Today it is my turn on the Dinner@8 blog which is profiling the artists in this year’s juried invitational exhibit, Reflections.  Please do click on the link to read their interview with me!  Fittingly, it is also Eli’s first Cross Country practice (to his dismay at 7:30 am!) of the season.  Why?  Because my quilt this year is of Eli’s 2013 Cross Country season:

This year’s Dinner@8 quilt: Eli, Cross-Country 2013, (c) Sarah Ann Smith

Four years ago, I created a portrait of Joshua for the Beneath the Surface exhibit also created by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison, the artists behind Dinner@8.

Joshua when he was 16, from four years ago. (c) Sarah Ann Smith

This year it was Eli’s turn to have a portrait done at the same age. The theme this year was Reflections, and for once I didn’t want to do something literal.  I’ve always loved looking at children and seeing features from their parents in them, as well as getting to know them and seeing bits of personality that come from their families.  With Eli, he has brains (from both of us but I’ll take credit), athletic prowess (totally from his dad!), determination (stubbornness?  we’re both guilty on that one), the broad shoulders of my dad and brothers.  So Eli is running headlong into his future, a Reflection of his past and a hint of his future.

At long last, I’m happy to share with you some in progress photos, too. First I had to take reference photos (since I can’t remember all the angles!).  There were decisions to make:  head on?  from behind (since he’s usually at the front of the pack)?  sideways?  On the Camden Hills course or not?  Scale and composition….

Many decisions: Close up of Eli (top left)? Heading out of the frame (top right)? Burning it up hill (middle left)? Powering around the corner (middle right)?  at Festival of Champions, in a fast-moving pack (bottom left)?  Running away in a small crowd (bottom right)?  Right click to view larger.

I knew I wanted to have him running on the home course, which is why I took these photos:

The avenue into the woods, behind the softball field, at Camden Hills. I knew I wanted this overall composition, but when I realized how small Eli’s figure would be on the 24 x 60 h. required size, I knew I would have to adjust. It just wouldn’t have the right impact if his figure was maybe 12 inches tall out of 60!  Right click to view larger.

I decided to use a photo of Eli running from Festival of Champions, coming around a corner at about the same angle they run into the forest in the photos above.   So I first worked on creating Eli, then I designed a background similar to the photos above.  The path and trees were easy, but getting a middle-ground in the right scale for the ferns and whatnot at the edge of the path proved tricky without an actual photograph (by this time it was mid-winter and covered with snow, so couldn’t go take another look).

Then it was time to dye the fabric to match the photo of him in his Camden Hills uniform.  Thank heavens I’ve taken those Carol Soderlund classes–I got the right color the first time:

Dyeing the fabric and the results. These fabrics I knew I would use for both my Eli quilt and the Amaryllis entry for Living Colour Textiles.

The remainder of the fabric got used in this quilt:

Amaryllis by Sarah Ann Smith (C) 2014. See the Living Colour Exhibit at http://livingcolourtextiles.com/

So now it is time to go dye fabric for another quilt!  Do surf over to the Dinner@8 blog to read their interview with me and the other artists in this year’s Reflections exhibit.

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

Hi all!  Thrilled to report that I am one of the artists in the Dare to Dance exhibit and book!  Dare to Dance is now available from Mary Wilson Kerr or Amazon.

Mr. Wiggles does the Circle Dance, in Dare to Dance by Mary W. Kerr. (c) 2014 Sarah Ann Smith

The quilts were to be 18 inches wide by 30 inches long reflecting the theme “Dare to Dance:  An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy.  This exhibit began as a local one in northern Virginia, but expanded into a wider call for entries from across the United States.  In the end, 60 quilts were selected; of those, 30 are on tour including mine.  To see the long list of venues for this exhibit over the next two years, please visit this page on Mary Kerr’s website.

Dare to Dance by Mary W. Kerr

When I first read the call for entry, immediately I thought of our pug’s exuberance when asked “Are you hungry?” (which is quilted into this piece between the dog dish and my feet, even though it is hard to see in a photo). The quilts are presented in alphabetical order by title.

When my copy of the book arrived, I was surprised, expecting the usual size of art quilt book.  This hardback is smaller, 6 x9 inches (approx), but each quilt gets a full page, allowing you to see delicious detail.

My pages in Mary Kerr’s Dare to Dance. Quilt and text (c) Sarah Ann Smith 2014.  Click for a larger view.

The facing page includes the title, Artists’ name and website, plus the story of the quilt.  I can’t wait to sit down and savor this book, dipping into to it for vicarious glimpses of joy.   Thank you, Mary, for including me in both the book and the traveling exhibit!

The new July/August 2014 MQU issue. Order at www.mqumag.com or find it at Barnes and Noble (among other places).  The Quilting Ergonomics article on the cover is mine! WOOT!

Editor Kit Robinson asked me, a while back, if I would like to do an article on ergonomics at your sit-down sewing machine, and I jumped at the chance.  I’m not a physician, and I start the article by saying that “no one size fits all,” so be sure to check with YOUR health practitioner, but I have learned some things that will make your life easier when you are quilting.  I talked about quilting aids in the last issue (which I apparently in my busy-ness forgot to blog about…coming soon!   Naughty Sarah!) and in this issue I talk about making your space work for you.

After all, if you are thinking “Ouch” or “oh my aching back and shoulders” you’re not thinking about where your next stitch goes.  So that’s what this article is all about!

Thumper decided to read the MQU ergonomics article while I had the camera out to take a picture. Ahem.

So for this article, I put on make-up, sucked in my gut, and got hubby to come down and click the shutter after I set up the tripod and lighting for all these photos–so now hubby is published as a photographer!   Thanks Paul and Kit for the byline for him!  It was much easier than using the timer and me trying to dash and get into position before the shutter tripped.  I’ve clearly got pictures of what NOT to do as well as what you should do.  Speaking of which, I really should get back to doing those crunches and stretching exercises!

Another big thrill was seeing as I flipped to my article that Brenda Gael Smith had an article on the hanging system used in Australia that has artists putting velcro on the backs of quilts to adhere to the rigid walls used there.  Helps the quilts hang beautifully!   So then I went to see what all was in the magazine, discovered there is a companion article about the Living Colour Textiles exhibit and one of the quilts included was mine!!!! (and yes, I still need to do that blogpost about dyeing the fabric and making this quilt…too many things to do, not enough time…it will come, I promise!).   Anyway, here’s that page–what a delightful, welcome surprise!

Living Colour Textiles exhibit curated by Brenda Gael Smith.  Amaryllis, bottom right, is my entry.  To see the exhibit, go to livingcolourtextiles.com/gallery.html 

Gotta run:  today is the last day of Eli’s sophomore year, and it is a busy one.  Exam this morning, memorial service for a cross country teammate who died of a brain tumor just days after receiving his diploma (thank heavens the school graduated him, he missed most of the school year); I’m planning on a LOT of kleenex.  After that there is a picnic at his house and the runners are going to run his practice course in his honor and memory (and I’m tearing up just thinking about it).  Then, finally, the delayed wrestling team potluck and awards.   Phew!  But we get to sleep in tomorrow.  More anon!

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…….