Lowell, Massachusetts, seems to be a very art-friendly town and, given it’s history as a mill-town (lots of textile mills in upper New England in the late 1800s), quite open to the idea of art quilts.  The Brush is an artists’ co-operative and gallery.  Each year when the Lowell Quilt Festival happens, various venues around town have art quilt exhibits or related shows.  The Brush, along with the Whistler Museum of Art (as in James McNeil Whistler, most famous for his painting of his mother….), are two of the venues art quilters want to be in!  (Note:  photos in this post are clickable … you can right click to view larger in a window/tab.)  This quilt is Sod Wall I, by Elfa Jonsdottir of Worcester, Mass.  I’m not usually partial to this abstracted style of quilting, but I thought the use of the hand-dyed fabrics and color was particularly effective.

I got to meet Debbie Bein, Elaine and Mary from Toronto, all from the QuiltArt list, and to my great surprise and pleasure, my near-neighbor Carrie Hedstrom.  Carrie is a young mom of FIVE (ages 7 to two months…youngest was in a baby sling for the opening reception!)…how she finds time for art is beyond me, let alone time to get the entries done and sent in on time!  Somehow, I managed to miss taking a photo of them (I had just gotten out of class and RACED from Chelmsford, where the classes were held, to Lowell, where the show and galleries are, to be there before the reception ended!) or of Carrie.  But I did get this shot of the wall where Carrie’s quilt was hung, on the far left, and one that I think is Frieda Anderson’s on the far right:

Update:  Rosemary’s piece is titled “Sheer Floral.”  And, it is indeed Frieda’s work on the right, titled “SunSet Pines.”

I’ve only met Rosemary Claus-Gray online, but I love her work.  Sometimes it is abstract, but this representational piece in sheer fabrics is just glorious:

If you look closely at the photo, you can see the stretcher bars shadowing through the sheer fabrics!

I neglected to take a photo of the label on these two pieces… if anyone knows who made them, please let me know!   I love the use of thread in the satin stitching:

(Update:  the piece above, thanks to Cyndee who spotted an article in the Lowell newspaper, is Sun Moon Stars by Therese Bliss….thanks Cyndee!)

I’m giving a lecture on beading and embellishments on quilts, so I’m on the hunt for examples to use in my lectures.  I’ve photo’s the labels on all these pieces so I can contact the makers and ask permission to include the photos in my slide show…..  alas, this overall photo of Rachel B. Cochran‘s Imperial Palace didn’t turn out sharp:

but the detail photo did–I’m in love with her hand-dyes:

Margarete Steinhauer of Scituate, MA, created The Cork Oaks; she is a plant and environmental scientist, and was inspired by a piece of commercial dye-painted fabric.

In several days, I’ll share the quilts at the Whistler!  Cheers, Sarah

In mid-July a most delightful e-mail from blog-reader Evy V. in the Netherlands arrived, telling me that “I had to let you know I was very pleasently surprised to see a picture of your beautiful Koy Quilt in the French/Dutch magazine “Quiltmania” when they arrived at my store.”  WOW!   So I promptly surfed in to eQuilter, which I know carries the magazine (since of course no one within a 90 minute drive of Camden does).  They had only just received issue 65, and Koi is in 66…. so I checked last week, and my copy of issue 66 just arrived!

Here is the opening page of the article which, as I had guessed, was about the spring AQS show in Paducah, Kentucky; this show is one of the two most prestigious in the US (along with the IQA show in Houston), so I was thrilled Koi was juried in:

Note:  photos are clickable to get a larger, more easily viewed size.  In some browsers you can right click or, on a mac use the applekey + click, to open the photo in a separate window.

I was happy to see another Maine Quilter, Wendy Caton Reed, represented on the second page…her quilt won a top ribbon at Maine Quilts 2008 this year.  It’s the one in the center, red and yellow:

And here, drum roll, on p. 26, is Koi!

I’m in mighty good company…that quilt just above mine is one of the top prize winners by Diane Gaudynski!

After the many, MANY rejections I’ve had, it is heartwarming to know that out of the many, MANY outstanding quilts in Paducah, QuiltMania selected mine to include in the article!  Thank you to them, and to Evy for letting me know.  By the way, she is a quilt shop owner in the Netherlands, so click here to surf in, and I sure hope some day I get to VISIT her shop!

Well, I’m TOTALLY bummed.   BOTH my entries to the Journal Quilts exhibit were rejected this year, the first year that it has been juried.  There were 150 entries, 48 got in, none of which were mine.  They were GOOD.  Sigh.  I’m just depressed.  I know rejection is part of the game, but I’ve had so many rejections for so long, and the journals mean so much to me, that I was really hoping to get one in this year.  Guess not.  Sigh.

The journal quilts debuted in 2002 I think… the year I joined the QuiltArt list.  I have participated in the non-juried exhibit every year since.  This is the first year there were limits on how many quilts.  Karey selected FIVE of my journals for the Creative Quilting:  The Journal Quilt Project book, and even opened one section of the book with three of my journals because she liked them so much.  So I know my work isn’t awful.  Sigh.

I won’t share the rejects yet…. someone online is going to organize a “latecomers” online exhibit to debut about the time of the real exhibit, so I’ll send mine in to that.   Sigh.  I’m just bummed.   Really bummed.  Kinda makes me want to not quilt and not work.  I’ll get over it {grin}!  Actually, since I first wrote this I’m doing better… I’m going to enter them somewhere else… off to look for a venue!

I had the great good fortune to be invited to teach at Lowell Quilt Show earlier this month.  I’ll blog about one of my classes in a couple of days, but today I wanted to give you an overview, starting with this overview of the show, which is held in the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, which is northwest of Boston (about 45 minutes by car, I think….it’s about 3 1/2 to 4 hours from Camden, Maine). Note:  photos in this post are clickable to be viewed larger.

The vendors are on an upper level that surrounds the arena, so you get a bird’s eye view.  This photo was taken early on Sunday (hence the lack of crowd).   I got over to the show earlier in the week, after class was over, and was thrilled to spot my Koi quilt for the first time….when folks were looking at it!  I guess a white glove lady was near it a lot of the time to show the back (LOVE IT!):

I had not realized until shortly before the show that the 2007 journal quilts would be there (I am not sure if this viewing included all of them or not, but I think it did).

As always, the journals are a popular exhibit (sure hope one of my entries gets in this year… I need an acceptance!!! instead of a “sorry” letter!).  On Sunday, I was thrilled to see someone really looking at mine… my journal is quite subtle, not a grab-you-from-a-distance piece, so it was really rewarding to see someone drawn in and taking a long time to take it in…thank you to whoever you are in this picture!  I hope it is OK for me to have posted this photo of you:

Wow…just realized I never uploaded this quilt to my website… I’ll do that when we get back from vacation in a week or so!   There is a lot to it… it is about Hiroshima, peace and all that….

One of the best things about quilt shows is the teachers.  If you ARE one of the teachers, one of the best things about a quilt show is getting to hang out with the other teachers!  I was thrilled to run into Nancy Prince, whom I had briefly met in Paducah, Joanie Zeier Poole, Judy Cisneros, Nancy Brenan Daniel and others….. dinners were a GAS.  This first night we each and every one of us had lobster of some sort at the hotel restaurant:

Nancy lives in Arizona, so she decided to splurge, and ham it up a bit… I totally love this photo and need to send it to her before heading out on Wednesday (and yes, she did take the meat out of the shell before eating it LOL)

:

On Sunday I got to have breakfast at the locally famous Four Sisters Owl Diner, a real OLD diner, with good old fashioned cholesterol-heaven breakfast:

To my great astonishment and pleasure, I got an e-mail a couple days before leaving for Lowell informing me that I had won an honorable mention for Naiads!  After viewing the other quilts, I’m thrilled even more…. here’s  a picture of Naiads with the ribbon alongside and the “neighborhood”:

I taught Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so got to see the show on Sunday to my hearts’ content.  But even tired teachers wear out.  And get hungry.  So mid-afternoon I set out on the town to see the shows at the Brush Gallery, The Whistler (more on those two in future posts), and get some lunch.  I was fortunate to be able to wait to pick up Naiads and my teachers quilts (Koi and Garuda Dances Under the Ocean Moon) at 5:30, after show take-down (thereby saving a bundle on  shipping) before heading home.  So, while waiting, I had an iced coffee…perfect:

For the past month or so I’ve been enjoying the Lark publication Masters:  Art Quilts (subtitled Major Works by Leading Artists).   This book is one in a series of fine arts and crafts such as Porcelain, Beadweaving, Gemstones, Glass Beads and others (forthcoming) on Wood Turning and Gold.  This series is a nearly square 9×8 inches, and hefty…the shortest is 300 pages, with the Art Quilt volume the heftiest at 416 pages. (Note: all photos in this post are clickable to see them a bit larger–scroll down for LOTS of great review pics.)

How author and curator  Martha Sielman, executive director of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA ) and an art quilter herself, managed to whittle her selections down to a mere 40 of the many, MANY outstanding art quilters working today I do not know.  What I can say is that she did a smashing job of selecting a representative sampling:  from some of our trailblazing artists to some newcomers who deserve to be included in the top tier, from abstract to highly representational, from those who work exclusively with fabric and thread to those whose quilts are nearly encrusted with embellishments, and from around the world, Martha has included something for everyone’s taste, and introduces us to some quilters we may not have known–well, even though I read voraciously and troll for news of the art quilting world outside the United States, there were some artists that were new to me.  The artists (in the order in which they are presented in the book) are:

• Jane Sassaman
• Michael A. Cummings
• Ita Ziv
• Cher Cartwright
• Noriko Endo
• Deidre Scherer
• Carolyn L. Mazloomi
• Hollis Chatelain
• Linda Colsh
• Charlotte Yde
• Joan Schulze
• Judith Content
• Kyoung Ae Cho
• Jette Clover
• Eszter Bornemisza
• Pauline Burbidge
• Yvonne Porcella
• M. Joan Lintault
• Katie Pasquini Masopust
• Nancy N. Erickson
• Susan Shie
• Caryl Bryer Fallert
• Jeanette Gilks
• Jane Burch Cochran
• Pamela Allen
• Therese May
• John W. Lefelhocz
• Miriam Nathan-Roberts
• Jenny Hearn
• Terrie Hancock Mangat
• Wendy Huhn
• B.J. Adams
• Inge Mardal and Steen Hougs
• Chiaki Dosho
• Inge Hueber
• Michael James
• Velda E. Newman
• Anne Woringer
• Clare Plug
• Elizabeth Brimelow

The book begins with a brief Introduction by Martha Sielman, and is followed by profiles of the artists.    Forty art quilters are included, each with 10 pages.  Each “chapter” begins with an introduction written by Martha and a detail photo on the left-hand page, while the full quilt is showed as large as can fit on the page on the right.  Each photo has the title, year it is made (which allows one to see progression in the artists’ work and style), size, and a brief summary of techniques.  On the subsequent pages, full-shot photos of an representative sample of that artists’ quilts are accompanied by quotations from the artists that give insight to their style, goals and personality.

With only a few exceptions, the photography is outstanding, showing even the stitching detail.  For those not familiar with taking photographs of quilts, it is challenging (to say the least!), so the ability to see this level of detail throughout the book is a rare treat.  Here are some of my favorites, beginning with one of my quilting idols, Hollis Chatelain:

I had not known of the work of Michael Cummings:

or Kyoung Ae Cho before, but I am certainly glad I do now….time to go surf the internet, eh?

and a photo of another of her pieces:

Ita Ziv of Israel uses highly unconventional materials, like the bags you get while shopping!

Charlotte Yde’s name was familiar, but I got to see some new works:

I love her bold use of color, her often monochromatic quilts, and in these pieces the repeated shield or banner shapes:

Jenny Hearn’s work reflects her South African heritage though it is not always obvious.  There is a rich complexity to the visual texture:

and another piece (by the way…sorry about the flash glare!)

Inge Mardal and Steen Hougs’ quilts always stop me in my tracks when I see them in a show.  They are very large….often between 5×5 or 6×6 feet!   They are densely quilted, and glorious:

I honestly don’t know how Martha managed to restrain herself to a mere forty art quilters….  each and every chapter is a feast for the eyes.  I also don’t know how Lark managed to publish such a sumptuous coffee-table book for only 24.95.  If you purchase this book from SAQA store, part of the proceeds will go to support the efforts of the Studio Art Quilt Associates promote our art form.   It is also available here at Amazon.com. Like The Art Quilt by Michael Kile and Penny McMorris, this book encapsulates the best of the best at a specific point in time.  I expect that this book, too, will become a classic and a valuable reference.  It’s also just a joy to sit down and savor.