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!

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.

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.

Leaps and Bounds

"Leaps and Bounds" (detail)

Finished! First seen in my August 5 post "Between Inspirations" this little (roughly 40" square) quilt is ready for my Open Studio event in November. I think that an assortment of work is necessary to have on hand: small matted pieces, printed cards, smaller utilitarian pieces like this one, along with the larger more artful work.

By the looks of things one would surmise that I'm well organized...this piece is well ahead of schedule.

EXCEPT November is also the Sisters' exhibit in New Haven at Bru, my two-person show with Maureen Squires (mixed-media) at Friends & Co in Madison and my going to Houston to see "Creative Force", the SAQA exhibit that I was lucky

enough to get into (it'd be a cold day in Hell before I did not get to see it UP).

THEN I can kick back (as if) and participate in the Shoreline Arts Trail Open Studio the third weekend in November. That's just before American Thanksgiving when traditionally our home is the gathering point for family from Maine, DC and Winnipeg.

But I've got that horse WAY before the cart. Next week our little Friendship Force of Southern Connecticut is hosting an exchange from Varel, Germany and guess who is the Exchange Director? This next week is going to be such fun. We have events scheduled for each day ranging from tours of Yale, pizza parties, cookouts on the beach, a trip to a wonderful museum (Pequot Museum), to dinner parties. I have even arranged for the Good Humor Man to call on our Welcome Dinner. Nothing more Americana than the Good Humor Man!

Upon re-reading my post I think I need to relax, close my eyes and get centered ;^) I REALLY want to enjoy the journey.

Terrific Find! Eva Zeisel

One of my hero(ine)s is Eva Zeisel. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

Eva Striker Zeisel^[1] (born Eva Amalia Striker,^[2] November 13, 1906) is a Hungarian industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships.^[3] Work from throughout her prodigious career is included in important museum collections across the world. Zeisel declares herself a "maker of useful things."^[3]. Zeisel currently resides in New York where she continues to design furniture as well as glass and ceramic objects.

The thing is that most useful, everyday glassware is not marked with the designer's name. Which,

from my selfish point of view, is a very good thing. Once you've held one of Zeisel's glasses in your hand you will never be interested in holding another...and you will always recognize it even when it's hiding among myriad knockoffs.

Today on my trip to a Goodwill Thrift Store ....because it was near where my art quilt group met today....VIOLA!!! I came across Twelve!!! small juice glasses, sometimes referred to as sherry glasses.

I think I have cornered the market on them here along the CT Shoreline.

I love them. All sizes, with the Federal Co. swirl or without. Each is a wonderful, useful piece of sculpture.

Bravo, Eva! You are an inspiration! Can you imagine: Approaching 104 years of age AND still creating beautiful objects!

The grunt work....

This first photo is of "Consider the Kelp", one of my last year's completions.

But this year I'm including it in my work for Shoreline Arts Trail Open Studio in November. I took last year off because the Open Studio Tour in my own studio the previous years had placed a hardship on my family. (My husband and I share a home with my daughter and her family: two parents and two children and two dogs!) Those who have had or have youngsters at home know how busy a household can be!

This year I will camp out at the Guilford Art Center. There are casts of thousands who include the Center in their stopping points along the trail, so I have hopes of needing a supply, especially of the smaller work. I have decided to mount on foam core those under 24" in either direction.

This second piece is one of my submissions to Fiberactions' challenge for the word "communication". It's titled "Signs and Symbols".

I have decided just to whittle away the mountain of prep that needs to be done in order to get me situated at the Center in November. Today I got two mounted. Two down and umpteen to go.

Fiberactions: September 15

Fiberactions time again! On the 15th of very other month, each member posts the results of her challenge to create a 16" x 20" piece inspired by a particular word. This month the word was 'stretch'.

Pictured here is a detail of "Time to Go?" my offering. I chose to stretch myself by creating limitations and, in so doing, challenge myself to stretch my imagination.

The limitations were: one piece of fabric, one color of paint, one embellishment and thread.

I cut a freezer paper stencil, painted with charcoal grey, painted the distant birds from an antique Japanese stencil with greatly darkened grey, machine stitched and embellished with antique, silk covered buttons.