It's Viewpoints9-3 Reveal again!

I guess my blog would have been retired by now if it weren't for my Viewpoints9 posts.  This rotation Lin Hsin-Chen posed her challenge:  Employ text.

Apparently several of the group don't 'do' text and for them it was a bit of a 'job' to find the joy in this cycle.  Not so much with me.

I like text, especially foreign text.  Text that doesn't necessarily mean anything to me, it just looks interesting.  Because of this, I collect text...so far the collection is fairly limited to English, French, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

I am working on a series within this V-9/3 cycle:  Exotic.

This past several months the news has been full of extraordinary, very disturbing images of failed attempts by masses of individuals and families trying to flee war and poverty, no matter the perils.  The image I can't erase is a beachside on a Greek isle, mounded high with piles of color-filled clothing, sprinkled with life-vests.  Detritus washed ashore from failed attempts to cross out of North Africa to hoped-for security in Europe.

With this imagery in mind I searched my stash of text.  It was from this collection that I found a piece...a vintage, rough linen sack with cursive French.

Jumping off the fabric was 'le journey' and I knew where I was going.

Combining African fabrics with this linen, I built an island based on the traditional log cabin quilt block to underscore mankind's most basic and longed for right:  HOME.

Be sure to hop over to Viewpoints' blog to see how the others answered Hsin-Chen's challenge.

detail

Greek Isle: Le Journey 40"x42"

A thread runs through it

Here are some photo notes from PIQF in Santa Clara CA this past Thursday where I 'booth sat' the SAQA table, chatting with whomever would  ;^)

We are visiting in CA visiting Martha Wolfe and some other friends and I was able to spend a day with Martha at the PIQF show.  Great fun!

I'm on my husband's laptop and not particularly adept...where, oh, where are my notes with quilters' names?

I do know that the second one is Hsin-Chen Lin, third is Susan Lee, fourth is a detail from one of several Betty Busbys'.  Apologizes to the others!!

Viewpoints9 Challenge #3

Seven Sisters: 18”x24” artist dyed, painted and stitched

Our third challenge was posed by Lin Hsin-Chen: "Horizon" refers not to a real line but to the infiniteness of the line which can only be perceived by feelings.  Therefore, we should not search line, but rather find a way to perceive the line.  Lines are indeed a medium that can spark human beings' creative genius, as well as their impulse for communications, by which the texture of knowledge is born.

Nature is separated into upper and lower sections by the horizon, generating spatial vocabulary and dialogues.  Humans unknowingly come to accept the linear attributes captured in time and space, and meanwhile some sense of awakening, some sort of subtlety, also arises in their hearts.  Yet, where on earth do these feeling come from?

Delicate lines carry emotions and expressions, and also other aspects than that should be explored.  I want to challenge all kinds of prospectives about lines and discover the touching consonances and fascinating textures composed by lines.

I started with ‘horizon’.  I didn’t get too much farther in my thinking with ‘line’.  As I began thinking about horizon, with ‘lines’ in the back of my brain, I began looking at the heavens.  In my research the words Astronomical horizon had captured my imagination.

I’ve always been intrigued with instances of groups of people, quite separate geographically and culturally, coming to very similar places in their descriptions of their environment, their explanations of the outside world and their mythologies.  While I was looking heavenward metaphorically, I remembered that many peoples have similar stories of the spirits and deities that reside in the heavens.

Pleiades, for example, is know as “seven sisters” to Australian Aboriginal communities and the Nez Perce of North America, “daughters of the night” to the Berber, and “seven sisters-in-law and a brother-in-law” for the Ben Raji of Nepal.

We are all similarly hard-wired with a need to survive.  To survive we must understand our environment and, sometimes, that means we impose meaning on natural phenomena.

Across the world peoples have drawn imaginary lines in the sky, describing creation tales of morality and explanations for earthly people, and, of course, those that navigate the globe.

Be sure to check the Viewpoints9 blog for other, sure to be interesting, interpretations of Lin Hsin-Chen's challenge.

post-script:  You might remember seeing this fabric pictured as it was being dyed.  The post was Dyeing in someone ELSE's yard on Sunday August 5, 2012