So I’m curating a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibit, Food for Thought.  That’s not as fancy as it  sounds–it means I am in charge of the paperwork.   In preparation for the exhibit being at the National Quilt Museum, someone else in SAQA asked for the Artists’ Statements about their pieces and a brief bio on each.   So I put together a quick email to request the latter from each of the artists (we already had the former).  I was going to put my bio, but thought ugh and boring, so made one up.  So here’s my ideal “short bio” for your entertainment.  Please note the website, Gallery and magazine cover are fictional!   (At least I hope they are, I made them up!)

Yosemite Sam
Boondocks, California, USA
YosemiteArts.com

After a career as a hunter of pesky wabbits, Yosemite Sam discovered his true calling as a mixed media artist.   His life tracking wabbits and other vermin in the woods still informs his portraits of nature and choice of materials which include mud, rabbit pelts, spent cartridge shells and red plaid wool shirts.  From the soft glow of dawn to the bright light of noon in the high desert to sparkling stars, Sam’s work exudes a sense of time and place.

Sam has exhibited in galleries across the West, including a one-hunter show at the innovative Sierra Spelunking Gallery inside a cave in the mountains.  His break-out work, Bugs B. Renaissance, was featured on the September 2023 cover of Sunset magazine. His work has been widely published and is in public and private collections.   A confirmed bachelor, he is now a confirmed vegetarian.   You can find his work, blog and recipes at his website.

I believe that the fictional gallery recommends patrons arrive with flashlights and/or Petzl headlamps.  ENJOY!   I’ll be back with new work (class samples) soon, I hope!

Hi everyone!  I’m digging out from under from the wonderful trip to England with Eli.  Laundry is done, school has begun (meaning there is more of an order to our days), and the To Do list and list of things to blog about has gotten ridiculously LONG.  So I’m going to take things more or less by external rerquirements.  First up is the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) Annual Auction which supports the ongoing efforts for this wonderful organization to promote the Art of the Quilt.  The Auction begins September 15, so mark your calendars!  You can read more about it here.  SAQA put out a call for folks to submit their Dream Collections–sets of six quilts they would buy if funds were endless.   I decided to play and created two collections, Transported and Portraits.

Transported is about quilts that take me to another place:  just looking at them my mind starts to weave a story about the imagery.

My SAQA Dream Collection; click this image to see larger.  To see on the SAQA website it is at the top of page 2, follow this link.  To view the quilt, after you get to the link, click on the image of the quilt.  To learn more about the artist, click on their name to visit their website.

The Auction has four parts:  the first three are online Reverse auctions a week apart.  The price is highest on the first day, $750.  You look at your budget and decide what donation to SAQA you can afford to get that quilt.  Each day, the price goes down a bit.  Most quilts sell during the week-long auction.  The next week, the quilts in group  two go up for auction following the same process, and ditto for the third week.  The quilts in the fourth part are on display at International Quilt Festival which begins in late October in Houston.  As with the online auctions, the price is highest day one and goes down.  Do you risk waiting another day?  I’ve been lucky to purchase a quilt at a price I can afford (while wondering why no one else snapped up these favorites early in the auction) the past two years.  Will I be that lucky this year?   You’ll have to browse the four auction pages to see which quilts are being auctioned in which section.  Here’s the SAQA link for How the Auction Works.

My second collection is one dear to my heart.  I think accurately portraying a person or animal is about the hardest thing there is in art, not just capturing the physical image, but the personality, too (both of the individual portrayed and of the artist).   Here’s Portraits, at the bottom of the page in this link:

Portraits in a wide range of styles; click on the picture above to see it larger. View the collection on the SAQA Website, click  here, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Which quilts would be in your dream collection?  Has one of the SAQA members put together a dream collection you’d love to have in your home? Enjoy the visual feast!

This autumn I will embark on something new:  curating a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibit titled “Food!”  That actually sounds a lot more glamorous than it is:  essentially, I will be the behind-the-scenes person coordinating entries, notifications, getting the quilts, communicating with venues and such like.  The juror, the person who will select the quilts for the exhibit, is the irrepressible Alex Veronelli of Aurifil Threads.

Tomatoes, Basil and Garlic, No. 1, the start of what I will call my Quilting the Good Life series!

This blogpost is to whet your appetite (pun totally intended) and get you to thinking about food and its portrayal in cloth.

I’ve used my small Tomatoes quilt (the one in my Video Workshop on how I create and quilt my collaged pieces) to illustrate this just so we’d have a tasty visual, but this post is all about ideas from words.   To find a full prospectus, you need to be a SAQA member; go to the Members login page to (duh) log in.  Then click on Calls for Entry (here), and then for even more information, click on “go to complete prospectus and entry instructions” or click here (remember you must be a SAQA member and logged in for that link to work).  In a nutshell, though, the exhibit will be about all aspects of food from production to consumption.  Finished quilts must be between 24 to 46 inches on each side; the variation in size will make it challenging for me to organize and hang the selected quilts, but will give artists substantial flexibility in size and orientation of their quilts.

While we were discussing the title and working on the Call for Entry, I googled around to find quotes about food.  Here are a whole bunch–do any of these inspire YOU to make a quilt about food?

• First we eat, then we do everything else. — MFK Fisher
• Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.  – Voltaire
• We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.
  – Adelle Davis
• One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.  – Luciano Pavarotti
• Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on the hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed,and puts them in your debt. ― Judith Olney
• There ain’t no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it. ― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux
• Sitting on the porch alone, listening to them fixing supper, he felt again the indignation he had felt before, the sense of loss and the aloneness, the utter defenselessness that was each man’s lot, sealed up in his bee cell from all the others in the world. But the smelling of boiling vegetables and pork reached him from the inside, the aloneness left him for a while. The warm moist smell promised other people lived and were preparing supper.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       He listened to the pouring and the thunder rumblings that sounded hollow like they were in a rainbarrel, shared the excitement and the coziness of the buzzing insects that had sought refuge on the porch, and now and then he slapped detachedly at the mosquitoes, making a sharp crack in the pouring buzzing silence. The porch sheltered him from all but the splashes of the drops that hit the floor and their spray touched him with a pleasant chill. And he was secure, because someewhere out beyond the wall of water humanity still existed, and was preparing supper. ― James Jones, From Here to Eternity
• … food is not simply organic fuel to keep body and soul together, it is a perishable art that must be savoured at the peak of perfection.  –E.A. Bucchianeri
• Jam on a winter took away the blue devils. It was like tasting summer. –Sandra Dallas
• We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain’t normal. ― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
• The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard. ― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
• You know, the act of feeding someone is the ultimate act of care and affection…sharing yourself with someone else through food.” He held another mouthful of cake under her nose. “Think about it. We are fed in the Eucharist, by our mothers when we are infants, by our parents as children, by friends at dinner parties, by a lover when we feast on one another’s bodies…and on occasion, on another’s souls. ― Sylvain Reynard, Gabriel’s Inferno
• Southerners are known for their hospitality and the foremost way of exhibiting it is through food. ― Cicely Tyson
• There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. ― M.F.K. Fisher
• Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts. ― James Beard
• I’m pretty sure that eating chocolate keeps wrinkles away because I have never seen a 10 year old with a Hershey bar and crows feet. ― Amy Neftzger
• First we eat, then we do everything else. ― M.F.K. Fisher
• Red onions are especially divine. I hold a slice up to the sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window, and it glows like a fine piece of antique glass. Cool watery-white with layers delicately edged with imperial purple…strong, humble, peaceful…with that fiery nub of spring green in the center… ― Mary Hayes-Grieco, The Kitchen Mystic: Spiritual Lessons Hidden in Everyday Life
• The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture. ― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
• To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day. ― W. Somerset Maugham
• Bacon is the candy of meat. — Kevin Taggart
• It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one. ― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition
• Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion. ― Ambrose Bierce
• your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. ― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
• I don’t know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it’s something that anyone can make – pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad – but it carries a certain taste of memory. ― Mitch Albom
• Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”― Alice May Brock
• If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. ― J.R.R. Tolkien
• Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch. ― Orson Welles
• After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations. ― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
• I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”― W.C. Fields

Ice Storm by Sarah Ann Smith (c) 2014, part of the SAQA 25th Anniversary Trunk Show and selected to be among 50 works in the collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky

It pays to check your ISP’s spam folder.  I found the news that my small art quilt, Ice Storm,  is one of 50 selected, out of 407, from the SAQA 25th Anniversary Trunk Show, to be in the collection of the National Quilt Museum!!!  SAQA is the Studio Art Quilt Associates.  Here’s the announcement in the May 2014 SAQA e.Bulletin:

The trunk shows have started traveling!  It was so incredible to see all the pieces together at the conference.  These pieces are from Trunk A: (note:  images not copied since I haven’t asked the artists for their OK).

If your area would like to borrow a trunk show, please contact your regional representative to make arrangements.

Congratulations to the following artists whose trunk show pieces have been chosen to become part of the permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum  in Paducah, Kentucky.  Jurors for the selections were Trudi Van Dyke and B.J. Adams. (List not copied.)

For the full list of selected artists and to see the 8 trunk shows created from the 407 quilts, please go here on the SAQA website. All these quilts are 7 x 10 inches, mounted on black mat-board to 9 x 12 inches. I am beyond thrilled and honored to be selected:  there were SO MANY wonderful quilts.  I wish there could have been more going to the Museum.

I completed this piece in the nick of time–just before the entry deadline, stitching it and sending quick mail to get it there in time!   And let me tell you, it was a bumpy ride to finished! I had just finished viewing and reviewing Diane Rusin Doran’s wonderful Digital Surface Design video workshop (blogpost here, if you are interested in purchasing the DVD or downloading this video, use the link to the Interweave Store to the left in the sidebar) and wanted to try some of Diane’s techniques with a photo from the brutal ice storm earlier in the winter.

In this next photo, you can see how I began to quilt the outside edges.  From the fact that the edges are sliced off you can gather that I DID NOT like the way it looked!

First effort at quilting the outer edges. Yuck. Chop ’em off and figure out Plan B.

I figured rather than pick it out (which would make me miss the deadline), I’d create a quilt on top of a quilt. So I did.  The back of the quilt tells the story:

The back side of Ice Storm.

I printed the photo a second time.  I quilted just as much as needed to be done to fit underneath the new, smaller, nicely bound “top” quilt.  Then I stitched in the ditch of the binding of the top quilt to secure it to the lower layer.   Add binding, call it done, and send it off by Priority Mail without even stopping to take really good photos!  EEK!

And now, it is going to be in the National Quilt Museum, once the trunk shows finish touring that is.  Use the link above to get to the page on the SAQA website where you can see all 407 quilts.  SAQA did LOTS of work to take photos, name them all with the artists name and upload them by the trunk show into which they were put.  Quilts selected for the museum are marked with an asterisk.  I’m in Group A, but those selected are in all of the different trunk shows.

So it’s a good day!  And I’ll close with a detail of the quilting and corner.  Sure glad I worked my tuckus off to get it done!

Detail, Ice Storm, (c) Sarah Ann Smith.

All I need now is more time to play with the techniques in Diane’s workshop–I have this idea…….

Just a quickie catch-up post!   I’ll have some great news to share in a couple of weeks about what has been keeping me busier than my usual busy.   But I’ve also managed to squeeze in a few other things.  First in date order is two online classes with the delightful, talented, and superlative teacher Val Webb (website here).   This winter I had planned to relax and take two of her classes which overlap by about a month.  Despite the fact that you can really do a LOT of work (and LEARN a LOT), I decided to take both.  First one is Drawing Dogs and Cats, second one is Fairies (or as I prefer, Faeries) in Nature.

My Luna-Boy faerie in gouache, about 9 x 6 inches.

In Val’s classes, you learn not only about drawing, but also painting, as well as various media and techniques.  The lesson above is for small children as fairies, with wings, and gouache (which I have never used).  There are some technical issues; basically, I need practice with the medium!   But overall I am quite pleased with my Luna-boy.  In the next photo, we worked with graphite to sketch a dog.  His right eye is a bit off (thank you for the feedback, Val! I knew something was off but couldn’t spot it until you helped), but I’m fairly happy with this one, as well.  I attribute all good stuff with these two to the quality of Val’s teaching!

Sweet doggie, in graphite pencil.

This week is also number 2 son’s 16th birthday.  How the child can be 16, weigh more than me (wooohooo! finally!), etc., defies comprehension.  Clearly the calendar lies.  Eli’s request for birthday dinner:  my waffles and Joshua’s parmesan fried chicken, an exact repeat of what Joshua had in early November.  As it was the beginning of the wrestling season, Eli couldn’t pig out.  This time he could and did <<grin>>!

We will NOT think about the calories involved in waffles and fried chicken.

Thanks to de facto DIL Ashley for taking pics as I brought in the birthday cake:

The calendar lies. There is no way my youngest is 16. I realize I am old enough to be his grandmother, but that is irrelevant LOL! Eli, we love you to bits and are so thankful you came into our lives (even if we were and are old and tired!).

She also got this great pic of Thumper the 26-toed cat.  As you can see, our cats pay us no mind.  Sigh.

Thumper. Sigh.

And guess what it is doing today.  Again.  Sigh again.

One more time. At least it isn’t sleeting a lot, as was predicted, and the temperature is now down to freezing or just below.

At least it is pretty–the flakes where HUGE!  We were predicted to get a lot of snow, school let out early, and we are all expecting it to be cancelled tomorrow.  Then the weather service predicted less snow, more ice and lots of sleet.  That is actually a lot worse.  But we haven’t had any sleet here in Hope, though beyond the ridge of hills on the coast is may be sleeting.  Here it has been snowing for about 7 hours.  We’ll see what the morning brings.  We will also fill buckets with water as it is likely to be heavy, wet snow and power could well go out.  Again.  Sigh.

And to end of a fun note, this fall I will be helping curate (i.e. be the behind the scenes worker bee) the new SAQA Food exhibit, open to SAQA members.  Alex Veronelli, mover and shaker at Aurifil Thread, will be the juror.  Just today I received the Quilts, Inc., eInsider newsletter, which had this profile of him.  It’s an interesting read.  Enjoy.

Now I need to go start on dinner.  Oh whee.