Hanging the Show

This is the official postcard for my show that starts this Saturday. I really like how my piece is front and center. The Delaplaine has seven different galleries and each one is dedicated to an artist, at least for this month. Sometimes they have group shows; last year they had a National Juried Quilt Show, juried by Karey Bresenhan, of Quilts, Inc.

Yesterday with the assistance of three very wonderful friends, I hung the show. This is a lot of work. Thank heavens I planned the layout in advance, so there wasn't any shifting pieces around to make them fit. I had thought about how high the pieces should be hung and wondered - do they all hang with their tops at the same height, or does the height vary with the length of the quilt. While I was a Art Quilts Elements I observed that they hung the work so that eye level was at the center of the quilt and the heights of the tops varied. "Eye level" is defined by various web sites that give instructions on hanging at 58" from the floor. This is definitely not my eye level but I know I am shorter than most people. Using 58" as the midpoint for the quilt, I could figure out how high the top should be, and marked this on the quilt bag.

Once we got familiar with the process and assigned duties, the whole thing went pretty quickly. And we all agreed that it looks spectacular. I will take pictures when I go back on Saturday for the opening reception, 3-5pm. If you are in the area of Frederick, Maryland during the month of May, I hope you can take the time to see the show. And right around the Delaplaine are several antique shops and yummy eateries. You could easily spend the whole day!

Art Quilt Elements and more

This past weekend I went to the opening of Art Quilt Elements in Wayne, PA. I also attended a one day SAQA conference held in conjunction with the opening. Both were excellent.

First, the show. This is becoming one of the premier art quilt events in this country, imho. The quality of entries is reflected in what is selected for the show itself. Fifty quilts were selected from the 600 entries by the jurors Jason Pollen, Deborah Warner, and Robin Schwalb. All have eminent qualifications for their roles as jurors and spoke at the conference. They reiterated things we artists have heard numerous times: have excellent photography, make sure the detail shot relates to the whole piece (in some examples shown, the detail could have come from an entirely different piece), composition and the elements of design are critical, and so on. I could have listened to them for way more than their alloted time. The keynote speaker was Sue Benner and it is always a joy to listen to her speak. Her topic was "Building an Artist Community" and she talked about the importance of having communities, not only for your art, but for your life.

Lisa Chipetine and Sandra Sider spoke about critique and technology and the importance of networking. The last session was small group meetings with AQE artists who were present at the conference. We could learn about their careers, their creative processes, and the particular piece that was in the show. Since there were quite a few of the artists present, it was an opportunity to absorb significant amounts of information. I also was able to put faces to names I had only seen online, always an interesting exercise, since nobody ever looks like what you think they might look like. I met several people who are regular readers of this blog and who gently chastised me for neglecting it, hence this post.

There is a catalog of the show available from the AQE web site for $30 (includes tax, shipping, and handling). It is a well designed catalog and worth getting (I bought 5*) even though catalogs never do justice to the work. You just have to use your imagination to visualize the vibrant colors and beautiful textural qualities in the work.

(* Four of the catalogs are for friends, but you probably guessed that.)

The "more" part of this post involves a new publication 1000 Artisan Textiles by Sandra Salamony and Gina Brown in which I have at least one piece. I haven't received my copy yet and I've changed computers since the original email so I don't remember which piece or pieces were selected for publication. I'll just have to wait and see. It's not just quilts, it's all kinds of fiber related works and it's available from Amazon.

The second "more" part of this post is about my solo show which starts on May 1 at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center in Frederick, Maryland. My work will hang in the Kline Gallery and I plan to have between 15 and 20 works. The opening is Saturday, May 1, 3-5pm and the show extends through Sunday, May 30. Everybody is invited! Hope you can come.

Hidden Agendas ©2008

35" x 42"

Not art

I have been at my sewing machine every day for the past month, but not making art. We have two chairs that are probably 35 years old, and the upholstery was wearing out. Especially where I had scrubbed it because of animal accidents. Yet the chairs were still in good condition and very comfortable. They sort of swivel and rock. So I thought I would make slipcovers for them. How hard could it be? Talk about famous last words....

Now I know why it costs so much to have these made. Being a novice at this, I went to the library and checked out several books on making slipcovers. Read them thoroughly. Only one of the three actually gave explicit instructions. The other two pretty much left out the steps getting from "Buy your fabric" to "Put it on the chair."

I started out by making a muslin cover so I could figure out where the difficult parts would be and learn how to handle them. Well, I figured out where the difficult parts would be but didn't solve how to handle them, at least not very well. When I got the slipcover fabric I bravely set off. The book said to make the seat cushions first, just for a psychological benefit. So I did. But the first cushion turned out way too big, and then I decided I should buy new cushions since why go to all this effort and use old cushions? I'll save the cushion cover til later.

Anyhow, after a lot of bad language, ripping out, frustration, and hair pulling, I finished one slipcover. I took it to chair #2 to put it on. I had used chair #1 as my model. That's when I discovered that the chairs were fraternal twins, and not identical twins. More bad language, but no more ripping out. On to the second slipcover. Which wasn't any easier, and even developed its own new problems.

But finally they're done. They're not perfect but they are pretty good. Slipcovers can't fit as well as upholstery, so I can live with the wrinkles. They look much better than they used to.



After I was about 75% finished with the second slipcover I discovered a website of a guy who sells step-by-step instructions of how to make slipcovers, geared towards the beginner. I was particularly interested in the "tips for first-timers". He suggested to not try to tackle a chair with an attached back cushion, wings, or curved arms. Check, check, and check, my chairs have all three. Probably better I didn't know that up front.



And here is Rosie, now 8 months old. She supervised from her comfortable perch, or helped by chewing the tape measure, pulling out pins, and knocking stuff off the table.

And now gotta get back to doing some art. The snow has melted and Spring is starting. Hooray!

More Snow Dyeing

This snow dyeing technique produces some unique markings, that's for sure. It's too bad it's limited, season-wise. Plus it takes a fair amount of space. I have to cover the pans to make sure the cat doesn't manage to get into them. After all, they are kitty litter pans, and she feels a certain ownership. So here I have these beautiful fabrics, which present the problem of how to use them. It would be difficult to overprint them and they don't seem to want to fade into the background. Front and center would make them happy, I think. So I thought that a good way to showcase these fabrics would be to dye some t-shirts also.

This blue one, which is nice, but not spectacular, will be my working-out-at-the-gym t-shirt. I can admire myself as I slog through my workout.

This second one I like a whole lot better. I used two different pans with different colors (obviously). The blue pan was the Brilliant Blue, with a little bit of Black Cherry and a little bit of Golden Yellow. I didn't mix the dyes so strongly this time, only 1 T per 1 cup of water. The second pan was mostly the Golden Yellow with some red and a small amount of blue. These pieces are to die for. Or is it dye for? Ha Ha. Sorry.

These next 4 images are all from the same piece of fabric and were in the same pan with the above t-shirt. It's amazing the variety of markings and colors that appear. And again these are fabrics that will have a difficult time playing with others, they are just too eye-catching.

Before the snow all melts I should try to do some with more dilute dye solutions to see if I can get subtler markings. I think I have some time, I'm betting there will still be some piles of plowed snow for another month.

Snow Dyeing and a Sweater

There has been a lot of discussion on the various dyeing and surface design lists about snow dyeing. I have always thought that this was rather a strange method of dyeing fabric since one of the basic premises is that the dyes need a temperature of at least 70 degrees to fix to the fabric. Snow is obviously nowhere near that temperature, so why use it? But at the moment we are overwhelmed with snow and I needed to dye some backs for quilts, so I thought I would give it a try. Right outside my back door is enough snow for just about the entire world to try out snow dyeing. In case you hadn't heard, we here on the East Coast, particularly in Baltimore, have had two humongous snow storms in the past week. This much snow is unheard of around here. And this season, we have had three storms of more than 20 inches of snow, an event never before recorded. For a region that normally gets 18 inches of snow for the entire season, this wallop has pretty much shut down everything. So, back to the snow dyeing.

A little research showed me the methods that people had used: pre-soak the fabric in the soda ash/water solution, wad up and place into the bottom of a large pan. Gather up the snow and pile it into the pan. Pour the dye solution over the snow. The snow forms a resist of sorts so that the dye hits sections of the fabric unevenly. Once the snow melts, then let the fabric batch overnight. I placed my snow-filled pan in a sunny window to speed up the snow melting process, but it still took many hours. The pans were on a slant so that as the snow/dye melted and puddled, the fabric was not soaking in the liquid.

I used some blue dyes that are at least 10 years old, mixed at 2 Tablespoons dye powder to 1 cup water. This is pretty concentrated solution. I wanted to see if I could get saturated colors because most of the examples I saw on the web were too pastel for my taste. This first piece is a Brilliant Blue and Black Cherry, both from ProChem. The Black Cherry was mixed at 1 Tablespoon in 1 cup. When all the snow melted on this one, I drained out all the liquid.

This second piece of fabric is Cerulean Blue, again 2 T in 1 cup water. For this one I must have had more snow or it wasn't in direct sun because it took much longer for the snow to melt and I didn't bother to drain the liquid. Maybe those more solid areas were soaking in the dye all night.

The results are really pretty nice, but I'm still not convinced it's worth the effort and the time involved. And the close contact with snow, that stuff is cold.

In December I blogged about dyeing some cotton yard and knitting a sweater. You can read about it here and here. I discovered that it's difficult to get even coloration on the yarn and I was worried about how it would knit up. Actually I like the slightly variegated look. Here is the finished sweater. It crosses over in front and ties at the side. I haven't had a chance to wear it anywhere yet. I like the patterning and once I got the hang of it, didn't have to rip out very much at all.

Now I've got another knitting project going. I like to knit while watching TV in the evening. Hand sewing makes my fingers and hands hurt, so I do this instead. It seems a shame to just sit and watch and let my hands be idle. I can glance up enough to keep up with what's happening. Except for Lost, and particularly when they air the previous week's episode with little explanations written out at the bottom of the screen. I call this "Lost for Dummies" because it helps make sense of the plot. Sort of.

500 Art Quilts

This new book will be available at the end of this month, 2 months ahead of schedule. I'm very pleased to say that I will have work in this book, although I don't remember exactly which piece or pieces they selected. Have to wait until I get my copy. There are 363 artists featured in the book and you can preorder it right now on Amazon:

The list price is $24.95 so the Amazon price is a pretty good deal. And if you buy more stuff, you can get free shipping, can't beat that. I get a small percentage if you purchase after clicking on this link and I appreciate that very much. It's too bad I can't that percentage on the stuff I order myself from Amazon, I'd be rolling in dough.

Right now I'm thinking about the month of May and the solo show I will be having at the Delaplaine Art Center in Frederick, MD. As it gets closer to the date, I will be posting more information. If you're going to be in the area I hope you can visit. Frederick is about 30 miles west of Baltimore on Interstate 70.

Filing

Putting stuff back where it belongs is always a challenge. It's much easier to plop it onto a flat surface somewhere and leave it for "sometime". Periodically those flat surfaces, also known as my work table, get so covered with stuff it's impossible to work. And I'm forced to do a clean up, which is a good thing. As long as I don't just move it around, like stirring the pot, which means it all comes back to its original spot. Anyhow, this isn't really about the stuff on my work table, it's about the little basket where I tossed the slides that came back from my show entries, in either a fat or skinny envelope. That basket was full of slides, and since I haven't entered a show with slides in probably about 3 years, one can only surmise how long it's been since I refiled them.

So I emptied the basket and pulled all the slides out of their little sleeves and sorted them. I have notebooks marked by year for slide storage. There is an archive notebook for anything before 1998, then 11 books going from 1998 through 2008. Each quilt has 2 pages of slides since I always shot a full roll of 36 on one quilt. It was easier to have lots of originals than to do one original and then have dupes made. As digital images became more and more prevalent, I began to take them also, but continued to shoot slides. Here is a blog post I wrote when I put in my last order for slide film, in April of 2007. (By the way, I cut up the quilt mentioned in that post.)

Obviously I stopped shooting slides because there are only 2 quilts in my notebook for 2008. It wasn't because I ran out of film because I still have 3 rolls left, stored in the freezer. I would get my slides processed by Fuji, using prepaid mailers. Then Fuji stopped processing their own film and had everybody send them to Dwayne in Parsons, Kansas. If you have Kodachrome slide film, Dwayne's is the only laboratory in the world that still processes it. Kodak stopped producing Kodachrome film last June and if you have some, you had better use it because Dwayne will stop processing it at the end of this year. He will continue to process other types of slide film.

It was always a little apprehensive waiting for slides to come back and wondering if I got the exposure right or didn't see some errant threads that were centered right in the middle of the detail shot. Or if the lab messed up. Several times the film cutter got confused because I shot the quilts on a black background and it couldn't tell where to start cutting. It was was by a machine and it would look for the change in color that signified an image, except in mine that signified the edge of the quilt. That meant the quilt was not centered in the slide and the left edge was cut off. I had to enclose a note that said the image was shot on a black background, please center. Then I figured out a foolproof method - I shot the detail first.

So anyhow, now I'm totally digital and I have a very nice Canon EOS Elan II film camera body that nobody wants. B&H Photovideo sells them for about $80, used of course. This is a camera I think I originally bought for $600. I will take it to the local camera shop and see if they will buy it. Photography students at the local universities often use them.

And slide projectors are becoming scarce also. It's really a dying technology. Someday we will have boxes and boxes of slides and no way to view them. It's really pretty amazing how quickly this change from film to digital has occurred. According to Wikipedia, the first true digital camera that recorded images as a computer file was manufactured in 1988. It took about 10 years for the technology to become readily available and affordable for ordinary consumers, and in 1999 Nikon released its D1, a 2.74 megapixel camera. From then on it was a race to see who could cram the most megapixels into their camera.

Winter Song

©2008

This is the last quilt for which I have slides, from March of 2008. OK enough history, time to do some art.

Winter Song detail

©2008

It's time

Christmas is over. It's time to get back to art. It's time to stop using all the Christmas prep as an excuse to avoid the studio. Of course, those were legitimate excuses: design Christmas cards, order cards, mail them out; purchase or make and ship presents for out of town family; purchase presents for intown family and friends and wrap them; make treats, lots of cookies and candies (short interruption for trip to ER to sew up thumb due to misuse of kitchen equipment); decorate tree, prepare meals, yada yada yada. I did spend some time in the studio but it was to sew labels and sleeves on finished quilts and make the storage bags. I'm on the last one and when I finish that there will be no more tasks that I can use to procrastinate. I will have to make some art.

At the moment I'm sort of devoid of inspiration and need a kickstart. Doing some surface design on fabrics always helps in that direction. Maybe some monoprinting with gelatin plates, or some soy wax batik (haven't done that in a very long time). Wish I had a foolproof method for getting up to speed....

What do you do?

Further adventures in knitting

Good thing I decided to knit one sleeve at a time. So far I've had to rip out three different times, for a total of about 30 rows. And it's not the kind of ripping where you can take the needle out, pull the yarn, and then pick up the stitches. With the pattern - knitting 2 together and yarn overs - I know I would never get it right. So I have to laboriously unknit one stitch at a time. Sigh.

While I was doing the research, I kept reading about AddiTurbo needles. Everybody raves about them so I did some more research to see if I wanted to purchase some. They are definitely not cheap. But it sure looked like I wouldn't have the problem of the needle unscrewing itself from the cable or the permanent loop in the other cable. It quickly became obvious that nobody was selling these beauties at a discount. All the web sites I checked had the same prices and even had the same charts. Must have some master site with the information that everybody is supposed to use. But I found this one site Bob and Nancy's Services that did free shipping, so that's a discount of sorts. I ordered them on Monday, they were shipped Tuesday, and arrived today. Pretty good deal.

I haven't been doing much art lately, for sure. I have a bunch of quilts that need sleeves, labels, and bags to hold them. Boring work, but at least I'm in the studio and I can listen to audio tapes. The label fabric that I ordered from Spoonflower arrived and I embroidered titles and dimensions for about 6 quilts, and those have to be sewn on. Maybe while I'm in the studio I will absorb some inspiration.

Adventures in Knitting

So I dyed yarn for a sweater, and found a pattern I really like at elann.com. It's a top down knitting pattern and I really like those because it nearly eliminates any finishing sewing, no side seams, and no sleeve seams if they can be knit in the round. This pattern is not real precise in its instructions and assumes that the knitter is fairly experienced. I thought I qualified for that until I got to this section:

Sleeves: Move sleeve-backs (underarm to back of shoulder) to one circular needle, and sleeve-fronts (underarm to front of shoulder) to a second circular need. Knit.....

Huh? I've used circular needles to knit in the round, but this use of two circular needles was new to me. I could not even visualize what this was talking about. Google to the rescue. I found lots of descriptions and videos of knitting with "2 circs". It actually seems easier than using double pointed needles, at least once you get the hang of it. But I couldn't find anything anywhere describing how to use this technique and knit two sleeves simultaneously. A little more searching revealed directions for knitting two socks on 2 circs at the same time. I thought I would try to adapt that to the sleeves.

This involves a lot of three dimensional thinking and my brain was clearly not up to the task. I threaded those stitches on the circs and they always came up in the wrong configuration - inside out or the beginning of the row was not at the needle ends or the whole thing was twisted. I struggled with this for a long time and it was not made any easier by the permanent loop in the one circular needle nor by the fact that Rosie the kitten thought all this yarn would be great to play with. Finally, I thought I had a workable configuration, and started knitting the sleeves. Disaster. Everything got tangled, I didn't put the right number of stitches on the separate needles so the pattern wasn't working out, and I finally surrendered. I'm knitting one sleeve on the 2 circs (notice how I've picked up the jargon), and it's going well. As long as I keep track of whether I'm doing a patterning row or a plain row. When knitting back and forth it was easy because the patterning row was the knit row and the plain row was the purl row. Now it's all knitting and I have to pay attention.

When I dyed this yarn I wasn't able to get even color throughout. I swooshed the yarn in the dye bath frequently and added the soda ash in batches and swooshed some more, but after I washed it I could see a definite variation in the color. I was concerned that it would look funny, like I had used different dye lots of yarn. But no, it doesn't because the variation is within the skein and it alternates lighter and darker. And it's really working out well - adds lots of depth to the patterning. I'm going to tell everybody it was intentional.

The last sweater I knitted I had to do a lot of reworking because I got the sizing wrong. Well, that and a lot of pattern errors and one sleeve knitted inside out. I certainly hope the sizing works out correctly on this one. I don't know if I have the heart to rip it all out and start over.

Keeping Busy

This is not a creative time of year for me. The days are dark and often gloomy, the trees are bare, and everything feels gray. I can't seem to get in the art mode, but I want to be in the studio. So what better time to clean the place up? I wish the horizontal surfaces weren't such magnets for stuff: magazines, fabric scraps, paperwork, stalled projects, yadda yadda. If I'm not diligent in putting that stuff away my work surface contracts into about 2 square feet. So I spent a day or so putting things away and dealing with paperwork. And I have several pieces that need the finishing touches - sleeves, labels, bags, slats. Boring work, but I can listen to audio books and the time passes quickly.

In the past I've made labels using t-shirt transfer paper. I've never been very successful with that stuff, and I think the papers have gotten old, because I was even less successful this time. I couldn't get a good transfer no matter how many times I tried. I had the idea to get them printed at Spoonflower, and created a jpg of the label with my name and address information on it, and uploaded it. I'm getting a yard of labels, which I think works out to more than 50. That should last for a long while. The title of the piece and its measurements will have to be added to each piece, and I could either write it out by hand or stitch it by machine using the built-in alphabet. Or I could even freehand write it out.

On one of my email lists there has been a thread about rejections. I've hit the trifecta this season with 3 (or maybe 4, is that a quadfecta?) rejections, all in a row. I'm not sure of that last one because I'm not 100% sure I even entered. It wasn't a show, so I didn't have to put it in the schedule, and I don't have a copy of the entry form. I intended to enter, but maybe I didn't carry through. I was never notified either way, and since I'm not on the list of people who did get in, obviously I didn't. Sheesh, I hate this CRS (can't remember s*^%).

Winter time is knitting season for me, and I searched for a sweater pattern that had more interest than a plain stockinette stitch. I found one with an intricate cabling pattern and I really liked it. Knitted up a test swatch and tried to follow the pattern. Yikes - too complicated. I would never be able to get it right and would constantly be tearing out rows. So I've found another pattern that's not quite so complicated (I hope). Ordered more cotton yarn from DharmaTrading and dyed it the other night. For this sweater, I thought the yarn should be all one color and so I used three skeins and immersion dyed them. I know why variegated colors are so popular - they're so easy to do. Even coloration is very difficult, and I have the results to prove it. You have to stir the yarn in the dye bath to distribute the color, but the more you stir the more likely the yarn is to tangle. So I have different shades of the golden brown I tried to get. The skeins have been hanging on the line for 36 hours now and they're still not dry. Then I will have the task of winding them into balls, which will have the added difficulty of keeping the yarn away from Rosie, the kitten, who thinks everything is a toy. Once I knit the sweater, if the variation in color is too obvious or doesn't look good, I can always over dye.

But the news is not all gloomy - yesterday I shipped High Noon off to its new owners in California. They are celebrating an anniversary and decided to treat themselves to the purchase of my quilt. I think that is an excellent way to celebrate an anniversary.

High Noon ©2005

We will be celebrating our Thanksgiving on Saturday again this year, since my daughter goes to her in-laws on the official T-day. It always feels weird to be cooking the turkey dinner when everybody else is still recovering from their celebration, or out shopping. So, whenever you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a great day!

One last thing. John Hopper, author of The Textile Blog, wrote a very complimentary article about my work last month. He writes about the entire gamut of textiles - quilts, tapestries, knitting, carpets, embroidery, and more. There are some very interesting articles on his blog (in addition to the one about me, of course).

Girlfriends' Weekend

Last weekend I spent a delightful 4 days with 6 friends in Chicago. These are people I've met at the Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio and have enjoyed their company whenever I've been with them. As part of this trip, I attended the opening reception of "What's the BIG Idea" at the Northbrook Public Library, where I have a piece in this show. I have family in Northbrook and it was a real treat to have them come to the reception and see my work hanging on the wall. It's an all media show, with mostly painted works, and mine is the only quilted fiber piece. I didn't win any of the big prizes, but there is always hope for one of the Viewers' Choice prizes.

In Chicago we stayed at the Silversmith Hotel, an historic building in the Loop, two blocks from Millenium Park. The staff treated us like queens and we tried to not make too much noise as we partied in our rooms.

We wanted to visit the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute but had to kill some time before it opened and so explored Millenium Park. This is an amazing place. Here is the description from their web site:

"Millennium Park is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design. The result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and the philanthropic community, the 24.5-acre Park features the work of world-renowned architects, planners, artists and designers. Among Millennium Park's prominent features are the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States; the interactive Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa; the contemporary Luri Garden designed by the team of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel; and Anish Kapoor’s hugely popular Cloud Gate sculpture."

I remember from my childhood that this area was railroad yards and parking lots, but in 1998 the City began construction of this park. What a change! We spent many minutes at the Cloud Gate, looking at our reflections in the highly polished stainless steel surface, and watching other people do the same thing. From one vantage point its curved surfaces reflect the skyline of the city along with the clouds in the sky. If you get close up you see your self contorted into very weird shapes.

We walked over the BP Bridge, designed by Frank Gehry, 925 feet long and serpentine in shape. There are panels that form the sides of the bridge and slope down to the ground and are an almost irresistible temptation to slide down. Slide marks from previous visitors attest to the fact that not everybody can resist the temptation.

We walked through the gardens which were showing the effects of late fall, and made me want to come back in summer to see them in full bloom. From the Park we ascended the walkway to the entrance of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute. This wing just opened last Spring and is another architectural marvel. We only visited a few of the exhibits, there is just way too much to see for a one day visit. We saw mostly contemporary art, both European and American and ate lunch in the gourmet restaurant.

On Saturday our goal was to attend SOFA - Sculptural Objects and Fine Art. I've heard of this show for years and never had the opportunity to see it. But first we had to get there, and that required a hike down Michigan Avenue, right past the old Chicago Public Library building. No longer a library, it now houses the Chicago Cultural Center and presents free art programs all year long.

From their web page:

"Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s first central public library, the building was designed to impress and to prove that Chicago had grown into a sophisticated metropolis. The country’s top architects and craftsmen used the most sumptuous materials, such as rare imported marbles, polished brass, fine hardwoods, and mosaics of Favrile glass, mother-of-pearl and colored stone, to create an architectural showplace. Located on the south side of the building, the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome ― 38 feet in diameter with some 30,000 pieces of glass ― was restored to its original splendor in 2008. On the north side of the building is a 40-foot-diameter dome with some 50,000 pieces of glass in an intricate Renaissance pattern, designed by Healy & Millet."

The mosaics were incredible, some with pieces as tiny as 1/4" across. We could have stayed for many more hours, but SOFA was calling. It was a long walk to Navy Pier and by the time we got there we were all in need of food and drink. After a delicious lunch, we finally got into the show. I've been to the American Craft Council show in Baltimore many times, and sort of expected something similar. At the ACC show, individual artists show their wares in 10'x10' booths. At SOFA, the artwork is displayed by the galleries that represent the artists in "booths" that resemble a gallery setting. Much more sophisticated in presentation. And much higher prices, it seemed. The people in attendance seemed to be divided into two categories: gawkers like us and fashionably dressed people who obviously had lots of disposable income. And they were disposing of it as there were many red dots.

Saturday night was deep dish Chicago pizza (yum, my favorite!) from Lou Malnati's I have frequently ordered pizza from them - they will ship it overnight FedEx, packed in dry ice. But it's never quite as good as the real thing, hot from the oven.

Sunday morning half of our group headed home early, and the rest of us spent the time walking in Grant Park, hoping to see Buckingham Fountain in all its glory. Unfortunately, even the the temperature was a balmy 70 degrees, the fountain had already been turned off for the season. We strolled through the park, then came back up along the waterfront.

And then it was time to leave and come home. What a fantastic weekend! We're already talking about our next jaunt. Maybe back to Chicago, or maybe someplace else. And next time I will remember to bring my camera.

Doings

Hmm, it has been a while since I last posted here, hasn't it. So I have several things to talk about today. Yesterday I went down to Washington, D.C. to spend the day with my friend Anita Kaplan. We went to the National Museum of the American Indian, the newest museum in the Smithsonian. The building itself is beautiful and the permanent exhibits have more information about American Indians than I had ever imagined existed. In this case "American" refers to the continental Americas, and not to the country.

But what was most interesting is the exhibit featuring the work of Brian Jungen, an Indian from British Columbia, Canada. To quote Paul Smith, the curator of the museum, "he begins with objects that are ordinary, useful, and comforting. When he's through, they are unique, expensive, and useless." Jungen takes objects such as plastic chairs, plastic garbage cans, golf bags, baseball mitts, suitcases, and Nike Air Jordans, cuts them apart and reassembles them into whale skeletons, turtle carapaces, totem poles, statues, and ceremonial masks. You can read more about the exhibit here and also see some of the sculptures.

Being a fiber artist, the piece entitled People's Flag really captured my attention. There isn't a picture of it on the NMAI web page, but if you follow the link to flickr you can see images that others have taken of the exhibit. The People's Flag is red, very, very red and is constructed of red items of mostly clothing. We could see sweaters, dresses, jackets, towels, blankets, bags, whatever. If it was red, made of fabric, and could be flattened into 2 dimensions, it was sewn onto this piece. Sizewise, it it immense. I think maybe 30 feet by 20 feet, although I may be way off. On the flickr site, there is one image that has people in it so that you can see the scale.

This exhibit will be up until next August, so if a trip to D.C. is in your future, I think you will enjoy seeing this.

After we had lunch, we went to the National Museum of Art East Wing. There we saw some of Matisse's cutouts, another exhibit of huge proportions. Also, Jasper Johns, Sol Lewitt, Mark Rothko, and a host of others. Many of these works covered an entire wall, and are inspirations to making very big art. I need a bigger studio. There was much more to see but we were tired and I was going to be going home in rush hour traffic, never a pleasant experience. So much to see, so little time.

When I got home a nice surprise awaited me. A copy of Quilts Japan arrived in the mail with a picture of Family Reunion, my Quilt National piece in it. Also pictured from Quilt National were Kathy Loomis' piece, which won the Quilts Japan Prize, and Anne Smith's piece, Best of Show winner. They only showed these three quilts from the show, so I'm very pleased that I'm one of them. The magazine leans more towards traditional quilting and other sewing crafts, with patterns and such, but since it's in Japanese, I don't get much from the text. There are some nice patterns for totes and purses, and I always like those. I might even make one, if it meets my stringent requirements for a purse. That is, it has to have pockets in the right places for my stuff.

And last but not least, here is a picture of my new kitten Rosie. In August my old cat Chuck finally succumbed to kidney failure and had to be put down. He was 16 years old and a wonderful pet. I knew I was going to be getting another cat but wanted to wait until after I had gotten all our planned vacations out of the way. Three weeks ago I went to the local SPCA and found this kitten. She was 10 weeks old at the time. And they were having a special - animals were free for seniors during September. "Seniors" was defined as anyone over the age of 60, and I was not ashamed to admit it. Otherwise she would have cost $100. Of course, when I took her in to my vet for more shots, it was $140, so in the long haul, that first hundred dollars is going to be a pittance.

Chuck was pretty old and slow, in addition to being ill, so I had completely forgotten how much energy a new kitten has. She dashes from room to room like a kamikaze pilot, crashing into walls and furniture as she slides across the wood floor. Any little item she finds on the floor becomes a new toy to be batted around until it disappears under the sofa or the refrigerator. I'm working on getting her to use the scratching post instead of my furniture and she sort of gets the idea. It's going to take a while I'm afraid.

Quilting Arts Magazine

I'm very excited. This month's issue of Quilting Arts Magazine not only has a picture of one of my quilts on the cover, I am also the Featured Artist. Quite an honor and it's wonderful to see my work in print.




Last weekend I spent 2 days with friends at our semi-annual fiber retreat. The location is in the mountains of Pennsylvania (although it's not really very mountainous, just very pretty). This weekend was devoted mainly to surface design. We brought t-shirts to decorate, we used rubber fish to make fish prints, I made a gelatin plate to show everybody how to make prints, several used Sunlight dish detergent to discharge, and of course some stamping. And some stitching went on also. What made this weekend so wonderful is that we all had 2 large tables of our own and there was still plenty of space in the room to walk around. At our previous retreat weekend, we were limited to 1 small table each and you had to turn sideways to negotiate the aisles. So this new spot is heaven. Can't wait until the next one in March! I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures to share.

Bragging

Not about myself, for once. This is about my sister, Mary Ann Shaw. She is the Chairman of the Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital Capital Campaign. She led the effort to raise $21.5 million to build a new children's hospital in Syracuse, New York. The hospital is named for its major donor, Tom Golisano, who contributed $6 million. The hospital is unique in its design. It's part of the Upstate Medical University and perches like a treehouse overlooking downtown Syracuse. There are 71 private rooms and the rooms are large enough for family members to spend the night. There are performance centers for visiting arts groups, a cafe, chapel, solarium, and outdoor porch. There is an art gallery for showcasing rotating shows from local artists, a family resource center, playhouses for toddlers and older children.

This is a short video that was prepared for the 8,000 donors who supported this effort. I hope you take the time to watch this, as it is truly inspiring. I am so very proud to say that Mary Ann is my sister.

Fun with an air pen

Summer is pretty much over, so sad. How come summer goes by so more quickly than winter???? I'm working on a new piece for a New Image group show. It's about 60"L x 48" W. The background piece is composed of gelatin plate prints with black-eyed susan leaves spaced more or less in a grid. I inked up the plate, put the leaf on top with the vein side up, then rolled the leaf with more ink. The fabric took up the ink on the plate but from the leaf only the veins made an impressions and the surrounding areas were left white. When the piece of fabric was completed covered with the monoprints, I decided there was way too much white for this to be a background fabric, and went over the white areas with pale washes of blue or purple or green. Much better, everything settled down. Then a little yellow for interest. The picture here is of the practice piece. I also have another piece of fabric that has the second imprints off the gelatin plate after I took the leaf off. The background color was mostly gone but under the leaf there was still enough paint for a good print. So I have companion fabrics that could easily become another piece.

My idea for the foreground was a large drawing of a fading coneflower. I used a picture I took several years ago and used one of the filters in Photoshop Elements to get the outlines. Since I wanted the drawing to be big, about 36" long, it wouldn't work to make a thermofax screen. The air pen seemed to be the (more or less) logical solution. I could print the drawing out onto several sheets of paper, tape them together, and then trace them onto fabric with the air pen. My last experience with the air pen was an exercise in frustration. I was using it to write out words and wasn't happy with the little blots and stuff I was getting when starting and stopping. And the scraping of the metallic point on the fabric was like fingernails on a chalkboard. This time I used one of the plastic points, which is a bit larger in diameter, but doesn't scrape along the fabric. And the little blots didn't detract from the drawing enough to bother me. So this experience was a whole lot more positive than the previous one.

Now I have these two pieces of fabric and am mulling over how I'm going to put them together. Right now the coneflower piece is rectangular, sort of, but I think it would be more interesting if I cut it to follow the shape of the flower and then sew it onto the background. After quilting I may rub some paint or paintsticks onto areas of the flower to emphasize them, but that's a ways off. I can think about it as I'm quilting and then decide if it needs it or not.

Yesterday I went to the opening of the National Juried Quilt Show at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center in Frederick, Maryland. This is a very nice art center in a very nice town about 40 miles west of Baltimore, right off Interstate 70. The show has 32 quilts in it and was juried by Karen Bresenhan, of Quilts, Inc. Many of the artists in the show, including me, have 2 or 3 pieces hanging, which is really nice because you can get a better idea of the artist's work when there are several pieces. There were prizes awards - best traditional quilt, best art quilt, best of show. There was really only one traditional quilt in the show, which of course won the prize, but this quilt would have won a prize even if there had been competition. Before the prizes were awarded, I picked the art quilts I thought might win (I mean besides mine), and picked out two. Obviously, the prize committee disagreed because they selected different pieces. The art quilt they selected is the one pictured on the link to the show.

The Miracle of Modern Medicine or...

did I beam onto the USS Enterprise in Star Trek? Last night I had emergency surgery for appendicitis. Less than 24 hours later I am home. It was diagnosed early enough (did I say my husband is a physician?) and so it was relatively quick and uncomplicated. I have three holes and a sore belly, but I can move around and eat fairly normally. No driving for a bit, which puts a crimp in my life right now. And I won't be able to use my boogie board when we go to the ocean next week.

Sorry, no pictures....

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday. She is 97 years old. I hope that I inherited those longevity genes. I know I inherited a lot of other things from her, for which I am very happy.



She lives in Chicago, a long way from me but we have webcams and can talk to each other with pictures and it's great. I wish I could be there today to celebrate. I used this picture to make a screen and printed us out onto fabric. She lives in a one room apartment in assisted living, so she doesn't have lots of room for more stuff, so I made this into a pillow. She can move it around and it won't take up much room, but every time she looks at it, she will think of me. How great is that?



So, Happy Birthday, Mom, and may you have many more!
Love,
Cathy

Chemistry Exercise Part 2

As promised, the second part of the dyeing exercise, using what Elin Noble calls "Jewel Tones". I used Fuchsia, Turquoise, and Sun Yellow (ProChem 108). The greens, oranges, and purples produced were clear and bright. These used only 2 dyes in combination. When using all three dyes, the results were less bright and moved into browns, some nice and some less so.



As I examined the results of the combinations of all three colors, I wondered how Elin came up the proportions of yellow, blue, and red that she chose. It certainly wasn't an arithmetic progress, like 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. And it didn't seem to be geometric, like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. I'm certain that it has much to do with the relative strengths of the dyes and that the numbers she came up reflect that. I'm just curious.

Part 3 of the exercise combines the earth tones and the jewel tones to see how they differ from the straight combinations done so far. I could really get carried away here but I'm going to just be content with what I have. And maybe someday I will take Carol Soderland's class.

Chemistry Exercise Part 1

I love the excitement of dyeing fabric and watching the wonderful colors emerge but I've never been very precise or scientific about the process. I have Ann Johnston's Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing
book and refer to it constantly, particularly for the dye concentrate formulas and occasionally to get a particular color. It's always been hit or miss, with the emphasis on the "accident" part. When aiming for a particular color, sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not.

I also have Elin Noble's book Dyes & Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric, which is also a great resource. I refer to her color pyramid with the percentages of yellow, blue, and red needed when I'm trying to get a particular color. She talks about "earth tones" and "jewel tones" and herein lies the basis of my chemistry exercise.

(I know I could take Carol Soderland's color class and end up with a marvelous resource of color recipes, but I know I will never be that precise when dyeing fabric. I'm just looking for generalities here and to see how the various primaries affect the final color.)

Part 1 - the plan is to use the "earth tones", which are somewhat subdued from the "jewel tones". I used the three dyes she recommends, or at least something close: Golden Yellow (Dharma 3, which is nearly orange), Light Red (Dharma 12), and Intense Blue (ProChem 406). The orange tendency of the Golden Yellow has a big influence on the final color.

I took her percentages and translated them into milliliters of dye concentrate, which I made using Ann's formula of 2T dye powder in 240ml of water (talk about mixing measuring systems, but I only have measuring spoons in teaspoons and tablespoons, and it's easier to use milliliters when calculating percentages.) I used fat eighths of fabric and labeled each piece according to the color it was going to get. I knew I had to get everything arranged ahead of time in order to not get mixed up. I used little syringes marked in milliliters to measure the dye concentrates, if not exactly, at least pretty close. Here is the color pyramid from earth tones:

This is not a very accurate color presentation, but you can certainly see how the yellow tends toward orange. The outside edges of the triangle are combinations of 2 colors only: red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red, with the points being the pure color. I find the colors on the inside of the pyramid much more interesting - these use all three dyes in varying amounts. It's equivalent to adding the complement of the color to the color to mute it somewhat. If I mix yellow and blue, I get green. Red is the complement. Or mix yellow and red to get orange, then add blue. Or mix red and blue to get purple, then add yellow. It was really interesting to see how little or how much of a color was needed to make a change. The color in the middle of the third row from the bottom is the brown that results from equal intensities of the 3 dyes. But not equal amounts, since red is about twice as strong as blue or yellow.

Part 2 of the exercise is to use the "jewel tones", which I mixed up last night. Those colors are Sun Yellow, Fuchsia, and Turquoise. I haven't rinsed those out yet, but I can see that there is a huge difference in the results. The colors are definitely more brilliant, like jewels. I have to be a little more patient before rinsing these colors out because turquoise takes longer to fix.

Part 3 of the exercise is going to be smaller in scope, because I could drive myself crazy here with all the combinations and permutations. But I am going to combine earth tones and jewel tones to get the secondaries (green, orange, purple) and the middle brown.

Then I will put all the information in a notebook along with color swatches and have a marvelous reference!