Art and Quilts, cogitations thereon

New QU class starts Friday

2013-06-11T06:39:00.001-07:00

My next Working in Series class starts at Quiltuniversity.com on Friday - there's time to sign up for it until Saturday!
This is an interesting class because when I was devising it, it struck me that few online classes really utilize the strengths of doing a class with many international students and on line. (I'm taking an on line class myself and it's just not exploiting the really distinctive aspects of this kind of teaching situation). So I began cogitating (as is my wont!) in order to figure out how could I do this differently?
In a real class, I take considerable advantage of the fact that we're in a room together. I can sit right down next to someone, just one on one, and really discuss their issues with art. While permitting as much kibbitzing as people want, I do try to make the situation a very intimate one.
So it has been a very interesting challenge to work in a totally different situation through the ether! I can't talk to folk very personally and intimately - watching their body language to see how they're responding to me...but I can, and do, take huge advantage of the fact that the quilt university classes are 6 or 7 weeks in length and that we have the resources between us of just about all the art and science and knowledge in the world!

Here are some images of a series I worked on some years ago: it was called Idea of a City:

Now I don't expect the people in the class will be able to make such a series in 7 weeks! After all it took me about 3 months for each one of these - they're all 60" square and all have home dyed, screen printed and arashi and godknowswot surface design ideas on them. The "river" strip at the bottom of the one above has 3 entirely different surface design technique and took some doing!! However I do feel that they should be able to have a well researched and thought out Plan for such a series and have made a good start on the first one.
If you have any questions about the class - you're welcome to email me (there's a link at the top right of the page) or ask in the Comments. Also if you're interested in purchasing my book Inspired to Design directly from me, autographed and dedicated to you! please email me for details. One of these days I'll get around to one of those yellow "Pay Now" thingies! but I havn't got that yet! I'm also doing a book on Working in Series, a much expanded version of the class with lots and lots of luscious photos of not only my series, but other folks and it will be out in time for a nice Christmas present!
And, if you have been, thanks for reading.....Elizabeth

Adding meaning to your work.

2013-06-04T08:19:00.001-07:00

Rothko: "There is no such thing as good painting about nothing".

Walter de Maria: "Every work of art should have at least ten different meanings".

Lori McNee: "Utilize historical works. or nostalgia for things lost. to help you create artwork that is meaningful" to others.

Recently (at Quilt National) I noticed that several quilts were awarded prizes because their content was very meaningful to the prize giver; a quilt with photographs of miners was given a prize because it reminded the prize giver of a relative who used to work in the mines. Collectors buy work that is meaningful to them, work whose content in some way reminds them of a person or place or experience they loved.

Meaning is important, and where there is none people will look for it. After all, don't they say that we're all looking for the "meaning"?!! I'm reminded of the lines from Alan Bennet: "Life is like a sardine can, we're all of us looking for the key"! (the whole video is fun, but the sardine tin (can) starts at 5.34).

Here's another link if the first one doesn't work for you.

The key to making meaningful work is to make it about something that really inspires you, something you know intimately - whose sights, sounds and smells come back to you constantly, whose colors and textures fascinate you. Many painters have made work like this: think about Marc Chagall's paintings which always reference the village he left long ago. John Marin's sea paintings, and Wyeth's series about Helga.

Many of my early quilts were about my home town, York, UK. Not York as it is today, but the York I remembered from my school days. I always loved to walk and would go across town a couple of miles, to and from school, every day taking a different route.

Lendal Bridge

Along the bar walls, erected by the Romans around AD 43, over the bridge over the River Ouse with the Minster towering in the distance..


Shambles

sometimes I went through the medieval streets, twisting and winding with cantilevered, exposed beam

houses..

Cathedral

and always the Minster, silvery grey beyond the little clustering houses...

My grandfather, too, was a miner and I remember the old winding wheels - and all the coal dust everywhere - from my very early childhood -

Colliery

of course to me the wheel was a matter of wonderment - I even liked the old gasworks! though I've never made a quilt of them (it's an idea though!)....I didn't realise that the winding wheel was truly a wheel of fortune, both good and bad.

I've seen the same phenomenon of the importance of meaning with the watercolors too - people want to buy them when they're of places or people they know personally and if you can convey your passion about the image with every shape and line and stitch, your work will glow.

And...if you have been...thanks for reading! Do hope you enjoyed Alan Bennett, one of the great playwrights and actors of our time. And there's loads more You Tube vids of him!

Elizabeth

Report from Quilt National '13

2013-05-28T09:03:00.001-07:00

Legacy

Just got back from my fifth Quilt National! What a wonderful quilt show this is...or perhaps I should say art show - for many of the pieces shown there would be equally at home in any fine art gallery. 85 quilts were chosen from 851 entries. Rather fewer entries than previous years: 2011 (1000+), 2009 (1000+), 2007 (1151). I wonder if this is because several well known art quilt makers, stalwarts of many shows, are now too famous, or too old to be bothered entering? There's a whole new slew of folk coming along, but finding the time and money for art gets harder for younger people every year.
Of the 85 quilts, I thought 33 were absolutely stunning and very inspirational, and of course there were some that were clever or very attractive, and some you wondered about! Alas, the jurying for prizes was also done by photographs and not from the real thing which I feel is a disservice to both the medium and the artists. I know if I asked they would say: Oh we have to do that so we can record the prize winners in the catalogue...BUT BUT why is having the listing in the catalogue So important? You could easily have on the last page information to a website page where the prize winners are listed. Plus it would be really fun to choose those whom you thought should have got a prize - and then go to the website to find out whom the jurors chose.

The catalogue by the way is very well done; published this year by Dragon Threads instead of Lark Books, and is available on the QN website. Since you can see the full pictures there of all the quilts - but very few details, I'll show you some details and some of the people who were at the opening!

The quilt at the top is mine - one of my industrial quilt series but the emphasis here is very much on what we're doing to our environment. Can you see the little boy (life size) crouched beneath the oil derrick? The weight of our demands for huge amounts of cheap energy is on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

Exploitation of the environment was a theme addressed by several quilts in this show, also other major issues like child abuse and Alzheimer's. May our voices be heard! And, thankfully, many artists made work about beauty - both obvious and hidden, loud and quiet!

One of my favorite pieces was Gabriel by Anne Smith of Cheshire, UK. I don't know anything about Anne but she has a wonderful sense of humour: "Gabriel has a job to do - he is a messenger - but what does he do on his days off from serious work? What does he wear?"

This is just a detail of the entire quilt - which you can see on her website too...an amazing piece with lots of fascinating sections...love his feet in sneakers (I mean what else does an angel wear on his day off?) dangling off the quilt.

Here's a detail of Deidre Adam's quilt:

and Deidre standing in front of it!

a detail of Luanne Rimel's heavily stitched piece - masses and masses of beautiful stitch texture:

a detail of Marianne Burr's amazing piece...look at all that embroidery!! Marianne says that she was an embroiderer first...then learned about art quilts. Her quilt is also the cover of the book.

And here's an overall view of the first hour or so before the hordes came in and it was packed out! Yes that's Del Thomas in the middle but I'm not sure of the other folk!

Dear Patty Hawkins by her lovely Colorado quilt.

Another beautiful stitching detail - this time from Judith Plotner's work...as you can see it also has a very irregular edge.

And finally my dear friend Robin Schwalb making a beautiful come hither Kitty face for me!!!

Do buy the book to see all the quilts in full and do consider entering yourself next time!! Deadline for entries will be sometime in September next year...start designing now!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading!
Elizabeth

Working with Photographs

2013-05-21T09:37:00.001-07:00

Apologies for not blogging last week - I was having too much fun staying with a group of friends on Jekyll Island, GA. Jekyll is a state park and although "they" are always nibbling away at its natural landscape with various "developments" aimed at the top 1%, much of the island is unspoiled. Some of the beaches have been voted "most romantic" and are used for weddings: I came across a wonderful "sculpture": an empty beach with two rows of perfect white chairs! Facing towards the sea...I thought it was a comment on how little attention society is paying towards the environment, but was told: " no...it's a wedding".

Of course we took lots of photos which will be used for both memories and inspiration. Not all photos are good inspiration for all mediums, however. Take a look at these two:

This would be quite difficult to make into a quilt because art quilt designs based directly on photographs are really fiber collage. And collage is is the process of sticking shapes together.
Now it does work okay for a watercolor, because it's quite easy to use line as well as shape in a watercolor:

I've isolated one tree, added color and value and put the ocean in as a back ground...

Let's take a look at a different photograph:

one in which there are distinct shapes:

Now this is a candidate for both a watercolor and a quilt design.

First step is to crop and desaturate.

And the next step is a quick sketch:

and then the painting:

and I've not yet made the quilt...(I've promised myself an abstract year!) but as you can see from the sketch there are clear big shapes and it would be a fun piece - next January!

I feel that when you're choosing a photograph from which to make a design for an art quilt, you need to look for good shapes that bear some relation to each other (unity) but are not identical (variety). Furthermore, I really like it when the image tells a story. Here are Marti and Heidi enjoying a bit of wave watching (I could tell because of the gentle snoring!!) and it brings back for me a lovely quiet day by the ocean.

So, if you have been, thanks for reading! And for anyone going to the Quilt National '13 at Athens, Ohio - I'll see you there!! Look for the tall gangly bird with short blonde spikey hair!!

Elizabeth

Sensation and Sensibility

2013-05-07T07:54:00.002-07:00

I keep thinking about something the curator from the Museum of Art and Design said when he was jurying the last Art Quilt Elements show. He was disappointed that there weren't any quilts using contemporary art ideas: video, electronics, synthesizers, installation devices, things that look like quilts but arn't made from cloth and vice versa!

Jeff Koons

Dogs made from balloons recreated in metal and blown up to giant size, strange materials like elephant dung.

I mean have you ever tried to sew elephant dung to cloth?
though it looks like somebody has managed to make shoes from it!!

Looking at the most recent Art in America magazines I can see where these ideas are coming from; there's hardly any straightforward painting represented in the articles - though plenty in the adverts! It's a bit like the fashion magazines that you buy to look at the advertized clothes rather than the peculiar arrangements of cloth on immensely tall, anorexic, terminally depressive models in postures designed to dislocate half the joints in your body.

Articles in art magazines and jurors from the art world are avant avant garde - they want to see something new, however awkward and unsustainable. But most art is there to add beauty and meaning to our lives and I'm sad that many contemporary artists seem to have forgotten that. There seems to be a real dichotomy between the two kinds of work. With a few exceptions, though, I really think that work that shows Truth and Beauty (yes, those currently unfashionable qualities!) will be that which will stand the test of time.

Where Bong Trees Grow

Meanwhile we have a choice! If you want to be provocative and catch the juror's eye, then start attaching the wires right now! If you want to show the world the beauty of the stitch, the cloth and the marks made by the maker's hand on the cloth then you might not get into some shows, but in the long run I think you'll be more satisfied by what you've made.

I'd love to hear from you if you disagree with me!! It's also very good if you don't! Opinions please!

Meanwhile I'm gearing up for a new Inspired to Design course which starts with Quilt University this Friday; there's time to sign up until Friday or even Saturday if you've thought about doing it. This is the workshop that goes with my new book also called Inspired to Design and available from me (signed, dedicated) or from Amazon or your local quilt store. Taking the workshop would support you working through the processes and I would give you as much feedback as you wanted on both your designs and your quilts. Might even figure out what to do with that elephant dung!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

Networking and marketing

2013-05-01T05:54:00.001-07:00

Lighthouse, Mull

Like many artists, I really enjoy the creative process and hate the networking and marketing aspects of our trade. I hated it in my previous life as a clinical psychologist too! However, with psychology you can't really share what you're doing with the public at large - and you can with Art. Last Friday, we had an art fair in town. I organized it with two other folk; we're all very different so it worked really well. I'm a big picture person and somewhat impulsive, the other two are detail people and very thoughtful and cautious! A nice balance.

It was, perhaps not surprisingly, difficult to persuade some of the artists to even show their work and communicate with the public but once they got into it they loved it. You get a great jolt of energy (much better than those horrid drinks!) from having Real People, the wandering through public, exclaim with pleasure upon seeing your work. The praise, however gentle, does lead to renewed energy when back in the studio. It also helps you to see your work with different eyes - what did people respond to the most, what resonated the most. Which art work did they spend time over, relating it to their own life experience?

Iona in watercolor

Several people remarked to me with surprise that they had made big sales - to friends. They wondered why those friends hadn't bought from them before. But there's something about a fair; it's hard to go to a friend's house with the intention of purchasing something. There's a lot of pressure - you feel you don't want to insult them if you don't see the perfect thing and it's all very awkward. Whereas in a public setting like a fair, all the artwork is well displayed, you can look at it and walk around the fair while thinking about it. You've got more time and space and the pressure is off.

Iona, in fabric

It's said that you need to see something seven times before making a big purchase. At a fair many people see your work, nothing may happen that day, but then later as the person recalls your work, looks you up on the internet..gazes at the empty wall in their house that would look good with a special piece of art...then gradually they may realize that they have to have it! A phone call is made.... As an artist who sells their work, I want a person to take their time and be really sure before they buy anything; I hate the thought that they'd come down with a case of Buyer's Remorsitis! so I'm always thrilled to get the phone call or email several days after the fair: "I've been thinking about that piece I saw....". Music!

Well...back to work! And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth
I'd love to hear about your experiences with networking and marketing....

Changes ahead in my online classes

2013-04-23T12:04:00.002-07:00

Back from hiking in the Smokies...
a gorgeous day to walk in the Pisgah forest and visit Looking Glass Falls, NC

......but now and back to business...

Alas, Quilt University will be no more after this year..December will mark its end.

My three different workshops, Inspired to Design, Working in Series and Dyeing to Design, are all scheduled to run through to December. A new course will start each month with enrollment opening about 6 weeks prior to that.

These are the starting dates:

5/10 Inspired to Design
6/14 Working in Series

7/19 Dyeing to Design

8/23 Inspired to Design

9/20 Working in Series

so if you've been dithering about joining up! or repeating a class you enjoyed, then now is the time!

There are so many things I have loved about QU:

The daily - often hourly! - contact with students all around the world

the fact that words are the main vehicle of communication, rather than short bursts of video - words that I put together slowly over several months when writing the lessons - together with lots of photos of course!

And the words as I answer each student's questions and comments through the course of the day.
I like being able to think about things.
I don't want to plan a tight script then act it out on video like those awful fake "reality" shows!
I like the spontaneity of the give and take in the Discussion Forum.

I really liked working for the Millers - a creative team.
Personal contact, very hands on and individual and committed to QU.

I have looked into some commercial online teaching but, for me, they are just that: very commercial. Huge organizations with organizational structures etc etc....I quit my "other" job to get away from all that!!

so if anyone has any ideas to suggest - an organization similar to QU, or a way to do it myself that doesn't require me to be an IT expert!! then I'd be most grateful! Or if someone has ambitions to run something like QU......I don't know if Roger Miller is selling the business but he can be contacted at dean@quiltuniversity.com
A big thank you to everyone who has, is or will be taking a class with me!! It's been a great three years.
Elizabeth

PS - my book is out! Inspired to Design, 7 steps to successful quilts. If you email me I can tell you how to obtain an autographed, dedicated copy directly from me - or support your local quilt store and ask them to stock it (it's published by C&T), or there is that online company.....
and, if you have been, thank you for reading!

Florida Workshop

2013-04-18T12:49:00.003-07:00

Just got back from a really nice workshop in Florida - I was blessed with a most gracious hostess and so was able to see something of the area from both land and water - absolutely gorgeous as you can see.

Since I teach design workshops, everybody comes up with a different idea and it's so much fun seeing those ideas flower around me! Of course there isn't a whole lot one can achieve in fabric in a short workshop, but nearly everyone left the workshop with a sheaf of designs - enough for a whole series.

We discussed the why when what and how of a series and then they designed and designed and designed - and nobody complained about working with pencil and paper! all the art books I've read say that once you have a good strong design 80% of the work is done....the rest is just flow..... This is just the beginning of Kimberly's design which was quite large...there will be many more of the "god's eye" shape...Kimberly also makes dolls

and clothing - didn't get a picture of the latter though - however she had a different really interesting outfit on every day made from embroidered tablecloths. A great idea...you often see them in garage sales and they're usually made from beautiful soft drapey linen. I'm going to steal that idea, Kimberly!

Susan is a scuba diver and her series of pieces are going to be about the sensations felt as you enter the water - this (again) is just the beginning but already you get the feeling of the water...

Arlene derived her series from the architecture of the spacious church hall in which we had the workshop - a really great room with windows down both sides and an outside patio for lunch! Can't do better than this. Again she had many designs and this is just the first 10% of the very first one....I think they will really convey the sense of windows and space and also are reminiscent of many views of windows and fire escapes from her early life in NYC. I really feel that it is the early shapes and lines that stick with us the most. I was raised in an old city (Roman, from about 56AD) and those early visual memories are strong and come out in much of my work.

Carol has a joyous sense of colour and loves circles...surrounding a color with its complementary makes it really glow as you can see here (on the left). Below are Glenda's value sketches for her portrait of a jazz singer. It's important to place the highest value contrast in the focal area of a piece.

Lenore was working on two tree scenes at once - you can build a series sequentially or simultaneously or a combination of the two, whatever works best for you. Isn't this little piece so elegant? The tree as dancer.

Christine loves garlic! She envisages a whole series based on this wonderful vegetable. A great idea, and a unique one. Jurors love seeing something quite different as I learned yesterday when I picked up my First Place award from a local art show - yes a quilt beat out all the paintings and photographs!! Fiber is Now. The subject of my quilt was something unexpected and that's a way to grab attention. I hope Christine finishes her wonderful garlic series...as you can see she has gridded her small sketch in order to be able to determine the size and shape of each piece of fabric.

Jan is enamoured of the beautiful patterns you see on moths..so much more subtle and intricate that butterflies....I think this is going to be such a delicate and intriguing series.

And Pinky is the Heron Lady...this is the first one of herons at different times of day...when you make a series about a bird, it's important to narrow the topic down. There are so many different possibilities for a bird series and the quilts will work together so much better if there are other common themes.

Roberta was working on developing different structures for a series of abstract quilts...this one is harmonious but not boring, balanced but not too symmetrical. It has great rhythms and some depth - all you could ask for!

Pam had several different ideas, all connected to the water in one way or another...this is the beginning of an abstract sailboat piece - when sewn together the yellow lines will be much skinnier of course. I really like the way it references the sail boat against a stormy sky without spelling it out.

Ellen completed one block in a complex abstract design and was already started on the next one...she picked green for her dominant color. it's always helpful to have one dominant color for a quilt, that really helps to pull a piece together. isn't this a fascinating block? With pencil and paper and a little time we can draw out so many better ideas than you could find in any magazine! Try it!!

Joy came up with a very different inspiration - a favorite old car..she's taken just a part of the car and made large and small blocks, rotating the small ones around the large...I love the sense of movement this creates.

so a really great week...with plenty of cogitation upon the view at the top of this blog...with a beer of course!! So, if you have been, thanks for reading!!
Elizabeth
PS my new book Inspired to Design is now available....you'll find it at your favorite quilt store, or write me if you'd like an autographed copy. There's an email link at the top right of this blog, or you can reach me at elizabethyork100atyahoo.com

Checking out the MFA exit show

2013-04-09T08:35:00.001-07:00

I love to go and see MFA exit shows - see what the young folk are getting up to! Are any of them using fiber, and, if so, in any innovative way? It's great to see energy in art work, unabashed vigor, boldness (to the point of leaping of cliffs!) and freshness. Of course there is always plenty of angst too! I remember one workshop I taught where half the class were young scholarship students instead of a full class of mature ladies - and I thought oh great! there'll be energy and unbridled excitement! Well the excitement was pretty much all in the mature ladies, and the young folk were full of agony and self involvement. Of course that was just a couple of weeks and the MFA students have a couple of years and several professors to encourage them to look outward.

The local art museum where the show is held has had a multi-million dollar expansion in the last couple of years and is really a fun place to visit with a lot to see - and Art is for Everyone!

There were a lot of paintings and nothing was subdued or timid about them! Christine Roman's fabric (scraps from family clothing) and
paint collages are complex and exciting. She describes them as joyful with menacing overtones! Variety and tension! She considers people capable of both cruelty and compassion and with a mixture of structure (she writes about a grid underlying the composition) and intuition hopes to reveal it.

The circular motifs occur throughout the piece in lots of different sizes and contrast with the strange black beetley things...the whole parcel is wrapped up with the skinny black lines. She conveys joy well with the lifting up feeling created by the large balloon shape, but you're definitely aware of the black beyond!

Stacey Elder's work has a similar appearance to Roman's - perhaps they worked side by side? I don't see that happening in the week long workshops I teach, but two years in the same program must inevitably lead to some connectiveness. I read all the time abut how artists influence each other greatly - I wish as art quilters we all had the amount of time, opportunity and energy these graduate students have!! Of course - without the angst! No more sturm und drang!
Stacey describes her work as a fun and spontaneous abstraction - but she also has the same dark space beyond and we're carefully led towards it - with towering cliffs around us! She states that "stacks of fabric generate the repetition of pattern and color" but I'm not sure if these fabrics are literally stacked onto the painting as a collage (though one can see some polka dots in the top left hand corner), or were more of an inspiration. As she layers on the fabric and the paint she aims towards an organized composition at each point in her additive process. She feels that in this way the final result will be balanced and resolved..

Onto the next gallery! and there I found more fibre. Two quilts made by Mae Ling Cann from North Carolina. (sorry I cannot persuade blogger to line them up!)Cann feels that the "traditions of heritage quilts bring to light questions of personal heritage in contrast to popular history and the irreconcilable differences that can exist between the two". I read this statement several times and still could not grasp the meaning! The quilts are very powerful (though would have been more powerful had they had traditional craftsmanship - surely an art education should encourage Technique as well as content?) Also I didn't see how the images referred to the artist statement. However I did appreciate the shock value and the sense of getting into bed with the enemy, accepting bigotry and repression as a cozy bed partner. There are many metaphorical layers of meaning that you could read into the images. I don't remember exactly what the words on the headboards said, I remember feeling they were unnecessary and were better edited out.

.

Jamie Bull's Lady Beasts dominate the last gallery. They are intended to exude power, sexuality and aggression, warning those who would limit the feminine perspective!
( I included the guard so you can see how huge these beasts are!

Like Roman, Jamie also intends to dazzle and delight while at the same time projecting a subversive element - watch out!! These are truly beasts!
Overall a great show!! and there were other pieces too well deserving of study - but not so connected with fiber. I did wonder if these pieces would be juried into Quilt National - I do think it's time we shook up some of the old conceptions!! what do you think?
And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

PS - the head board close up explains the dualistic nature of the swastika symbol:

It's very frustrating but my images keep uploading sideways - if anyone know how to alter orientation in blogger - I can't find it on any menu - I'd be most grateful. It took me repeating and repeating all the images this morning to get them eventually suddenly inexplicably! to orient in the correct way. Apologies if you get a crick in your neck!

Playing Card art challenge...the process of making the piece

2013-04-02T13:05:00.002-07:00

I know that Sue Pierce pretty much did all you could do with quilts and playing cards with her wonderful Full Deck show....but when our local alternative gallery, Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA) had the same idea and asked 53 local artists of all media to make a playing card piece, I couldn't resist the challenge. I hadn't known Sue when she chose her artists (sadly! I asked her later why she hadn't asked me - she said "but I didn't know you Elizabeth"!! yes it's all in whom you know! ) However, since ATHICA does know me (they currently have two large industrial landscape quilts I made on show), I was asked this time around.
I chose the 4 of Diamonds and this is my preliminary sketch, I'd had the house sketch on the "inspiration" wall for about 3 years!! and though it had the nice graphic quality I wanted for the playing card, plus with houses there were opportunities for diamond shaped windows!

I wanted to use playing card "colors": blue, gold, black, red and white....so tried at first putting in the values this way....the gold at the back really leapt forward and was very confusing, ..so I had several more goes and finally settled on the one below.

I picked out my fabric, decided on the size of the piece - as you can see 1" on the sketch = 3" in real life...this would bring it to about 18 x 30.....
we had to make the art piece to certain proportions that would reduce to a playing card size - and yes there are going to be decks available. alas this is the second opening I will miss this spring!! so I sure hope somebody save a deck for me!!
I thought the four diamond windows would be the first thing I should make:


3

Then I placed a piece of white fabric on the design wall for the background and began to add the shapes working from back to front....


	4

As you can see I mark out the four edges of the quilt first with long strings of fabric...the side ones are weighted so they hang straight. Adding a few more....

It's good to stand back and look at the piece properly every few additions just as a painter does...didn't like that dark red in the middle when I stood back, warm colors advance...so changed it to blue.

also I wanted to soften the very bold effect of the gold fabric and break up that huge shape a little, so added more sections on top.

It's beginning to have character ...a nice clean look..but perhaps the black to the left of the large blue grey house is too strong...trying a slightly lighter value...

Now connecting the two sides with more of the same tone, I want this to work as a whole...I'm also eginning to add some secondary diamond shapes here and there, but not red!

Putting in the foreground color...I sketched it a dark value because I want to have the 4 of diamonds emblem dark over light on top and light over dark on the bottom..

Got the diamonds in place, not sure abut the other non-diamond windows...so moved those of until I had the basic shapes sewn together...

Sewing the top together, then reviewed it and decided to continue the diamond theme - both with the other windows which are all either actual diamonds or sections of diamonds. then I thought about adding the trees and realised adding more different shapes would simply take away from what I had, so I left the tree idea for another day - and probably a bigger quilt. I quilted it in red with diamonds - all over! Here's the finished piece:

As you can see I also added extra diamonds to the other two corners....I did this to help balance out the design - but not too symmetrically would have been boring! and I do hate to be boring!!
so...what d'you think?   anyone for bridge?
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!   Elizabeth

PS my next Dyeing to Design class starts at Quilt University this Friday. There's still time to enroll. It's 5 lessons over 7 weeks of dyeing, surface design and art quilt design . I cover dyeing a full spectrum from 6 basic dyes, gradation dyeing, arashi shibori, and several kinds of screen printing AND how to design quilts based on each of the five elements : value, color, line, shape and texture which participants will create with dye on their fabric. The goal is to learn both ways of getting color on cloth AND the best ways to use the subsequent cloth when designing your own quilts.
Quilt University cannot be beat for its value and international coverage and is a real tribute to its founder, Carol Miller who persuaded me to write for her.   Also I actually appear on video - several times!! Thanks to intrepid photographer Julia Triebes!!

the alternate view:exploring contemporary possibilities

2013-03-26T08:55:00.001-07:00

Heavy Metal, one of my quilts in the show

I love going to art shows, especially in "alternate", non-profit, non-institutional galleries. We're lucky enough to have several here in Athens, Ga - a town steaming with artists, rock bands and retirees. A strange mix! but we're high on the "recommended" list for all three!
One of the better known galleries is ATHICA and I'm lucky enough to be included in their current show Worked described thus:

Work of art is an apt term, suggesting not only a process resulting in an object, but a labor and its attendant economies. Worked (is) an exhibition highlighting the labor that goes into art making along with work that that addresses more conventional ideas about…well, work.

Well, I don't know about that! it all sounds a bit vague to me! But it's an interesting little show, if somewhat sparse - just 12 pieces. I'm used to seeing those quilt shows where quilts are hung on every inch of space including the attendants! To my eyes, a couple of the pieces were a little derivative. for example the guy that got inside a pegboard cubicle to do some kind of physical jerks (no I don't think That Kind!) of which a camera feed showed us totally untantilizing glimpses! I think Marina Abramović did it much better!

Another derivation, perhaps a little more subtle was this work:

The shadows and light patches are just reflections....though I do think they add some interest! Yes the work is very obsessive, but havn't we seen this before? Didn't Agnes Martin make many obsessive graphite lines on paper? And Sol Lewitt hire people to do this on giant walls? - impressive, there, because of the size. So I'm afraid I didn't linger over these drawings - nor did I spend long looking at the fake concrete blocks though the children were having a lot of fun with them! It is good to have art that kids can interact with which is not possible with most mediums - certainly not fiber. I just cringe when people smear their greasy grimy sticky fingers all over my quilts! but it happens - despite all the "please do not touch" signs!

full view

I did however spend a long time peering at Laura Tanner Graham's pieces. I really liked the combination of richness and freshness, plus the mystery. You had to peer in closely to see if you could figure out what the story was. Laura describes her work: "as a retelling of the consequences of excessive manipulation". I guess many quilters can relate to that!

detail

She also says:
"through the modification of domestic practices typically assigned to women my mixed media paper installations explore the contemporary possibilities of such crafts as quilt making from paper, ink, cotton, thread, latex paint, sewing needles, contact paper and Mylar".

and another close up

I do hope that the quilts I'll be seeing at Quilt National '13 will also explore those possibilities, instead of being either derivative or clunky imitations of the kinds of paintings produced by "sunday painters". Of course I'll be reporting back on that show - which isn't till the end of May.

I also visited the MFA exit show at our local art museum this week and was happy to see several fiber pieces - I'll give a brief review (with pictures!) next blog. Suffice to say that fiber as a medium and quilts as a format are both alive and well in MFA programs!!

So, if you have been, thanks for reading!! And, do please comment - you will be instantly more gifted and energized if you do!!! Elizabeth

Review: People and Portraits, Art Quilt Portfolio

2013-03-23T08:33:00.005-07:00

Some time ago (can’t find it!) I reviewed the first book in this series of Art Quilt Portfolios by Martha Sielman and had a number of criticisms. As I recall, these were focused on the fussy design – floating flotsam, odd lines that appeared, and unnecessary borders. I also queried overly lengthy fulsome introductions and stated that more information from the artist would be of greater interest and should not be in a “filled out a form answering specific questions” format. I’m happy to say that in the new book, People and Portraits, these changes have been made. It’s a lovely, cleanly designed, hefty book with a good smell! (D’you smell books? I do hope I’m not the only one!) The book feels solid in your hand instead of the increasingly flimsy efforts produced by many quilt publishing companies.

People and Portraits has 192 pages and features 21 quilt artists in depth and has seven special gallery sections. The 21 artists are: Sowada, Gardner, Elkins, Berends, Kumicich, Kleinman, Ferrin, Kurihara, Rocke, Lovinger, Ugerup, Leak, May, Pelish, Bardella, Wiener, Pal, Bowker, Nida, RuBert, and Goddu. Eight artists are from outside the USA. For me, there were many new names and fresh work as well as a few old favorites. The book, therefore, is a great survey of quilts which feature figurative work. There are some obvious omissions, e.g. Nancy Erickson, Wendy Huhn. These choices are always at the discretion of the curator/editor and there may be many reasons why a particular artist’s work isn’t shown. However, if the reason is that they are featured in another volume, there could at least be an example of their work in the gallery section, so as to make the survey more complete, with a notation as to the volume in which they have more pages. Many people might buy just one book in the series and not know of their work.

The gallery sections are: happiness, contemplation, community, icons, family and friends, work, play with approximately a dozen quilts by different people. The titles of the section are an odd collection, it’s hard to see the logic in such divisions and I wonder if dividing up the “other” pieces into these galleries has any real point or usefulness. Why not just have the 21 featured artists and then one big gallery?

Each artist has about 6 pages showing at least that many quilts. This is a generous amount and gives you a real impression of the person and the scope of their work. There is a short paragraph by the editor which is more of a glowing back cover review of the artist’s work than a real introduction to the artist. I would have liked specific details about the artist, education, location, website etc. These could also have been included at the end of each section. About half the artists I hadn’t heard of previously and it would have been most helpful to know which country they’re from and a little of their background. Yes, poking around in the index, I did eventually find their countries of origin, but that’s a bit awkward. While some of the artists ramble on a bit philosophically most do address process issues and, even though I do tend (like many of us!) to skip the words and look at the pictures, I did find what they had to say revealing and well worth reading. Each person wrote a little differently about themselves, more refreshing and readable than an organized interview format. This encourages them to be so much more intimate and straight from the heart in their comments: “I am a very small fish. I’ve always seen myself as an insecure person, but not when I’m creating.”

A small quibble: I would much rather have had a stitched, appliquéd or pieced quilt on the cover, rather than a painted one…but I can see that the piece chosen is a strong clear image. Overall, the photographs are clear, well focused and the color printing (in as much as I know the work) appears true. If People and Portraits is that much stronger than The Natural World, start saving now for the next one in the series!!

Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits by Martha Sielman is reasonably priced at $(US)24.95 – and, of course, is significantly discounted to $8.60 (how do they do that??!!) at “that” online store!

And, while you're there, don't forget to take a look at my book Inspired to Design, Seven Steps to Successful Quilts which is due out next month!

As always...if you have been, thanks for reading!! Elizabeth

Stream of Unconsciousness

2013-03-13T08:27:00.001-07:00

Ambivalence (48"h, 72"w)

I’ve been thinking about the structure in a quilt design. Few quilt designers seem to consider this before working out their designs and I wonder why. Interestingly, the same phenomenon occurred in painting a number of years ago. I came across a book called The Painter’s Mind written by Romare Bearden (of all people!) and Carl Holty, published in 1969 – when sentences were complex and thoughtful and paragraphs slowly developed the main thesis. I was fascinated to read in the Preface that they had noticed the same thing in painting. They felt that both artists and art lovers want (and need) more knowledge about structure:

“Many students who were nurtured on the notion of self expression as the sole criterion for integrated painting are now seeking a more precise knowledge of their craft; and many art lovers, seeking an extra dimension to their appreciation of fine art, would still like to understand two of the most fundamental aspect of any painting – structure and space.”

As in any art form (the plastic arts, writing, music etc), stream of consciousness only goes so far!! Bearden and Holty feel that the important question for art lovers and both amateur and professional artists is how an artwork is actually put together. They feel that a painting is actually always about something as Kirk Varnedoe posited in his book Pictures of Nothing, a discussion of late 20^th century abstract art. Of course that something can be literal, conceptual or an abstract formal appreciation of harmony and balance of pictorial elements.

Their writing is so elegant and pithy:

“Many of the abstract Expressionists attempted to break all ties with the past and , like the hero of E.M. Forster’s novel, Howards End,, they wished to come upon art as the revivalist seeks to discover Christ”.

There is, I fear, a similar trend in art quilting today. When people first begin making art quilts, i.e. quilts to be displayed on a wall primarily as a decorative object, they tend to work rather literally. I think this is a normal process, you’re inspired by a landscape (or whatever it is) and you want to take the best of what you see and translate it into cloth. The next step is to figure out how to add to that design what you feel and experience when you look at the landscape as well as the landscape itself. This is a lot harder, almost equivalent to the search for the perfect PhD research topic! It can lead to a lot of doubt and anxiety.

Unfortunately, a lot of people then see what they think might be an easier path: they say to themselves “I’ll just work from my unconscious”…what you might call the stream(or path) of unconsciousness. Somehow, magically, all feelings and experiences will be expressed if you keep your conscious mind out of the way! But, as Bearden and Holty point out, if there’s no structure, the piece, being formless, will not hold up, our eyes will drift over the shapeless mass – have you seen quilts like this? I know I have!!

Alas, this book is very rare, I notice – but your public library (always support libraries!) probably has a copy on a back shelf that nobody has take out in 40 years! There are gems back there in the dust!! And if anyone has a copy they don’t want…I’d be happy to trade it for my new book – I’m getting an advance copy today – I do hope I’ve not missed any errors! It is exciting though! Books, books, books. "Yes, Wonderful Things!" indeed!

And now for another wonderful thing: a nice cup of tea.

If you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

Local Art Show, next Working in Series class

2013-03-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

My next Working in Series class starts at Quilt University this Friday. If you have ever wanted to take your art quilting to the next level, working in a series is the way to do it. Developing the same theme in many different ways really stretches and exercises your design skills: creatively, technically, professionally and emotionally. This class begins with the students surveying serial work in many different countries and mediums and is often a most exciting part of the course as you discover new artists, new ideas and new possibilities that you would not have access to in any other way. Imagine being able to send out a researcher of local art in your own country plus North and South America, Canada, Australia, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East! Not always in every class, but often!! And I'm looking for the first student from Antarctica - though I believe penguins havn't yet got the hang of a sewing machine.....even though there is, in fact, a walking foot called the Penguin walking foot!!!

But meanwhile....back at the home base...I visited the first of our two local annual art shows on Sunday.

visitors to the Art Show in front of Terri Jarret's beautiful scrap quilt Carried Away

These shows are tremendously popular in the community and each gets about 600 entries in every conceivable medium, and some you probably wouldn't conceive of! Outside jurors are brought in to whittle down the numbers to something manageable...I was lucky enough to get into both shows and even got a small award in one of them. Of course the preponderance of the work is painting and photography but there were quite a few fibrous pieces this time too.

Aline

Bonita Kelemen's amazing portrait of Aline was outstanding for its millions of beads obsessively applied and the eye catching command gaze of the subject.
Not only is the lady encrusted with beads but her face is embroidered solidly - you can't see it but there are hundreds of lazy daisies and french knots and many other classic embroidery stitches. "Fabric collage on raw linen canvas with embroidery and beadwork" was the description. I don't know the artist who does, however, live in Georgia.

Hole in the Sky that the Night burned through

Justine Stevens' work was also very striking - again this artist is totally new to me. She's a recent graduate of the BFA program at the University of Georgia with an emphasis in print making however what was most fascinating again was the combination of techniques: embroidery over paint (acrylic, gouache, watercolor) and collage on linen.

Disbelief in String and paper

Substitute a Floating Palm Frond

These are tiny pieces - about 6" square and full of amazing little details.

I'm so sorry I missed her exit show. It's very good to see young people getting into fiber!

Another new fiber artist, for me, was Travis Craig
with his funky little figurative piece:

Got Stars on My shoulders, don't Need 'em in my Eyes

I'm not quite sure whether that's a walking stick in front and this is a disaffected soldier or whether there's a more light hearted meaning - though I doubt it...
it's a striking image that catches your eye, it's intriguing and well proportioned.
I don't know anything about Travis - it's a fairly common name but it would be fun if he were the longboarder seen in the youtube clip
What athleticism!!

There were also several fine woven pieces by local weavers I know well - and only 4 quilts, two by yours truly and two by member of the local guild: Terri Jarrett and Jodie Seila. We're in good company!

The other art show doesn't open till next month - alas the opening is when I'm away but I shall visit afterwards and see how fiber art is faring whether we call it a quilt or a fabric painting or a collage or even just "art".

And now to write a welcome to my Working in Series class - there is time to sign up until Saturday...the class starts late Friday.
So, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

Reading about Art

2013-03-01T15:31:00.002-08:00

Hours 8pm

I love reading about art of all kinds. I just finished Sarah Thornton’s book Seven Days in the Art World – while a lot of what she writes is really about the business side of the art world (especially, I think, the studio practices of Takashi Murakami the extremely popular fantasy comic/ manga inspired Japanese artist of the superflat) much of the book is quite fascinating. Art critics and art historians and art editors and art consultants and art handlers, and art collectors and art auctioneers etc etc - the artists themselves seem to hover uncomfortably on the fringes shabbily dressed and gnawing at their nails!


definitely shabby, but not exactly gnawing!

So very different from the quilt world where large groups of fiber artists gather to enjoy and admire each others’ work. The art world as a whole is a fascinating glimpse and insight into all kinds of people, different mediums and cultures and practices– but all engrossed in creativity and in the wonderful (and often strange!) things that creativity brings about.

Being involved in art world makes daily experience so much richer – I think it’s so sad that children (including, alas, my own grandchildren – hold that charger!) these days are diverted to electronic games so early and away from paints and clay and collage and cloth. Once they’re hooked onto the instant response of the electronic joystick, they become bored by something slower like stitching or drawing or paint on paper. Their brains seem to demand faster rewards, if it doesn’t work in a second or two then frustration mounts. Then, as adults, they become the people who give up extremely quickly. They have such a mistaken idea that talent is instantaneous, if you can just press the right button you’ll be able to do whatever it is – sing like an opera diva, dance like a B boy, paint like Cezanne, play an instrument. The Beatles were an instant phenomenon? No way! They worked harder and practiced more than any other group of their time – to an amazing degree.

Looking for talent!

I just read Renee Fleming’s autobiography The Inner Voice: the Making of a Singer; she wrote about the incredible amount of training and technical knowledge of the body that is necessary to produce and hold the right note whilst singing – years and years of training in order to develop the ability to put the breath where it’s needed. It’s so much more complicated than ever you would think. And the same is true of any branch of art – which is why it is so compelling, you can never get to the end of discoveries about the medium and about yourself. As human beings, we NEED art! I don’t think you can develop fully as a person without it. It doesn’t have to be paint or cloth, it could be in gardening, or boat building or baking!
Or even, in making a good cup of tea….so I’m on my way! If you have been, thanks for reading!! Elizabeth

Updates

2013-02-22T17:24:00.000-08:00

Well not a lot of cogitating has been going on lately! More like gallivanting! However things are happening - I received a large box of postcards advertising the book (send me your address if you'd like me to send you a postcard - my email is: elizabethyork100atyahoo.com). And the book itself - or rather the cover! - has appeared on Amazon for pre-order, though apparently it won't be out till May.

I heard from Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN that my August class has made. If you've never been to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts it is one of the best in the country. They run concurrent classes in many different media with top notch instructors - it's an honour to work there! so you're exposed to new developments and creativity in many media other than fiber: paper, wood, clay, metal, painting, stone, enamal, glass etc.

Arrowmont's main gallery

It's so much richer an experience being part of the wider world of art and craft than just tucked away in one corner - however cozy that corner is!! I've been working on some new ideas for this class too - developing quilt designs protocols based on some of the best women abstracts artists in the 20th century.

My class at The Bascom in Highlands, NC is now up on line. This is a new venue for me and should be fun.

The Bascom is an absolutely gorgeous new art center in a beautiful little town in Western North Carolina. It will be quiet and peaceful and a great place to get down to some designing, dyeing and constructing!! They like small classes so there will be lots of one on one help.

I'm also going back to Cape Cod in October again! Linda Gallagher has the info on that class.

I've recently turned down invitations to two very far away countries...for events in the far distant future...I'd loved to have visited those places but the teaching venues were at hotels during big quilting events - short fast paced process driven classes - and I find I like to get to know the students
and work with them one on one rather than being a production!!

I got another Teacher of the Year nomination - thank you very much whoever put my name forward for that honour!! It's a very nice glow to feel that someone would go to the trouble to do that.

And I managed to get two quilts into the local art show - this is quite an avant garde venue so it's a leap forward for quilts to be accepted. Plus an even more forward looking local gallery wants 5 or 6 of the industrial quilts for a special show about Working Environments... so - things are moving!

It is with great sadness though that I learned today of Carol Miller's untimely death. Carol started the online class Quilt University many years ago and 3 years since invited me to teach there. Heavily persuaded me! She always insisted that the cost of the classes be kept low so that anyone could join and that the language be very clear and the supplies simple so that you didn't have to speak English very well, or worry about esoteric gadgets. These classes have proven to be wonderful for people who couldn't attend a class away from home - either for cost reasons, or distance, or various home commitments. Having now taught about 20 such classes I realize more and more how very important they are and how amazingly far sighted and innovative Carol was. Yes there are other online classes but most of them are a LOT more expensive, ordinary people simply couldn't afford to do them. Teaching for Quilt University has brought me in touch with people around the world, every continent (except Antarctica - though I'm still hopeful!)! Carol's husband plans to carry on with the classes by the way but I know all the QU teachers will sorely miss her humour, her support and integrity and straightforward warmth.

Things change all the time, everything is in flux - enjoy what you have today - it might be different tomorrow! It's all to do with quantum physics apparently which demonstrates that nothing ever measures the same from one moment to the next. Oh and they use prime numbers to encrypt data and messages because it is next to impossible to factor a large prime number thus enabling asymmetric encryption i.e. coded with one key, but deciphered with another.

And now for a cup of tea...and then back to those abstract painters! And, if you have been, thanks for reading. Elizabeth

Trends

2013-02-13T08:25:00.002-08:00

Went to a talk the other night given by the director of a well known university art gallery in a rather classy Southern town. He discussed several recent exhibitions he had curated and what became obvious very quickly was that obsessional art is still very popular. One show was all about patterns made on the floor with thousands of pounds of salt in a little salt pourer. Try it for yourself! Take a box of salt and doodle on the floor...If you do this with a sewing machine on fabric, you can create similar patterns, but it won't be art till you reach about 500 square feet!

Gompertz, in his book What Are You Looking At, suggests that the current art "-ism" is entrepreneurism. Entrepreneurism in art is defined as the ability to make art, market art and build a profitable art business. And being able to build a hugely recognisable trade mark - in Hirst's case it's currently The Painted Dot. Hirst has painted dots for a long time - the paintings look like color charts only the colors are in rows of circles rather than rectangles. He made his name with the shark in formaldehyde, and flies feasting on a cow skull but these are less marketable on a world wide scale than the dot paintings. Amazingly he managed to persuade a well known gallery with premises in most of the world's art capitals to put on a solo show of his dot paintings all around the world simultaneously! What a brilliant marketing ploy. He's a marketing strategist par excellence and there is something very obsessive about the dots too - though I doubt he crouches down and makes very many of them himself.


Rusty Answer (detail)

So how does this relate to the art quilt world? I think we do see evidence of both of these trends - the obsessionalism has always been evident. Nothing, if you think about it, is more obsessional than an art form that requires millions of stitches taking months of work. There is such a meditation involved in repeated simple manual gestures that gradually build up into an art piece. When I left school I went to get a job at the local chocolate factory, I wanted to be the one that did the squiggles on top of the chocolates. In those days (maybe now too though I've not had a classic box of chocs for a long time, alas) every chocolate had a different pattern on top reflecting its contents. I thought it would be really neat to sit there with my little chocolate pourer making up all sorts of designs!! (a lot better than salt if you think about it!)...but alas the personnel department told me that people like me "ruined an assembly line". Just imagine a gallery filled with chocolates !!! a chocolate installation!

Electric Fields (detail)

Obsession and marketability are two of the trends. But what else? I'm afraid to say I think it's a certain blandness - there's enough horrible things going on with really scary climate change, the eternal human appetite for dispute and war, and the, alas also eternal, belief that "my religion is the true one and you are an infidel". So, people don't want to be "irritated" (as my friend described her feelings looking at one of my most recent quilts) by any reminders of these important issues. Another friend said that he wanted art that calmed him down not aggravated him.

I think I'm going to make a cup of tea...now what about a gallery installation of 4,000 cups of tea? hmmm....
one room with tea and one with chocolate and both very marketable.....
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!!
Elizabeth
PS if you're in or near Athens, GA, this Saturday I'm one of the featured artists at the opening of the Classic Center (2-6); I'm off to buy some salt now....

New class this Friday

2013-01-29T11:20:00.002-08:00

"Inspired to Design" - my most popular class starts again on Quilt University this Friday. This is the most basic class I teach. It's about taking a photograph and extracting lots of different quilt ideas from it.


Ideas sketched out and hung up on design wall for review

It also covers the basics of thoughtful design (I expand on those in my follow-up class Working in Series), and choosing a great color scheme. I also go through how to block out a quilt working from a small sketch - no need to drive across town to the copy shop and spend money on a couple of large cartoons! I don't know who started this idea that you need a full size cartoon to make a piece - certainly painters don't have that. Perhaps tapestry artists do.


Here's the photograph


Here's the sketch

And here's the quilt!

as you can see there are some differences between the final version and the drawing - I like that - if you have the main shapes in places and the main values organized, then you can add little interesting bits if you feel an area needs them. it's like putting a fancy door knob on the door of a house that is all previously designed.
If you're slavishly following a full size cartoon, it's a lot harder to make those little changes. On the other hand if you have no sketch at all, then it's very difficult to have a good basic structure to the quilt design.

Eniow! just some of my pet peeves...some people have marketing Mondays and wordless Wednesdays, I have peevish january the 29ths!!!
If you have been, thanks for reading! And if you are signed up, I look forward to seeing you in class!
Elizabeth

Looking for the Patterns

2013-01-24T06:59:00.003-08:00

Life has been busy round here with three separate Christmases - the family coming to stay in dribs and drabs - which has been fun but I think three is enough!! I was beginning to feel like the guy in Ground Hog Day! But repetition is the central point of pattern and if you look you'll see many patterns within and without your experience.

I thought I'd become very scattered making quilts, painting watercolors and then signing up for square dance lessons and coding using prime numbers! Then I realised that it's all about patterns.

I think patterns are what drew us into quilting in the first place. I remember as a small child loving to visit the rose garden in the local park. Not because of the prettiness of the flowers (though I loved the scent of roses and still do) but because of the copious dropped petals that I could retrieve and arrange into complex patterns on the old stone flags of the garden. Of course I hadn't heard about Andy Goldsworthy and I had no photographers on hand to immortalize my efforts!!

So it was really just one step from rose petals to fabric petals in the beautiful rhythmical traditional quilt patterns (I always loved the shifting ones like Storm at Sea, or Broken Dishes) and then to square dancing. I just couldn't figure out why square dancing would be so interesting (the other dancers are so well, "country"!!) until I realised from this website and this Japanese one that it was the visual patterns that intrigued me.

and now to grab my code book and off to coding with primes!! I wonder what else presents in repeating patterns?
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!
Elizabeth

workshops: past, present and future positive!

2013-01-16T13:20:00.003-08:00

In the same way that I love taking workshops, I also enjoy teaching them...and especially the planning! Planning out a new class and doing the research leads me in all kinds of different directions which interest me a lot - and I hope will interest the students!

Currently I'm having a lot of fun understanding, analyzing and deconstructing various abstract art works (particularly those by women artists) in both modern and contemporary art (modern being 18602 to 1970s.... and contemporary art being that made by still living artists) and seeing how their design and construction processes might relate to fiber. I was afraid this was not a legitimate activity until I came across this you-tube clip by Elizabeth Murray - one of the foremost artists of the 20th century where she talks about deconstructing a de Koonig painting in order to learn from it.

Murray is fascinating as a painter because she was both representational and abstract at the same time being indifferent to attempts to classify her as belong to one art form or another. There is such a tendency in the arts to try to group people according to genre - which as art quilters, or are we fiber collagers? or mixed media artists? - we constantly run into. Murray is credited along with Philip Guston, Frank Stella and Brice Marden as rebuilding painting (which was thought to be "dead"!) during the 1970s with her innovations and bold expansion of ideas. As such she is a great source for inspiration not only for painters but for all artists. And so are many other amazing women painters of the last 100 years!! This is going to be a great year of exploration for me.

I did have another idea for a class - but couldn't get any interest in it...that was "the Sensuous Quilter" - we were going to see, hear, smell, feel and taste our way to new designs!! Ah well, it's good to have some crazy ideas once in a while - even if people think you are - well - crazy!

I'd love to take a workshop in abstract art, but have never seen one...so that's why I decided to build my own! As well as looking at videos, I'm also reading What are You Looking At by Will Compertz which proves to be a fascinating look at all the different movements there have been in art since the mid 19th century (and the invention of the camera which changed everything).

Meanwhile my Dyeing to Design class at Quilt University starts this Friday and in two weeks my Inspired to Design class also starts at Quilt University. If you've not taken a class with me before, that's a great first class. My first abstract class will be at Arrowmont in August. Quilt University has the best value of any online classes I've come across - check them out!

And looking back to last year, I'm honoured to be nominated again for one of those Professional Quilter TOTY (Teacher of the Year) awards. At first I was a little puzzled by the announcement that I might get a TOTY award because the word "tottie" has somewhat different connotations in England!!!

Well back to abstraction! or is it forward....
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!
Elizabeth

Talent, skill and happiness.

2013-01-08T14:25:00.001-08:00

Emerald City

“Oh it must be so wonderful to have such a talent!”

How often have you heard that? D’you really believe it? If I don’t know the person well I just smile modestly and say nowt…but if I know them I tell them it’s not talent but rather persistence, stubbornness and a desire to master something very difficult. Or, at least, tame it a little. Winston Churchill (reportedly) said:

"The way to be happy is to find something that requires the kind of perfection that's impossible to achieve and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it."
Churchill painted – and built brick walls when he was really frustrated!

Making good art requires the development a lot of different skills, together with the determination to stick at it for a long time plus, if possible, (but, alas, hard to find), an encouraging and insightful teacher.

Robert Genn, a renowned Canadian painter of landscapes, described four basic skills that he thought imperative for the serious artist. Like most of the books I’ve read on the subject he rated drawing as one of the most fundamental and most important skills. Traditionally, for hundreds, if not thousands of years, art schools have also emphasized drawing. There are lots of good books on the subject – I particularly like those by Carrie Parks who was a police sketch artist trained by the FBI! She focuses on the ability to actually see what you are looking at, and NOT to glance, label, then bring up a cartoon like symbol in the mind rather to focus on the reality of the shapes and wiggly lines that make up a landscape. It’s important to tell the left brain with its stylized “trees” or “flowers” to shut up! Don’t work with names like “tree”, “boat”, “head” instead find the basic shapes.

The next step is to develop a basic measure (e.g for the human face this might be the width of the eye), then “measure” everything else using that as a “yardstick”. Most people have the width of one eye between the two eyes…etc. Drawing is based on developing such “measures” like the point of a pencil held at arms length, then looking at the relative sizes of the objects AND the spaces between the objects in terms of “eyes” or “pencil lengths”. As you can see, being able to do this is a technical skill, that can be learned in the same way that children learn to recognize letters of the alphabet.

Genn’s second skill was color. For anyone working in a medium using color like fiber artists, it’s very important to know about hue, value, intensity and temperature in color. It’s crucial to be able to recognize – and manipulate – the effect that colors have upon one another and how to choose and group colors within a composition.

The third skill he mentioned was abstraction which really struck me as I’m currently very interested in abstract art. What exactly is it? I realized it wasn’t just arbitrary splashes of paint on a canvas or pieces of fabric thrown at a wall (though that certainly can be fun it’s just as likely to lead to good art as those poor monkeys still slaving away on their typewriters (or probably computers these days) trying to come up with a Shakespeare play).

Abstract art has been defined as a “controlled visual magic” – wouldn’t it be wonderful to say “oh I’m a fiber magician” when people ask what you do?

The control consists of a) a defined structure, b) using compositional guidelines thoughtfully and c) working with implication, suggestion and mystery rather than literal representation. Good abstract art yields an emotional reaction, before the frontal lobes take over and start to analyze. A mix of abstraction and realism adds tension and mystery. I love art like this – where you think you can almost see where the artist started.

And talking of Composition, that’s the fourth skill that Genn lists. He feels that “composition is the queen of the skills”. Having the ability to compose those basic elements well is what makes the magic hold up! Good Composition is a Bach cantata, you know there is a basic structure, there are rules of harmony and so on but within that Bach manages amazing feats of rhythm and melody and contrast.

Being able to capture, hold and intrigue the eye entrancing it with the variety of different moods and shapes, edges, and lost edges, all kinds of magical things going on and yet coming together to form a complete whole is a wonderful thing. Hopefully, not an impossible one!

The person who has been able to develop all these skills will have a unique voice, the ability to express feeling within their art. And thus that unique voice will be seen as an amazing talent. But we know…the magician didn’t just happen to find the rabbit in the hat….!

Having delineated these skills, the building blocks of “talent”, Genn pointed out that there was nothing wrong with simply making art for the fun of it without trying to build one’s knowledge and skill. But:

“But if you persist in this direction, your unskilled work will be like that of so many others--and you will begin to bore yourself. On the other hand, the skills I suggest are worth learning for their own sake--and they will stand you well no matter what you try to do. They are hard won. We value most what is hard won--and so do many others. Skills worth learning take time and patience.”

And remember Churchill:

"The way to be happy is to find something that requires the kind of perfection that's impossible to achieve and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it."

Isn’t that great!! As well as art I’m also going to learn square dancing and with my co-ordination that going to be impossible too!

I’m off for a cuppa tea!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading!

Elizabeth

PS I have two online courses starting within the next few weeks: Dyeing to Design on January 18^th and Inspired to Design on Feb 1^st. check with quiltuniversity.com if you’re interested. Quilt university’s courses are without doubt the best value for money of all online classes – it’s an amazing organization.

PPS I'm happy that the quilt at the top of this blog: Emerald City has been chosen by the American Ambassador in Monrovia, Liberia to be shown in the American Embassy there as part of the program Art in Embassies! quite an honour and a lovely surprise.

Unpredictable, beautiful and shaggy!

2013-01-02T06:14:00.001-08:00

Amy Sillman Cliff

A painter whose work I really admire is Amy Sillman – if you Google “Amy Sillman images” you’ll come across a lot of great pictures. She’s an abstract painter who also incorporates almost identifiable images that tease your mind into a Gestalt whirl! She writes that she wishes her work to be

"Every day the raw, the goofy,

the inexplicable, the urgent,

the disrupting, the embarrassing,

the awful, the complex, and the

fearsome barge into my life,

whether I like it or not. I respond

with paintings that are partly cartoon,

partly lament, partly grudge, that I

hope are unpredictable, beautiful,

but sort of shaggy”.

I’m enjoying spending these first days of the New Year soaking myself in art – it’s so refreshing and enjoyable compared to the dire tv we have these days – the endless yapping heads, the stupidity, the lack of compassion and complete absence of long sightedness. It seems like everything and everybody is just looking for what will gain the maximum profit. I’m even being deluged with emails by companies whose products I reviewed with less than 5 stars on Amazon – they want me to give them 5 stars whatever I think about their product “because it will hurt their ratings” – as if that is reason enough!! It’s like the school kids who feel they should have an A because of their GPA – the quality of the work is irrelevant. I bought a new mp3 player to replace one on its last legs and discovered that the new ones only work properly with downloaded and paid for music – not with free library books!

And so to turn to art is so refreshing – to find the unpredictable, the beautiful and the shaggy is wonderful. Turning the annoyances of everyday life into beauty!! Hmm I wonder what sort of a quilt I could make about eye drops, mp3 players, chattering inanities and cliffs?

If you have been, thanks for listening!

Elizabeth

considering Abstraction in 2013

2012-12-28T11:53:00.001-08:00

Ambivalence 1

Representational art is art that involves some representation of the real world.

Abstract art, by contrast, does not attempt to show things as they really are.

In realism the artist generally tried to portray things as realistically as they can; abstract art attempts a number of different things but what it does not do is aim at a realistic representation of some actual place or object. Abstract art can be about ideas, or feelings, expressions, mood. In effect pure abstraction is one end of a continuum and pure realism at the other, with most 2d art somewhere in the middle.

Attempting to paint things as they really are has a long history and was particularly popular in the mid 19^th century. Realist painters wanted to make every day life and everyday scenes into Art. Previous to this the main focus of art had been on religious or mythological topics. Abstract art began to appear around the turn of the 19^th/20^th century with various movements being developed: Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism – and many more, divisions and subdivisions!

A Summer Day Long Ago

You can take the same subject and paint it abstractly, realistically or somewhere in the middle: e.g. a landscape can be shown in as much detail as a photograph, or more impressionistically with the emphasis on the light and shade, or as abstractly as a simple grid using just the colors from the landscape. Agnes Martin’s grids have often been said to have been inspired by the Canadian prairies where she was born – or the New Mexico deserts where she moved after leaving New York. Interestingly, she herself always hotly denied this; she wanted her grids to be a picture of perfection, the abstract idea of perfection rather than a portrayal of something actual. And who knows what is true? I think we probably don’t even remember or have any idea of the power of our early visual memories.

Beehive

The inspiration for abstract art can come from mood, emotions, observations, objects, geometry, patterns, details, even microscopic details – there are a myriad possibilities. Ideas can be developed from other artists’ work (a very common beginning point for artists ever since art began thousands and thousands of years ago), from nature, from the construction techniques themselves and these days, increasingly from computer manipulations! There are so many ways that can inspire us to create ever new arrangements of the basic elements.

Fall Study

I felt that I’ve always made some abstract work – when I added up how many of the 250 or so wall quilts or fiber collages (take your pick!) I considered that about 1/3 were purely abstract and another third significantly abstracted from my original sketch of a building or city or landscape. In reality, however everything I’ve done has been abstract. I’ve never once attempted a faithful realistic representation of anything – nature does that better, also an SLR camera !!

Forcefield 2

There are many regions of abstraction, though, into which I’ve never strayed and I think the task I’m going to set myself for the New Year, my second NY resolution after “Spend more time on Making Art!”, is to explore some of the possibilities for abstract fiber art that I havn’t yet attempted. I think it’s very important (unless one is a commercial decorative artist) to keep trying things you’ve not tried before, to be very adventurous in one’s art. In order to get into the better shows (the top handful of quilt shows and mixed media art shows) something different and venturesome is required. And I think that’s right – that’s what those shows are for. The other shows are for polished techniques and impeccable renderings of ideas we’ve seen before. I know for Quilt National this year I deliberately chose something strong and bold and a little out of the normal quilt range – and it paid off – or perhaps I was just lucky, who knows?!! But we do owe it to ourselves to not just keep reproducing the same thing, in many different colors, but instead to push forward, to be Bold.

And so with resolutions 1 and 2 in place, I shall go and make a nice cup of tea! Meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you have decided to do in your artistic life and what part abstraction might play in it. Also, d’you agree with me? Should we be bolder? Or is polishing better?

And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

The Ultimate Quilt Judging Algorithm - 9 questions to ask!

2012-12-19T08:41:00.003-08:00

Last week I wrote about developing an algorithm to see if the judging of art quilts could be improved - partly just out of curiosity about decision making but also because I had seen so many amazing pieces rejected for major shows, when quite mediocre ones were accepted. I asked for ideas for questions the algorithm might use.

But, before we get to that, I must commend N who has already developed her own algorithm for judging science fair projects! She wrote that judging “seemed daunting [until] I came up with a number system that rated categories. Added the categories, I could tell whom I would recommend for blue ribbons. It worked great for me, but I was always amazed that the other judges saw things totally differently. I was never really sure if I was thinking out of the box or if they just didn't know what they were doing”. What’s interesting is that there is, in fact, very little correlation between one’s confidence in a decision of this kind and its validity. If a person is very confident in their intuitive powers, you need to ask whether they are making that judgment in an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable and also whether they have had the opportunity to learn those regularities through prolonged practice.

The same holds true, of course, for art projects. When you are blocking out a quilt on the design wall, in judging whether or not this shape of red (or blue) will work well in relationship to the other shapes on the wall, if you have considerable practice and feedback at doing this, your intuitive judgment is likely to be sound, given that the principles of good design are surprisingly applicable to much art. If, however, you have not had much practice and this is your first workshop in creating an art quilt, then to be asked by the teacher to “use your intuition” is a nonsense! Intuition is the result of prolonged and considerable exposure to fairly regular situations, it isn’t something you’re born with. Alas!!

SO, let’s look at the questions that were suggested for our Ultimate Quilt Judging Algorithm. I wrote that six categories should be enough – you don’t want to be standing there all day looking at your own various attempts, or at the quilt show looking at one piece! Interestingly, only four main categories were mentioned.

1. Immediate reaction, Attention getting and holding

Did this quilt attract my attention? Yes = 1, no = 0

How long did I want to look at it? 5 seconds (0) or 5 minutes? (1)

If I pushed myself to look longer, did I see something more? Yes = 1, no = 0

Does this piece stir something in me? Yes = 1, no = 0

Is there anything in this quilt that distresses, disturbs or bothers me? Was that the artist’s intent?

Yes: Intentional = 1, Unintentional = minus 1. No = 0.

2. Fresh and New

Have I seen something like this before? If so, is it a development, or an iteration?

Score 1 for not seen before, or a development. Score 0 for seen before.

3. Color and Value

Looking at it first in grey scale (in order to avoid not only color bias, but also the tendency for different people to see colors in different ways), is it strong, balanced and interesting? Yes = 1, no = 0

Do the colors used work together and, if they clash, is there a reason for that? Work together = 1, clash but with a good reason = 1, clash for no reason = 0.

4. Technique

Does the technique used amaze and awe me? Yes = 1, no = 0

But, are the techniques more the result of proficiency and access to particular technology (camera, printer, high end machine) than to traditional fiber work? The weight given to the answer to this could be determined by the organizers of the quilt show and who is awarding the prizes! (ha!) If the show supports all techniques, not matter how much technology is used, then the yes is good. If the show does not, then subtract the 1 given for amazing technique.

Conclusions: What’s interesting is that while the above questions do not directly relate to the principles (which are, of course, guidelines, not rules!) of design (as in “is this quilt design well pulled together?"), but, rather, they are all supported by those principles. So judges who were familiar with those concepts would be able to hold a discussion using common terminology. I do think it important that we all have the vocabularly of designs - we think in words by and large, and without words, less thinking is possible!!

There are more questions in category 1, however that is because more people thought it important to mention. And, in reading many jurors' comments, this is definitely the category considered to be most important. So there are in total 9 questions. Try them out – and report back!! Especially try it out on the winners of prizes vs the non winners, and, if you have access, the accepted work vs the unaccepted.

Any comments? I look forward to reading them! They make my day! both positive and negative!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth

The Ultimate Quilt Judging Algorithm

2012-12-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

How would you feel if your art quilt was judged via a simple questionnaire rather than a panel of experts?

I read Meehl’s famous book Clinical vs statistical Prediction: A theoretical analysis and a review of the evidence many years ago. I was reminded of it recently by a discussion in Kahneman’s fascinating book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in itself a further treatise on the parlous and impossibly illogical state of human decision making!!

Meehl showed with numerous examples that in many fields a simple algorithm could make a better predictions than could experts in that particular field. This included doctors re prognosis (remember the Apgar score they use to evaluate newborns? It has saved many infant lives), wine-growers predicting how good a wine a particular crop will make, stock-brokers (yes! Wall street could give up tomorrow and computers calculate the best buys and sells and do it better!), financial analysts, sporting events, recidivism rates etc etc. When I think of how much money we spend on these “fortune tellers”, instead of on solid research and development into clean energy and so on, my mind doesn’t cogitate, it boggles!

So I started wondering if an algorithm could be developed for judging art, specifically a quilt show…or even if that would be a good thing? We have all known of amazing quilts that weren’t accepted to shows where they should have been – and duds that were included to everyone’s disgust (except I presume to that of the maker!!) Would they have got in if they were assessed simply by a 6 step questionnaire? It would also be a useful way of assessing one’s own work – which babies need help and which will be stars? I know I’m not alone in wondering which of my art works is the strongest.

Meehl concluded from his meta analyses that in order to achieve the best predictions, decisions should be based on formulae, especially in low-validity environments (like an art show). What we also know is that the algorithm doesn’t have to include complex weighting – it doesn’t make any difference according to Dawes’ article “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear models in decision making”.

Weighted complex combinations are no more reliable than simple ones.

Of course “experts” are extremely hostile to these ideas, they don’t like to think that all their expertise and judgment and sensitivity counts for very little. And they are skilled in limited, local short term situations, but longer term predictions are better assessed by a mechanical combination of a few variables. However, many have so much invested in their expertise that it makes it very difficult for them to accept their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

Okay – so which variables would we pick for judging a quilt? Six is enough. They should, if possible, address different aspects of the work so that there is not too much overlap. Once the six dimensions have been chosen then a couple of questions for each one could be formulated. For example, for me one of the important things is whether or not the piece can hold my interest – so the questions might be:

1a. How long did I look at this quilt when I first saw it?

1b. Did I come back to look at it again?

A second variable I think important would be something I’d call “freshness”. Questions might be:

2a. Have I seen something like this before?

And so on….so let’s see how much consensus as to important variables we would have. So please send in your ideas!! What characteristics of a quilt, or any work of art actually, are the most important? Let’s see if between us we can devise the Ultimate Quilt Judging Algorithm!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading!! Elizabeth