Art Quilt Tahoe

Last week a friend, Loris Bogue, and I attended a workshop with Valerie Goodwin at Art Quilt Tahoe. Valerie is a professor of architecture at a university in Florida with a very busy schedule, so we were very fortunate that she was able to come to the west coast.

Art Quilt Tahoe takes place at a beautiful setting, Zephyr Point, not far from my home. Here's a shot of the alpine glow you can see after sunset.

Unfortunately it was quite cold at the beginning of the session, but as the week went on, it started to warm up.

We did many exercises in line and composition and then went onto begin our personal projects. The exercises were very helpful. I find in art classes, I learn more from the critiques, and it was certainly the case in Valerie's class.

Here's two of my designs:

Here's two of Loris' designs:

Most students chose a city map of various cities throughout the world. Some students chose to do almost imaginary maps which became very interesting, almost abstract. I chose to use topo and geological maps and an image of an area here in Tahoe--Mt. Tallac.

Here is the piece so far. The background (sky) are the types of rock formations in the area. I hope to do some surface design on it to integrate it more, then will stitch the topo lines and streams in different threads. The middle ground is an image of the mountain--I am using tiny pieces of fabric and will stitch it down with black or violet tule. The foreground are the trees and valley, which may be painted or printed and modified. I'm not sure yet.

It was a wonderful experience. I am looking forward to taking Valerie's 5 day workshop in composition. I learned so much in such a short amount of time. But what I think was the most valuable was the opportunity to slightly see the world through Valerie's eyes. It really opened areas for me to explore.

The Process of Stitching

A friend shared an image of her smile with me. It was such a great image, I couldn't wait to stitch it.

I worked with the image in Photohop and determined the values. I blew up the image to be 24 x 48 and mapped out each value. Then I assigned colors to the values and traced them onto tracing paper.

I chose raw silk to stitch because it has a lot of body. I dyed it a deep blue/green because I wanted to have some of that color show through the stitching to influence the colors of thread I used. I knew this piece was going to be almost solid stitching, so planned to have a small border of the fabric showing when mounted to a stretched canvas.

I placed the tracing paper onto the silk and began stitching with the thread around each area to indicate the color to use to fill in that shape. Then I removed the tracing paper & filled in each area with thread.

Here's the finished stitching, which will be pillowcased and attached to a 1 1/2" deep stretched canvas with velcro.

Collaboration

My friend and fiber artist, Karen Rips, and I are collaborating to create a body of work we hope to present soon for a show we're calling

A View Within: Conversations.

Here's two of our pieces. Karen abstracts the image and I stitch the image:

We're calling these pieces Premature Infant 1. Karen's piece is 36 x 48 and mine is 36 x 36. This image was taken from an x-ray of a baby in the neonatal ward.

I'm anxious to get back to working on these images, but need to finish the two new floral pieces I'm presenting at the NY show.

Nor Cal SAQA Critique Meeting

Yesterday a group of SAQA members living in Northern California & Nevada had a critique session at the lovely home of Robin & Paul Cowley in the Oakland Hills. I was excited to visit their home again, after seeing it on the SAQA Studio Tour over a year ago. It is a fabulous place! This is a shot from their garden showing an incredible piece by Jun Kaneko:

Sandra Sider led a critique session in which many of us participated. It was very informative and valuable. I learned a great deal and we all benefited in hearing Sandra's & others' comments on our work. But I didn't get any shots of the critiquing--mainly because I was taking so many notes!

Before we had arrived at the Cowley's, some of the participants met Sandra Sider & Franki Kohler for lunch and visited a small gallery in Oakland where Franki is showing some of her work. Here is the info for the gallery:

Creative Framing & Gallery, 5015 Woodminster Lane, Oakland 94602.

We had a great time. It was a long day for me, but packed with great information and lots of fun.

Another Great Opportunity

This is a preliminary view of one of the new works that will be featured in The ArtQuilt Gallery-NYC.

www.artquiltgallerynyc.com/The_ArtQuilt_Gallery_NYC/The_Art_Quilt_Gallery_in_New_York.html

I'm very excited to show in a new, wonderful venue featuring art quilt artists. The previous artists have been Daphne Taylor, Noriko Endo and Carol Taylor, so I'm in really good company!

Painting With Fiber: Florals

begins January 24th and runs through March 3. I hope to see you there for the opening reception, Monday, Jan. 23!

An Introduction

I'd like to introduce you to my fabulous painting instructor, Phyllis Shafer (www.phyllisshafer.com). I've learned everything I know about art from Phyllis. She is a fine artist, an incredible teacher and friend.

She has her 3rd solo show at the Stremmel Gallery (www.stremmelgallery.com) in Reno, Nevada this month. What's so interesting about Phyllis' shows is the fact that her work is almost sold out before the gallery even opens for the reception!

Her show features paintings of the Great Basin, as well, as other Nevada locations. The opening reception is Oct. 20 at 6 p.m.

A Great Opportunity

I've been given another great opportunity to show my work in the magazine Quilting Arts. I hope you will check it out.