My New Floral Show at the Vision Gallery

Just got back from a quick trip to Chandler, AZ where my florals are on display at the Vision Gallery. It was so thrilling to see so many of my pieces together so beautifully displayed. Eric Faulhaber, the director, and his crew did a grand job of hanging not only my show, but at the same time hung the show in the Chandler Center for the Arts, ARTrageous XVIII. 

Both shows will be showing until January 18th. Hope you can drop by.

I'll post more images later, I promise.

New Show Coming Up

Flora: Paintings in Fiber will be showing at the Vision Gallery in Chandler in Arizona,
starting Nov. 1st, next Friday.

It's a great opportunity and the surprising thing is that it opens right after Karen Rips & my show of body imaging,  A View Within.  And the reception coincides with the reception of ArtQuilts Year XVIII, ARTrageous, in the larger Chandler Gallery.

I'm looking forward to seeing most of my florals all together in such a wonderful setting. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity. 

Hope you can make it! It will be great to see you there!

More Images

Karen's husband, Ted, took much better photos so I'm borrowing a few. This view gives you an idea of how wonderfully our show flows. Eric Faulhaber, the coordinator & his staff did a great job of layout, lighting and hanging. 

Karen & I are posing with Eric. He and the board of Vision Gallery, should be commended in being one of the few venues that make a concerted effort to present and promote fiber art. 

This is a shot of the largest space, showing some of our first work. Vision Gallery also carries some incredible sculpture, ceramic, glass works and jewelry. The placement of these pieces really enhanced our work, matching color and often shape.

It is such an honor to have our debut at Chandler's Vision Gallery and so thrilling to see our work all together in a gallery setting. We hope it arouses interest in Chandler and surrounding areas and the fiber community.

Most of the shots were taken Friday morning but here's a shot taken during the reception.

I'll post more photos later in the week. I hope you get a chance to see it before it closes Oct. 26th. For those on the East Coast, we will be having a show in November at Gallery ArtTimes Two in Princeton, New Jersey. Here's some information about that show:

Vision Gallery

I just got back from a quick trip to the Vision Gallery in Chandler, AZ, where Karen Rips & I debuted our new body of work, A View Within. It was an exciting weekend and something I'm still processing.

But before I share our incredible experience, I'd like to talk a little bit about the Vision Gallery and their  director, Eric Faulhaber. Eric has been a great promoter and champion of fiber arts for a long time and Vision Gallery has been home for an art quilt exhibition for 18 years. This year's exhibition, Art Quilts: XVIII, ARTrageous Art Quilts runs November 1 through January 18, 2014.

Eric and his board bring many fiber shows to the Chandler community and continue to be important  figures promoting fiber arts. As fiber artists, we are especially grateful for the opportunity to present our diverse, interesting, ever changing world. Fiber venues are rare in our nation, unfortunately, and having the opportunity to be apart of Vision Gallery's fiber presentations is a great honor.

I'll share some of the work with you today and in future days. You can also visit our blog, A View Within  and Karen's blog, Fiberartmusings.

If you're not familiar with our work, Karen abstracts the image and I present a representational view.

 Side of Head.

Lynn's Spine III, Frieda and Backache

Vision Gallery is a beautiful gallery featuring highly skilled artists and craftsmen, presenting ceramics, glass, metal sculpture, jewelry, and of course, fiber. The staff, Sherry, Paula, and Justin are friendly and helpful and director Eric created a magnificent presentation with our work. We are so pleased with the placement, lighting and flow.  We couldn't have asked for a better debut for our body of work, A View Within. 

I hope you get a chance to visit Vision Gallery and experience it for yourself. Our show will be running through Oct. 26th.

The Journey

Recently I traveled to Southern California to combine my pieces with Karen Rips' work, my friend & collaborator for our show, Interpreting Body Imagery with Fiber at the Vision Gallery in Chandler, AZ this September.

It was so great to see our body of work all together on Karen's table! We had worked for almost 2 years developing our pieces and it was so gratifying to see them. As our collaboration progressed, our work grew in complexity and diversity.

And as our collaboration continues, so does our experimentation. Karen continues to push the envelops of discharge, overdyeing, shibori, and texture creating processes through shrinkage and manipulation. Check out Karen's blog, Fiberart Musings.

I'm experimenting with different stitching substrates to create work capable of hanging off the wall, in 2D and 3D presentations. Currently, I'm working on 14 MRI slices stitched onto screening, which I'll talk more about in future posts.

An Interesting Article

Marital Bliss

This is a very short post, but thought you might enjoy seeing an article by Brenna Barks of Wornthrough about the current show,  Milestones: Textiles of Transition, at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. It's running until the 21st.

 Hope you get a chance to see the show--it's quite a diverse collection of works.

http://www.wornthrough.com/2013/07/03/textile-milestones/

Debuting Some of the New Collaborative Work

 Karen Rips , my friend & fellow fiber artist, and I have been collaborating on work we're entitling,  A View Within for the last few year. The body imaging we've chosen to represent are shown in representational and abstracted formats.

I  free motion embroidery the original body images using combinations of several threads, stitched through 1 needle, on hand-dyed silk, then heavily stitch the background with monofilament thread.

Karen abstracts the images, using many processes, including discharge, over painting, dyeing, shibori,  and/or printing along with distressing & shrinking the fabrics.  She heavily machine and hand stitches, using various kinds of threads.

Recently, we've been writing proposals for venues throughout the country.

We thought it might be interesting to also share with you some of our work, in case you haven't seen our blog, A View Within. So we'll be sharing with you every once in awhile our work.

This is part of our series, In Utero. It features the above MRI and sonograms watching the development of 2 children. Here are some more pieces of that series:

A New Apprentice

I just couldn't pass sharing this. A fellow fiber artist, Betty Amador, sent this to me, knowing I'm a cat lady.

Great News

In the last few months Karen Rips and I have been seeking venues to show our collaborative venture, A View Within. 

We have received a show in at the Vision Gallery, Chandler, Arizona. And to my surprise, they were interested in my floral work as well. 

This was taken from their exhibition website page. We're very excited to have our work seen as a whole collection and thrilled to be featured in this wonderful venue. We'll have more information soon.

New Work Debut

This piece entitled, 1 of 3 Female A, is part of a new series exploring the use of line to tell a story. This piece has a companion piece, 1 of 3 Female B, speaking to our nations' weight problems, where 1/3 of the population are obese. You can see this piece at the upcoming NorCal SAQA Regional exhibit at the Roseville Blue Line Gallery. 

This piece is overdyed decorator fabric stitched with polyester threads and measures 27" x 60".

Here's the show postcard:

The show opens June 7th through July 13th. The reception is Saturday, June 15th, 

reception 6-7 (members only) 7-9 (for public)

More Wonderful Textiles

One of my favorite works in the Milestones: Textiles of Transition is by Mary Mazziotti. Called,  Death Gets Married, it depicts death as a man and various wonderful scenes where he searches for a bride, finds, marries, loses her, then begins looking again. Here's two of the images from the series:

Another series I liked was by artist Linda Friedman Schmidt, of hooked discarded clothing. They are called, The Scream Within, Push and Prisoner of Childhood.

And finally,  another moving piece, Accretion, by Beverly Rayner was a full room installation. A cloak made of cards, mementos, photos and newspaper clippings following a family. Oddily enough, Beverly found all of these items chronicling lives in scrapbooks she purchased at a garage sale:

I hope you get a chance to visit the show at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles before it closes, July 21. And check out their future shows, which are to be exciting, as well. (I can't wait to see Fiberart International 2013 in the fall and Quilt National with my friend & collaborator in our ongoing project, A View Within,  Karen Rips, in the spring!)

More About Milestones: Textiles of Transition

Sunday I attended the Opening reception of Milestones: Textiles of Transition, which runs through July 21st. It was grueling drive (4 hours each way from my home in Tahoe) but it was well worth it.

Above you see the entrance with, Forever Yours, a wonderful piece by Susan Else.

This shows my piece on the left and some wedding ring quilts from the museum's collection as well as a private collection.

Arriving a little early, I was able to photograph a few works before our artist walk & talk began. In the foreground, you see Collateral Damage, by artist Victoria May. On the wall you see The Last Year, by Deidre Scherer, that portrays the final year of an elderly woman. Below is one of the pieces, April 1968.

And here's a photo of me in front of my piece, taken by my friend Linda.

You can read some of the press coverage here:

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/arts/2013-06-01/museum-gotta-see-um/1769420.html

http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/usa/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=119547

More photos to follow.

An Experiment

I tried something new this week. I had wanted to experiment with transparency for sometime and thought I'd be using silk organza. But I found this heavy polyester coated vinyl screening and wanted to try it. I traced the image I wanted to stitch, an MRI of a woman, onto a film like Aquafilm, placed tissue paper under the film so I could see my stitching lines, and stitched, using my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen. It was slow going with the thread often getting wrapped around the bobbin case, but that was easily remedied.

I am stitching here with 3 threads, using the dual cone holders on the machine and one to the side. I'm really enjoying mixing the threads and creating new, more complex colors by combining threads through one needle.

After soaking the piece in water to dissolve the film, and hours of picking out the left over tissue paper, my experiment is finished. I'm looking forward to expanding--trying different materials and subjects.

This is a detail shot and below is the full piece. Unfortunately, I had intended to enter this piece into the

NorCal SAQA show at the Blue Line Gallery this summer, but I didn't realize the size restrictions (it's a little too long). Hopefully, it will make it to another venue, along with some other experiments.

Two Pieces

Intimate Spaces

Last year I was invited to enter the Dinner at Eight group show, which traveled to two or three venues in the U.S. This was my entry. It's stitched with pearl cotton thread. I had showed it in an earlier post, too.

This year's theme was Exquisite Moment. I struggled with what that meant and how to portray that within the format of 24" x 60". I finally came to a decision of using nature--for nature is exquisite.  I chose a magnificent, ancient juniper that grows right next to Hwy 50 in Meyers, CA, a very small town near South Lake Tahoe. People drive by this magnificent tree and take little notice of it's grandeur and beauty.

As you can see, I'm partial to yellow/ green--and my very favorite color combination at this moment is yellow/green and blue/violet. It's painted with textile paint and will be quilted with monofilament thread.

Here's my submission, Ancient Juniper (this photo was taken prior to my quilting, sorry):

You can see this piece at the Long Beach Quilt Show this summer or Houston's show in the fall.

New Show

This is part of the press release for a show I've been asked to participate in, Milestones: Textiles of Transition. It sounds really interesting, doesn't it? 

I love the work of Susan Else and Diedre Scherer and have started researching the other artists' work now. 

I look forward to seeing all the different art forms come together in such a diverse group of artists and feel very lucky to be apart of the show. The reception is June 2. Hope I see you there.

Milestones: Textiles of Transition

I am so fortunate to have been asked to participate in Milestones: Textiles of Transition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Deborah Corsini, the director, is curating the show, featuring antique and contemporary pieces. The show runs May 8 through July 21. The reception will be 2-4 on June 2, where many of the artists will be discussing their pieces.

My piece, Marital Bliss, will be traveling there from show Joetta Maue's show, down to sleep.

Hope to see you there!

more on 'down to sleep'

I was so pleased to see some images posted by Joetta Maue on her curatorial blog, 

http://connectivethread.blogspot.com/

showing our work in down to sleep. 

It's still in Lawrence, Massachusetts until April 12th at the Chester F. Sidell Gallery, so catch it, if you can. A very diverse show, it has large installation pieces, 2 and 3-D works that appeal as eye & tactile candy.

Here's a few additional images she shared:

Marital Bliss

I especially loved this piece by Bren Ahearn:

a friend's foot

A friend was kind enough to share her foot's image with us. Karen Rips and I are continuing to work on a series, A View Within. You can see our progress here: http://aviewwithin.wordpress.com/

As you can see our friend, Lisa,  has had a great deal of trouble and pain. We appreciate her generosity in sharing her image with us.

down to sleep catalogue

The down to sleep catalogue is now being offered on Joetta Maue's blog.  

Here's the link: http://littleyellowbirds.blogspot.com/2013/02/down-to-sleep-catalogue.html

I can't wait to see mine! And I'm so pleased to see that Joetta used my page on her blog. 

What a thrill.

down to sleep, part 2

                  

Down to Sleep

An exhibit curated by Joetta Maue

Chester F. Sidell Gallery

March 1 - April 12, 2013, Opening Reception: March 1, 2013, 5-7pm

The bed is a powerful locale in our daily life - with most of us beginning and ending our day here. We experience our most intimate moments of vulnerability, love, passion, sadness, and weakness here.  Most of us begin and end our life in this place that is piled with soft sheets and pillows. As a metaphor we can experience all the most significant emotions of human life in this one simple place of our daily life.  This exhibit is work that explores this liminal space with contemporary fiber practices.

Participating Artists:

Bren Ahearn, Caroline Kirton, Eunkyung Lee Hagar Vardimon, Jenne Giles, Jen Pettus, Jody Oesterreicher, Julia Elsas, Karri A Dieken, Kristin La Flamme, Laura Bisagna, Laura Mongiovi, Marissa Fisher, Marissa Lehner, Mary Goldthwaite-Gagne, Maureen E Patrick, Micha Michelle Melancon, Michelle Urbanek, Paula Chung, Rebecca Fricke, Sabina Hahn, Sherry Aliberti, Susan Lenz, Susan Moss, Tamar Stone, Tom Whitton

For more information contact joettamaue@gmail.com or visit essexartcenter.org