Lilies of the Valley, 36 x 36 inches. As always, there is dense quilting to bring the quilt to life. This work is has been juried into the SAQA Connecting Our Natural Worlds exhibit, and is available for sale. However, the quilt cannot be delivered to the purchaser until the end of the SAQA exhibit in 2022.
I love the delicate fluted cups of the tiny flowers near our front porch, the shades of green as the leaves curve around the delicate stalks. And later in autumn the flowers become vibrant red and orange berries to add little glints of surprising color to the fading landscape.
Detail, Lilies of the Valley
The quilt uses my own hand-dyed fabrics extensively along with commercial batiks and cotton sateen. I encourage you to visit the online exhibit and enjoy!
In 72 hours I’ll be in The Quilt Show studio, prepping to tape on Saturday. That meant do this week’s photo for my weekly photo challenge/critique group quick! My first thought was found letters, so I took a quick jaunt two miles to Hope Corner, the seat of town government (it’s ok to giggle). In the panorama, you can see the road to my house on the left, the Pinchbeck’s home, bagpipe business (Pinchbeck Pipes) and Sweetland Center (school, events)–black and red buildings, Hope General Store (big gray building in the center) which has been in pretty much continuous operation since 1832, the Town Office (tan building mostly obscured by the General Store), on the right barely spy out a red barn for Hope Orchards (you-pick mostly), and Benjamin Leavitt’s metalworks. I have often said a town in Maine is where two roads interset and there are at least two buildings. We have more than two!
The caption sums it up–I’ve been BUSY, so I am actually looking forward to sitting in an airport and on a plane! I’m also really excited about the opportunity of being on The Quilt Show. I’ve got samples and step-outs prepped: when you demo something you have to make a zillion versions of it, one for each stage of the process since there isn’t time to do the work while being filmed. I’ve even thought to the week after when I have a teaching job in Portland and another the following week in Massachusetts. I’ve got about five big events this year, and three of them are between April 4 and 18! Sheesh!
But I’m happy excited, the income from teaching will pay for the cost of the trip to Colorado–airfare, hotel, Uber to and from here and there, seeing some internet friends, meals, and shipping two boxes. Since I live in Maine and take Cape Air from here to Boston, we are limited to just ONE full-size suitcase per passenger. There are only 9 seats plus the pilot’s on the plane, and cargo is in the nose cone, small carry-on items go in the wings of the plane, and there is a netted area behind the last seat. That meant an expensive FedEx of long/large quilts and a flat rate box of goodies to give to the audience. But I’m READY! I’ll share pics on Facebook and Instagram and blog when I’m home and have had a brief collapse LOL!
I’m thrilled to share that I will have a solo exhibit of my work, The Art of Sarah Ann Smith … so far, at the Mancuso Quilt show, World Quilt New England, from August 15 to 17, 2019, in Springfield, Massachusetts! Now that it is listed here on their special exhibits page, it is official!
Most of the quilts on display will be those that were in my Rising Stars exhibit in Houston in Fall 2017, except those that are sold or are in a touring exhibit. This exhibit will also have at least one or two new works (to be determined). I’m pleased that I will be able to help hang the exhibit. I may be able to stay over night or come down on the 17th to be at the exhibit and give gallery tours. Stay tuned for more info as we approach August.
Another SQUEEE–this time ProChem! I am delighted to share that I will be teaching a 3-day Paint on Cloth Workshop from August 5-7, 2020 at Pro Chemical & Dye in Fall River, Massachusetts. Think kindergarten for grown-ups with paint and cloth: silk paint, transparent, opaque and pearlescent textile paints, as both the Movie Star and the Supporting Cast. I’ll be developing course materials over the next 15 months, so if you’ve got something you want to learn, TELL ME! And if you’ve got a brilliant title, I’m sure I’m gonna need suggestions on that, too!
Modify the fabrics that you already have to create your art
I’m not usually an abstracts person, but I love the layers I was able to get from handwriting, screen printing, and stamping…come play with me!
Please let me know what YOU would love to do in a paint-on-cloth workshop. Personally, I want to go to dinner at the fabulous seafood restaurant out on the shore in Rhode Island after class, too! I’ll be back later in the year with more details, but in the meantime, tell me what you’d love to learn from me!
Sometimes you need to do something else. You totally love your main “thing” (in my case it is clearly art quilting), but you need a break. And sometimes, that makes your main “thing” even better. I’ve learned over the years that good design is good design, whether it is landscape, interiors, architecture, photography, painting, sculpture, apparel, the principles are the same. So I have taken online classes in drawing and photography and been enriched.
At least ten years ago, I sat down between Christmas and New Year’s desperate to do something creative. The boys were still pretty young so time was scarce. I grabbed a pile of magazines and started tearing out words and pictures and glued them into my sketchbook. That has become an annual tradition…at least most years. This year Widgeon decided he needed to see if the collage passed inspection. Happily, it merited a wag.
I don’t know if I’ve done it every single year, and some years — like this one — it was done in (late) January instead. But I like reading what words have called me to use them and seeing where my head was in a given moment.
This year, I made sure to add information about whose artwork or photo. As with most years, a lot of my fodder comes from Down East magazine. North by East is a monthly column, and in December they featured work by Ryan T Higgins, a Maine Children’s book author. I must now go to the Library and see what they have of his. I was also stunned to see the “Sarah” quote, obviously about another Sarah. I covered up the “big” before dreams, but otherwise I really liked it.
This page got pretty dense…but I liked the quote at the top (from an ad for something). I also liked the bit on the pink, but it was too much pink, so I covered it up. Using blocks of text upside down or sideways works. And I LOVE torn edges…LOVE LOVE LOVE…that exposed white framing the image or words. I also dug out my circle punches. Have some circles and a few squares.
I’ve also taken a number of outstanding art classes from Val Webb over the years, ranging from birds to children to faeries to animals, using pencil, ink, watercolor, colored pencil…I learn so much, both about materials and tools but more importantly about SEEING. Observing. I’ll never want to be a colored pencil artist, but taking birds in colored pencil with Val taught me about patience and layering. I found I now do that with dyes, with paints on cloth, with thread, in my art quilts. And this year I also took a brilliant course at Sketchbook Skool, Watercolor. I always want more watercolor!
Over the past 8 years or so I have learned about the difference between student grade and artist pigments, that using quality paper makes all the difference in the world, and using pure pigments and mixing your own (just like dyeing fabric!). I decided I needed to get a bit organized and SEE the actual colors painted out from each tube. I had bought some icky (Bienfang) cheap watercolor paper that I will never use for a finished anything, not even a class practice piece. So got out my “tag” punch and did a paint out of every tube I have. Then ordered two more tubes! In search of the perfect pink…..and replacing one teeny tiny tube that is almost done. Each tag has the name, code for the manufacturer, and the universal pigment code (PV 42 for example is Permanent Violet 42). Yes, you can go wwwwwaaaaayyyyyy down the rabbit hole with this stuff!
A good mail and watercolor day. Turns out quilting templates and rulers have lots of uses, of course we all know that! I saw the clamshell cases at Jetpens.com and couldn’t resist. When I went to order, I discovered I had left that awesome washi tape in my cart, so it had to come to me also. And then there are those two tubes of watercolor and some empty half pans. That’s another thing I learned: make your OWN palettes with your favorite colors, use magnetic tape that sticks to the bottom of the pan, put inside a palette or metal tin. And then I used my quilting rulers and circles to mark a grid in my notebook/sketchbook.
I used to have both my to-do-etc notebook and a sketchbook. I never had the one I wanted handy. So I said to heck with the cost, and bought a GOOD sketchbook and use that as my “everything” journal. I write lists, take notes at SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) meetings, suss out ideas for quilts, and sometimes even sketch or paint in it! Now I will start filling in the circles with words, quotes, ideas, images/sketches, may fill the white backgrounds with ink textures…we shall see!
So that’s what I’ve been doing…along with quilting. What about you? And here’s an end of the day/blogpost dog walks photo from yesterday:
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