Gallery

Monday, October 25, 2010

Connecticut Women Artists Exhibit

This news just in: Selected for Connecticut Women Artists' "2010 Members Juried Show"
are "Abstraction 1" and "Crow"!!

Gallery 53, home of the Arts and Crafts Association of Meriden at 53 Colony St., Meriden CT has hosted this exhibit in years past supported with a wonderful opening reception. Saturday, Nov 6, 2-4, this year, if you can attend it's always a treat. The exhibit will be up until Dec. 3.

Unfortunately I won't be able to be there. And, that's not the only reception in CT that day where my work will on
exhibit...and that I will miss...(it doesn't rain, that it pours). That day is also the Opening Reception at the Guilford Art Center for its annual Artistry Show (Nov 4-Jan 9 2011) which, this year, includes an exhibition of the members of Shoreline Arts Trail. This is the kickoff for the holiday season and promotes the Open Studio event on Nov 20-21. While I will miss the opening reception, I won't miss that weekend!

Saturday Nov 6, I will be in Houston at IQF participating in a Gallery Talk in support of SAQA's "Creative Force" which premieres then. A real bounty of riches!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Not exactly lemonade

but better.

On September 15 I revealed my contribution to Fiberaction's challenge inspired by the word stretch. I never was happy with the result...I stretched, yes, but was unsatisfied.

I probably should have filed "Time to Go?" away but it gnawed at me. Today I framed it with rick-rack (which always makes me smile) and mounted it on foam-core.

It might still be filed away...but I like it incrementally better and I'm smiling.

And that brings me to this current Fiberaction challenge, due on November 15. I finished it yesterday. And it makes me smile too.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Beyond Comfort

Yesterday, six days before the deadline (!), I posted my two entries for Beyond Comfort, a SAQA exhibit that calls for entries that push ones own personal artistic envelope. It sounded like a huge leap of members' faith to enter real experiments. It turns out that it is a very interesting path...one that I actually enjoyed.

This first photo is a detail of my first entry "Looking Forward/Looking Back". I was trying to challenge the definition of a quilt. Granted art quilts ARE a challenge in that they are not usually intended to be functional, but rather artful.

So. If you define a quilt as three layers held together by stitches, the implication is that the inside layer is insignificant, however useful a function it might serve. I started with the inside layer, the batting, being the star. I dyed wool batting in a freehand style that, not surprising to me, seemed to yield a landscape form. I layered the batt with cheesecloth, that I had dyed in the same way, on the front and tulle on the back. The whole was machine and hand stitched together. Then later embellished with felted wool, shells, and a few weathered sticks.

This second entry was an experiment several months ago. With a piece of white cotton I rubbed with crayon over the cracks in the cement floor of one of the Guilford Art Center's classrooms. That too yielded a landscape which I dyed by simply pouring dye pots over while holding the cotton in the air. It was later machine stitched.

Postscript added in the middle here: The title of this piece is "Promised Land". I'm not a formally religious person even though I studied religions at length in the long distant past. This Promised Land reference is to a more current place. The landscape that emerged on the cloth reminded me of the foothills of northern California where I was born and my mother's previous three generations hailed from. It was called the Promised Land quite seriously by many of the settlers coming to farm, pan for gold, build railroads and raise their families. I have fond memories there.

I really enjoyed both experiments and was bemused that my subconscious created landscapes. A nice break. I seem to be stuck in the "leaves and trees as metaphors for life" stage. So the bigger picture landscapes is a nice change for me. I guess the challenge to stretch worked....I left the leaves (for the moment) and used cracks in the floor to crawl out of a rut.