There and Back Again, a Hobbit’s Tale (or some equally long movie saga reference!)

…so where did we leave off?  Oh yes, little Nell was tied to the railroad tracks…or was it poor Pauline found the brakes had gone out and she was just about to go over the edge of the cliff…or Frodo found himself in some perilous predicament with Gollum in the foreground looking duplicitous?

Okay, yeah, it’s been a while since I posted.  And really, what’s the point of rehashing for the sake of history; let’s see if I can recall for the highlight reel…starting most recently.  As of late Sunday afternoon, I finished the fourth of four pieces for the Kentucky State Fair, and they were delivered with 20 minutes to spare!  The Fair has been my big motivator for an annual creativity push for the last several years.

Having achieved all that I had ever set out to do last year – have one of my creations highlighted in the big glass display case – I decided not to enter anything in the Textiles division this time.  Plus, why not move over and see what happens for someone else in the category I’ve competed in these last five years, Open Technique Art Quilt.

Instead, I’m now working to make inroads in the Fine Arts division as part of my bigger scheme to illustrate the connection between art and craft.  Sure, you hear “Arts & Crafts” all the time, but what’s the point of making such a distinction between the two?  But that’s a whole other discussion…have I gone there already?

Anyhow, the Fine Arts division has five fiber categories for creative textiles, four of which I entered.  Blah, blah, blah…yeah, enough of all that, let’s see already!  Okay, so you may have already seen one of the pieces earlier in this blog, which is the one from the Art Quilt Group woven challenge – not the collaborative fish, but the other, long piece with raised circles on it.  Scroll back through the older posts if not.  [One day I intend to add a gallery to this blog…won’t that be nice!]

This is the last piece I finished.  It kept me up until 2:30 a.m.…couching 22 different colored yarns for emphasis on the petals.  This was my most spontaneous piece, and probably least like the works I’ve been doing lately (dimensional), although the yarn and surface embellishment relate fairly closely to my Fair entry of 2007.

I started by quickly sketching the flowers with water-soluble crayons on a piece of hand-dyed fabric and added water with a paint brush to make the crayon marks blend.  Then I went wild with oil pastels.  I was working outside in the hot sun, so the water had quickly dried, the pastels were melty, and they applied very nicely.

I’ve heard it’s sometimes helpful to choose a title before starting a work, and even though I don’t usually give names to my pieces, I decided from the beginning this one would be called “Violent Flowers.”  Having the name in mind kept me on track in choosing colors and using unusual patterned prints, and it helped me stay loose in my approach.  Also, something about knowing I was creating for the Fine Arts division was freeing in that I didn’t worry about raw edges and free motion quilting technique, which can make a difference in textile judging.  When it comes to free motion quilting, I’m SUCH a novice.  Don’t even ask about consistent stitch length.  My approach was somewhere between free motion quilting and thread painting, rather frenetic, really.  Whatever, I was happy with it in the end.

Here’s another piece.  It’s a bit of a departure.  I’ll let the picture tell it’s own thousand words, except to say the raised electronic pieces are parts two broken VCR/DVD players.  There are some really interesting bits inside if you open those babies up!

Have I mentioned the hardware store as a source of materials inspiration?  I knew I wanted to include wire, and I imagined I would have to buy lengths of several different wires to get a variety of colors.  As it turns out there such a thing as “sprinkler wire.”  I don’t know if that’s meant to be for yard sprinklers or fire suppression systems.  In any case, it comes as a black cable, but inside there are seven smaller wires, each in a different color!  And, once I started opening the black casing, I found there’s a piece of thin twine built in that, when pulled, neatly cuts the casing open for access to the seven 18-gauge wires.  For $20 I got 50 feet each of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black, and white.  That might not sound exciting for traditional quilting, but if you’re exploring art quilting, dimensional work/sculpture, or adding structure, this might be the bonanza you’ve been looking for!

In the piece above, I kept the various colored wires straight and wove them into the background mesh (plastic fencing) and over the quilted pieces to create stability/structure, but with the twisting and bending options, the possibilities are nearly endless.  Note that the piece has lots of open space between the fabric squares, and the white is just a background the piece is laying on.

The final piece I entered is a sculpture.  I didn’t get a great picture before turning it in, so we’ll come back to that in a later entry.  I really like the flowers, but the sculpture is the piece de resistance.

So, Fair entry discussion behind me, what else?  Well, there was the gallery talk by Penny Sisto at the Carnegie in New Albany, Indiana.  She has completed a series of art quilts featuring native Americans.  The gallery was packed with visitors!  Accompanying Penny in the talk was a native American who spoke about some of the imagery depicted.  It was difficult to hear the entire presentation due to microphone technical difficulties, and the crowd made it challenging to see the pieces as they were being presented, but eventually there was enough room to get a closer look as the throngs moved to the other end of the gallery.  And, as a bonus, I got to have lunch afterward with my sister and AQF’s Elaine and Marilyn.  It was a pleasant little getaway.

In other news, Art Quilt Group was canceled for Monday due to city-wide power outages resulting from a sudden freak wind storm that brought down lots of tree limbs, whole trees, and many electrical lines; however, there may be the possibility of rescheduling the group to next Monday.  I hope so. I look forward to group each month.

Well, that’s way too long…and I’m not even sure I said anything!  Let’s just wrap this thing up.  I did mention “saga” at the beginning….

By the way, little Nell gets rescued from the tracks, poor Pauline escapes in the knick of time and doesn’t go over the cliff, and Frodo…well, he heads west to the undying lands.

The End.  Roll credits.