation in both technique and subject. 

​A short interview I did with the festival about this quilt can be found on my PROCESS AND VIDEOS page.

I had several other quilts in the show as well. Here are those:

.At the 2021 Quilt National Biennial Show., 6" of Chaos won the Award of Excellence from the International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska. This award was a purchase awar, and my quilt will now be part of their permanent collection.

It was a majow honor and surprise to get this award, and the weekend spent there was lovely. Just to see old friends and make new ones, and talk fiber art all weekend.

See my Process and Video section for the interview about this quilt.

 I am continuing to click away with my camera in answer to the "challenges" given in the photography plass I am taking. This week we are photographing ROADS. I actually have thought about it a lot since moving to Virginia. I grew up with the roads with wide shoulders in the Midwest. Even the country roads have large right-of-way gravel areas on both side for emergency parking, snow piles, and, in my case, photography or plein air paining. But here in Virginny, it seems that if you want to stop at the side of a road there is always a major ditch, hedge, trees, or fencing. There are very few turn-offs that are not private property. This is a shame, because there is also breathtakingly beautiful hills, horseland pastures, mountain views, undulating fence rows of all ages, and old homesteads to be seen. 
I decided to try anyway. I turned off the main road onto this little road, and the view was wonderful. However it was a one lane road with no shoulders! I opened my door, and quickly took this shot then had to back up to let these cars go past. Here are a few "altrnative" roads shots I took:

Photogs love that hour before sunset and the hour after dawn. The light is frequently bathed in gold. Sometimes pink or orange, and an hour later a beautiful dark and silky blue. It is those times of day that everything appears serene and special - even a construction trailer or a trash filled underpass.  Hope you enjoy these.

But of  course I did take my camera. It helps me meander. Photography stops me in my tracks to notice. Here are some of the things I noticed.

I do not read much poetry. I remember virtually none. But somewhere in my head there is one poem, heard in my teenage years, that is always with me. Back then, I found it touched my soul, and I still find that "oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood" this poem and days like today come to mind.
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I took these two photos to show that "street" isn't always "faces". I shoot people from the back often. These two young women were just delightful, and this shot portrayed their movement and closeness much better than the one I took from the front. On the right photo, I was watching the humans interact, when I finally noticed how the canines were interacting. Their "conversation" was more interesting than the human one!

I took about 25 pictures of this couple. I couldn't hear a word they were saying, but it was evident they were totally enthralled with each other and in their own world. If I were a writer I would have written a short story about them. These photos are almost more portrait than "street". I really lucked out on the lighting and with the dark bar behind her face that really added contrast. I am including more of these shots below because they are just too fun. The center one is when a little girl outside the coffee shop also spied them and knocked on the window to wave!

This last photo is also at the coffee shop; And while the couple was animated, this person was serene and solo.

These are the two photos that went together to make the above photo.

here are a few of my older photos that I also think portray "abandon" well.

Recently I posted this photo of a pepper on Facebook. It was sitting on the counter after Jon had finished making our salads... just sitting there staring at me. Yes, I am familiar with the phenomena of pareidolia, but I just found this humorous. 

When I posted this, one of the comments that appeared was "You see art in everything". That statement took me back for a moment and made me think for a couple of days. Yes. Yes, I do see art in everything. It takes my breath away when I look around. I am amazed that that a brick and weed and the sun light can compose the perfect still life. I think the cigarette butt on the sidewalk is both a statement and a story - as well as an interesting composition.  I am easily amused and impressed. The edge of that brick building against that blue sky is the perfection of complementary color.  The fog that shrouds that parking structure, while letting the dried weed be in extreme focus, is more than I can comprehend replicating.

On the way home from my studio tonight, I saw this image in a bank drive through. Eat your heart out all you abstract expressionists.  Frame it, put it in the east wing of the National Gallery and let the critics opine. 

They can write a missive on the tension between the lines vs the splashes, the contrast of the darks and lights. The significance of the shapes, or maybe they would discourse over the need for a pop of color. They would check the title for political or social significance. And contextualize it based on the culture from which the artist came. 

Was it art before or does it take validation or reproduction to be so?

As I thought more about this, I thought about the very real discomfort I feel when some says, or asks if, I am an artist. Okay. Whatever. If I need to be qualified or quantified, you can call me that.

But, as I have said before, I prefer "maker". I make stuff. It wasn't there. It didn't exist and I birthed it.  I used my intellect, my heart and, occasionally, serendipity to do so. I made it. 

As I thought more about this, I decided that, perhaps, the real aim of an "artist" is not the product they make, but the continued attempt to make others see the art that already exists around us.  I make for my own sake. Maybe we are - or should be - translators. I do believe people called artists see and appreciate differently; just as scientists, or mathematicians, or musicians, or chefs view their world differently.  Then we attempt to use our human talents, venues, media, and connections to try to get others to see what and how we saw (or tasted or figured). It is how we write. It is how we solve equations. It is how we bake. 

Some of this we learn through academics. We spend hours and years in drawing classes not drawing the cube we know exists, but instead, the cube as we see it. Then we move to foreshortening in life drawing and still life compositions where we talk about the space between not just the objects. We learn to see with our eyes, not our head. Once we can do that, we start to understand how what we see exists for only a moment: a tilt of the head or the cloud momentarily over the sun can change the reality. How our specific moment and object of focus is a reality that no one else experiences in the same way.

We are constantly saying "CAN'T YOU SEE THIS TOO?"  and "OH YOU MUST SEE THIS". The landscape painter tries to capture and explain the moment of clarity they had when looking out on nature. The portrait artist doesn't paint just the resemblance, but the inner person as they saw or felt it. The photographer captures a moment that perhaps only they had the acumen/patience/luck to witness. The abstracters capture essence or movement or the core of something that needs no subject. 

I have been asked to give workshops, or presented with other opportunities. That is also something I tried a couple times, but haven’t gotten my head around. When I was a Graphic Designer, I also taught. I taught design concepts, color theory, printing processes, etc. the nuts and bolts. When I was making sweaters, I was fine with sharing my technical knowledge about how to serge knitted fabrics, or my process. It was not proprietary and the construction was, in many ways, the idea of it all. It had no internal value to me. That was all knowledge I gladly shared without any problem.

But now? What would I share? I use my design concepts, etc. but that is not what makes my work unique, nor my expertise any greater than many. I use a machine and various cutting and sewing processes, but that is not my interest or focus, they are merely a means to an end. I don’t even know what brand thread I use (or should use!). My process is “whatever it takes”!

How would I convey that intimate sound my heart makes when I know something is right. How do I explain that shiver that goes up my spine when the right stitch makes the right texture. How do I communicate how after looking at twenty five of my photos, that one says “I am the one you need”. That is all good and fine, and I am loving that is what I am able to do now - with little thought to profit or demographic appeal, but in many ways, it is very ego-centric and almost art masturbation. But it can be seen for some reason, as some higher level of art, but I don’t think it is.

Yesterday this girl came into my studio. At the gift giving season, I revert to the selling mode of my garment making days and make some earrings, gloves, and this year, holiday themed masks! The girl looked at my table of goods and picked out a soft cashmere pair of gloves. She didn’t care about the “fine art” hanging in my studio, she wanted those gloves in her life. She got them. I can honestly say that no one who has bought any of my “fine art” ever has expressed the pure joy of having it in their life, that she did for these gloves. Isn’t that art?

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After the fabric is returned with the photo printed on it, I start to add the layers of additional colors and textures. I have used some of the same techniques I show on the DEMONSTRATION page, but also some additional ones that are unique to this piece. Below are some detail shots and information about the process(es) used in that area.

I have been waiting for today. This is notification day for the Quilt National show. This show is held ever two years, and the show host a variety of contemporary and international art quilts. As with all juried shows, the exhibit slants differently every year, due to the subjective nature of jurying. I have no doubt that each jurist tries their hardest to be fair and that is appreciated, but when compiling a "best of" grouping, it is impossible not to have your own opinions. I say this to recognize the difficulty of being a jurist (I have done so in the advertising world, so I empathize), to console the  makers of pieces that may not have been juried in, and to explain my anticipation for the day, because it is always an unknown.

I submitted three pieces to the judging. The first  one "Dystopia in the time of Covid" (34wx60h) is based on the "doom and gloom" of the dystopia that is 2020. The dog toy is an image that I had, and the first time I saw a picture of the virus, that is exactly what I thought it looked like. The collage image is printed on chiffon, and behind the chiffon is  a grid made from the remnants of the masks I made for the protection of family and friends.

The second piece I submitted was this self portrait, "Just Thinking" (50wx36h). The background of this one is woven fabrics, and the weaving blends into the image via some painting and the stitching. The image itself was printed black and white on a linen-like canvas. It was then hand 'colorized' with fabric paint.

The third piece, "6' of Chaos" (52wx36h) is also influenced by the Covid world we are all now a part of. Our world seems a bit surreal right now, and I wanted to make this piece feel that way. It is a combination of three photos, with stenciled figures and paint as well as layers of fabric, yarns and stitching. It was my hope that this is the one that would be chosen if I was successful with my entry. I tried so many processes to get the textures and images I wanted. I thought the concept was strong, and the quilt techniques were unique in their use, if not their process!

Happily the judges agreed. This will be appearing in the 2021 Quilt National next June through September in Athens, Ohio at the Dairy Barn. Tomorrow, I will write another blog entry about the processes I used to make this one. So if you want to know more, stay tuned!

*"Fat envelope is a carry over from when you were notified be snail mail, not email. The "skinny envelope" contained only a rejection letter, while the "fat envelope" contained the acceptance, show information, and contracts.