Artquiltmaker Blog – Page 429 – Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity

Book Review: Quilt National 2007

In honor of Quilt National 2009 opening soon, I finally wrote the book review for QN 2007 from Lark Books.
Quilt National 2007: The Best of Contemporary Quilts by Lark Books

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I have to admit that I have a love-hate relationship with Quilt National. I love the idea. I often intensely dislike the quilts the jurors choose.

In this year’s work, I love the photos, but, in general, my initial reaction was that the quilts look the same: lots of squares intersected with a square or another piece of fabric. I felt like I was judging the book too harshly, so to be fair, I went back and read the entire book and scrutinized each quilt and thought about them.

The jurors, Tim Harding, Robin Treen and Paul Nadelstern (whose work I greatly admire), seemed not to be as motivated by notions of beauty or status as they were intrigued by the possibilities of transformation.

Nelda Warkentin’s quilt, Harmony, has a calming ocean-like feel to it. Part of her description/artist’s statement includes the words “quiet, flowing movements,” which I think describes the quilt very well.

Spring Cascade by Virginia Abrams reminds me of calming fences and certain motifs in my my quilt The Tarts Come to Tea. Next to Abrams’ quilt is Dress Circle by Thelma McGough, a black and white piece with umbrella reminiscent motifs. Although it is made up of photos, it retains its quilt-like quality.

Weeks Ringle also has a piece, Tankini, in this book. Hearing the name and looking at the piece don’t mesh instantly, but the concept comes together after a bit of gazing. I love his piece because of the simple lines and the fact that she uses commercial cottons in an innovative technique. It isn’t just the type of fabric she uses, though. The simplicity does not mean simplistic. I think that there is a lot to look at in this quilt.

I am not a fan of realistic faces made into quilts. They freak me out for some reason, but Kristin Tweed has created a successful quilt in #42 Big Head Series: The Gladiator. One successful part of the success of this quilt is the lack of quilting on the face.

There are some good designs in this book. Mostly they are simple, linear designs. There is more digital photography manipulated into blocks and quilts than I remember from the past.

View all my quilt and non-quilt reviews.

See * Draw * Quilt * Learn

Sarah Ann Smith of Art & Quilting in Camden has set up a new blog, soon to be a group blog, with the intent of encouraging people to learn to see so they can improve their drawing.

Sarah started the blog on May 5, so you are not too far behind. She mentions The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book as one of the resources. You can add this to your list of drawing sites to review, in addition to Gabi Campanario (who now posts at the Seattle Times site) and Urban Sketchers.

Infinity Blocks Progress

I made about 8 of these blocks over the weekend. They are pretty fast to make and I get a big bang for my buck. The photo to the left shows all the blocks I have made to date. Actually, half of all of the blocks I have made to date. I make two of each fabric so I can send one to my SIL.

The weird thing is that I kept counting the blocks, periodically, and coming up with the same number. Not sure why except that my counting was obviously off! Two blocks aren’t in this picture, because I wanted it to be symmetrical.

Teacher Pillows 2009

Yes, I am doing it again. If you want to read the torure from previous years, I have gathered the posts into one search just for you.

My goal is to have them done before school ends this year, which is June 12. I actually have until June 11 this year as I am, sadly, not attending the conference I usually attend that week. Still, I want these babies done and out of my hair ASAP.

Some weeks ago, on a rip to IKEA for light bulbs (now I know I can get the same ones at Lowe’s, which is closer!) I found pillows for $1.50. They are an ugly baby blue, but solid and they will make fine pillow forms. They are not as fluffy as the ones I have bought in the past, but tough times call for economies.

Yesterday, I corraled The Child and had him choose blocks. I also had him do drawings for the back.

This is the Greek Cross block and it is for the aide. The others are Tangled Star, Omega and one with a lot of triangles. I am working on the latter. Another day I will post all of the photos.

Next up: copy the drawings to fabric and piece.

Tarts Progress

I wasn’t done with the Tarts, as TFQ suggested. I feel like I made some significant progress yesterday. the blocks take a long time for me to make. I have to do the drawing, trace a couple of times, put the pattern on fusible, cut out the fabric, make sure the pieces are all going in the correct direction and then I can press and machine stitch.

Here is the whole section that I worked on, so you can see how it fits into the whole. I thought the area needed a bi of blue. I wanted to use turquoise, but didn’t want to overwelm the piece with it, thus the aqua color. I think it is a little light to be on the edge, but we’ll see how I like it once my brain has a chance to rest from it.

The yellow “china” cup wasn’t planned, but entered my head and got a place at the table, temporarily, a least. I am not sure I like the fabric for this area, though a plainer yellow would have melted into the aqua. As I mentioned, I really like the juxtaposition of different patterns on the fabric and that is what I was going for with this cup. Also, the fabric design relates to the blue china cup. They may even be part of the same group.

I am pretty pleased with the blue china cup as I was able to work in that pinky rose fabric that I wanted to use for the background of the green teapot. I think it is a good transition fabric between the background of the green and the orange of the sugar and creamer.

I realized recently that showing you all of these process shots means that you never get a surprise. I will have to think of a project I never show you just to give my readers a surprise once in a while.

All Quiet on the Quilt Front

Or maybe not.

I have been struggling with the Tarts lately and with traveling so much in the past three weeks it has been hard to get back into the creative mode. TFQ and I had a nice looong chat last night which helped to get me back into the groove. She knows about design. Aside from the fact that we share a lot of the same ideas about design, I really trust her judgment. If I ask for advice, she will give me good advice. I appreciate the way she helps me through the design process when I feel like I am struggling. As I mentioned in my essay, design, etc is partly an intellectual effort for me. TFQ and I can have the right mix of intellectual and creative in our discussions.

I talked with her about my struggles. She suggested that I take the Tarts off the wall for a month and let the project simmer in the back of my mind for awhile. The idea appealed to me, in a way, because I worked on the Infinity (Crazy Eight) blocks and I was really wishing that I had more design wall space. If I take he Tarts off the wall, I’ll have the space. It might be time to get the portable design wall out of the closet again…or stop working on so many projects at once.

I don’t really want to take the Tarts off the wall, because a month can easily turn into a year and by the time I drag it out again, I might want to remake all the blocks AGAIN. Needless to say, despite the merits, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. When TFQ suggests something, I give it serious thought because she usually has a point.

That was the start of the conversation, however. We looked at the piece using the Tarts Arrangement post, the way I had arranged the different blocks and what was working and what wasn’t working. Now I am all fired up to rearrange the pieces, make some new blocks and move forward a bit more. I am not ruling out putting it away again (with a calendar reminder!), but I am not doing it quite yet.

I do know that the teapot block (bottom middle, mauve with blue bubble background) with the view from the top is going. It was damaged somehow and I can’t fix it. Since I have to remake it anyway, I am taking it out and putting in a new block. TFQ made a good point about that block. It is a different view than all the other pieces and, thus, really stands out. Not sure what yet. TFQ suggested another tart or pastry. I don’t have any ideas for one, but since there are only two in the piece, another would a good design choice.

You also get to see the cake plate block in it’s native environment.

Here are some new Fabric of the Year blocks. I haven’t pressed any fabric lately, so this is the end for the moment. I am not short of fabric to press, I just haven’t done it. I love that red polka dot. It is the same fabric I used for the to go cup.

Word of the Day: Struggle

I was looking at the photos from the recent AQS show in Paducah. I looked at them (thanks, Leslie, for posting!) and thought they were unbelievably gorgeous. The work, the time, the creativity. I also thought that there was no point in me ever enering anything in Paducah, because that work is different from what I do. It isn’t that I probably couldn’t do what Sharon Schamber and Caryl Bryer Fallert do, but I really don’t want to. I love the work that I do and want to continue on the path that I am on and not make something just to enter it into Paducah.

Today when I read the Word of the Day, Struggle, I thought of these feelings I had when looking at the Paducah photos.

Deng Ming Dao, from 365 Tao writes (abridged by me!):

“Goals are important. Forbearance is also important. But the very process of struggle is equally essential…Without it, we cannot know any true meaning in our accomplishments.”

“A writer will write significant passages as if they were dictated. Each might say, ‘It happened so fast!’ But in reality, it took all of them years of dedication and struggle to come to that moment of climaz. Thus even the virtuoso performance is the tip of a lifetime of struggle, and the gem of meanin is set in the metal of long perseverance.”

Struggle has a negative connotation at first glance, but this passage is great because it acknowledges past work and sums up success.

I think that we have to acknowledge our past work as we achieve success in the present and the future. We have to acknowledge how much we have learned and struggled to get where we are at this point. Caryl Bryer Fallert and Shawn Fanning (founder of Napster) did not have immediate success. What appears to be immediate success has some kind of backsory. Caryl Bryer Fallert had years of machine quitling experience behind before winning best of show at Paducah. Shawn Fanning knew about the Internet and programming before he created Napster.

I don’t think that a person can have instant and immediate success. There is always something behind doing something for the first time: family, classes, related experience. There has to be a foundation.

TFQ turned me on to a Flickr group called Mod Sampler Quilt-Along. It is related to the blog, Oh fransson! It seems that this is where people are gathering now and sharing their quilts in a way that is different from the Paducah show. TFQ and I had a long talk about the AQS show and how it relates to new quiltmakers. She is starting a blog and I hope she will write more about our discussion, but if not, I will pick it up later.

Note: You can see the beginning of the WOTD project on the January 1 post. While I am still doing the project in my journal, I am only posting WOTDs here when they really related to something I have seen or done. My last WOTD post on February 1, 2009 explains a little about my thinking.

Journal Bliss by Violette Clark

Violette Clark, a Canadian artist I wrote about on the Creative Prompt page, has a new book out. I first heard about Violette on the CraftSanity podcast with Violette Clark during a recent road trip. The podcast is one of the earlier ones and it didn’t mention Violette’s new book I haven’t seen the book.

Violette has a great style. If you take a look at her website, you will find it full of creativity, cheerfulness (my favorite) and joy. She has a blog and message forums for her fans to discuss everything from her blog posts to how they are inspired by her work.

Check back for a review of this book!

Book Review: Ocean Waves

Ocean Waves by Terri Thayer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
You cannot blast through this book. I did and I didn’t understand it at all, which meant that I turned back to page one and started over as soon as I finished it. Terri once told me that every word has to count so writers these days prune, prune, prune. I may have realized that with her other two books, Old Maid’s Puzzle and Wild Goose Chase, but it came home to me with this book when I knew the killers and didn’t understand the ending.

Dewey’s character is developing and I like to be able to see that in the book. I also enjoyed seeing her develop as a quiltmaker and am glad she didn’t bail on her class.

Terri has a knack for characters I love to intensely dislike and this book was no exception. One was a control freak and the other had a huge chip on his/her shoulder. I am glad I won’t be seeing THEM again.

This was a pretty exciting book. The ending was fabulous. Terri did not fulfill my fantasy of killing off Kym, but I liked what Terri did with Kym in terms of moving her along with her life. I would have liked a little more background on what has gone in Kym’s life since she was fired from QP, especially since, despite Dewey’s heroics, Kym doesn’t move beyond her self centeredness.

The sad part about books, though, is that we only get a few days of Dewey’s life and I could really use more. Perhaps Terri should write a blog by Dewey…in her copious amounts of spare time!

View all my quilt and non-quilt reviews.

Everybody Draw Now

Soule Mama’s recent post really fits in to the Creative Prompt project. She also points to a NPR story (which, sadly, I missed) about drawing. Go and read all of Soule Mama’s post because it has a fantastic point of view.

clipped from www.soulemama.com

Keep Drawing!

I heard artist Mo Willems on NPR last night (Getting Adults to Draw). He observes that “people stop drawing when they decide they’re not good at it…[but] Nobody stops playing basketball once they realize they’re not going to be a professional.”

Hear, Hear! Keep drawing!

He says, and I firmly believe, that in order for children to want to draw and to continue that into adulthood, they need to see the adults around them draw. They need adults to draw with them. No matter what our “skill-level” or whatever hang ups we may have about being – or not being – “an artist,” if we want our children to draw/paint/knit/sew/make, we must be doing it too. And really – what a wonderful assignment for us as parents, you know? Of benefit to us all…

Essay on Notebooks, Creativity and Podcast Influences

Summary: essay on art vs. craft and my rambling journey to find out my truth on this subject.

I have a notebook in my car. It is a spiralbound Strathmore sketchbook. I bought it about six months ago when I ran out of gas receipts on which to write directions, radio ad URLs and to do lists.

It is a bit of a sad sketchbook. Its promise isn’t really realized because it stays in the car. I don’t usually bring it into the house. It is a little bit bent from being jammed in the pocket of the driver’s side door. I don’t use colorful pens, pastels or pencils on the pages. I usually don’t sketch in it. I haven’t decorated the cover. It is utilitarian and serves a function

This sketchbook, by some strange twists in my mind, reminded me of an unsolicited “pep talk” someone gave me about being an artist at a recent art quilt gathering. The well intentioned person had just seen the Eye Spy quilt.

: Finished top with borders

Somehow, this quilt was seminal for me. This very plain (as in non-artquilty) and ordinary quilt for The Child jolted me back into art quiltmaking.

I think I started writing this blog do just that – to record the process, to give myself some accountability and to inspire myself at a time when I was trying to build creativity into the few nooks and corners of a very full life and overstuffed schedule. I realized, that day, in showing the Eye Spy quilt that it worked!!! It took some time, but it worked!!!! In recording my process, I was ready to come back to working on some of my half finished art quilts.

At that gathering, I was trying to explain these feelings to the group and mentioned something I heard Wayne Thiebaud say when asked if he was an artist. His response was that he was a painter and that he would let history judge his work while he went on and painted every day. I love the fact that he has chosen to do his work and worry about what people think later.

Perhaps it isn’t humility; I don’t know the man personally, after all, but success that allows him to think that way?

In any case, my well meaning co-attendee said that I should say I am an artist and think of myself as an artist and then I would be an artist. She related her experience of doing the same thing and how it had changed her life.

I certainly want success with my quilts, but I don’t believe that by making stuff and saying *I* am an artist automatically makes *me* an artist. I don’t think that other people have to say that I am an artist to be an artist either. For me, it just doesn’t seem that easy.

Regardless of what I do I want to be happy. I am happy:

making my quilts
discussing and learning about art, design, creativity and quilts
making tote bags
layering paper and photos to make scrapbooks
responding to creative prompts
being inspired by other creative people
admiring the work of wonderful, creative podcasters and bloggers
etc.

Is this enough? For now, yes. Forever? Probably not. I am very cognizant of not wanting to ruin what I have by moving into being a professional artist. This is at the same time I am aware of the desire to expand what I do and publicizing it.

This whole discussion was brought to mind by a couple of episodes of the Creative Mom Podcast, to which I listened this morning. Amy has a very intellectual way of looking at her creativity, which I admire and think I share in some ways. I admire, as I have probably said many times, I am sure, her calm and even, yet enthusiastic tone.Her tone in itself is inspiring because of its poetry. Not literal poetry, but a poetic sound.

Art vs. Craft

In one of the podcasts, a mom Amy knows from schoolo asked her ( December 17, 2008 episode) after seeing her gauntlets, “are you one of those crafters?”

When I hear the word ‘crafter’ I think of plastic canvas and hot glue guns. Every tool and supply certainly has it’s place, but that is not me. I don’t think of myself as a crafter even though I live with the quintessential definition of craft: I want to surround myself and my daily life with practical, simple and beautifully useful items.

When I think of artist, I think of Wayne Thiebaud, Georgia O’Keefe, Michaelangelo, and Dorothea Lange. That is not me either.

I wonder where I fit into this creative landscape of color and creativity? I don’t know so I guess I will continue what I am doing and follow in Wayne Thiebaud’s foosteps by letting history decide.

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