I’m delighted to share that my Lilies of the Valley quilt has been juried in to the Visions Art Museum online exhibit “Spring.”

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.

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!

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.

If you’d like a sneak peek, you can check it out in my book of the same name, The Art of Sarah Ann Smith … so far on Blurb. The book is available as a hard copy or PDF.

I hope you’ll get to see my quilts and that I might even get to meet some of you at the show!

Thanks to my friend Jenny K. Lyon, I’ve got two pictures of my Lilies of the Valley quilt on display in Houston since she is attending International Quilt Market for the (Drum Roll Please!!!) debut of her first book, here, Free Motion Quilting, From Ordinary to Extraordinary.  It has literally just been released…can’t wait to see it at Festival!   Anyway,

Here’s a view of the Power of Women exhibit, which has three parts: the 36″ quilts, some 2×8 foot sheer art cloth banners, and in the background the 2×6 foot quilts of women to admire. I can’t wait to see the exhibits! My Lilies of the Valley is the center one…I had thought they were going to be way high up, so delighted folks will be able to see the quilting and details.  Photo by Jenny K. Lyon–Thank you Jenny!!!!

And a close up–Houston always does such a good job at hanging and “choosing neighbors”! And yes, my quilt IS for sale!  Photo by Jenny K. Lyon–Thank you Jenny!!!!

I get on the road to the airport at 7 am tomorrow, but won’t get to see any quilts until preview night on Wednesday.  So psyched for teaching and friends and quilts and art and friends!

Hi all!  Popping in for a quick post:  An interview with yours truly about my work and my submission for this year, Pink Oyster Mushrooms, is now live on the Dinner@8 blog, here.

Here’s what I wrote on my entry: Beneath the Surface of the Edges of the pink oyster mushrooms, the Space Between the gills forms rhythmic Patterns of shadow and light. My Affinity for fungi and lichen extends to the inspiration I find in the world around me in Maine, even at at the Belfast Farmer’s Market. Dyeing and painting white cloth is part of my artistic voice, my Personal Iconography.

International Quilt Festival Houston is approaching, which means for the 10th year there will be a Dinner@8 exhibit, a juried invitational, which has showcased some of the best art quilts being made in the past decade.  I have been fortunate to be invited to participate for 9 of those years and was accepted in all but one (and I totally agree with the curators…I would have picked other quilts than mine, too!).  I am THRILLED to be in what is the final exhibit because, sadly, all good things come to an end. From the quilts I have seen, this may be the best exhibit yet.

Conceived and curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison (click on their names for link to their personal websites), each year they selected a theme and a size for the exhibit.   The size was in place for three years, then the next three years a different size, etc.  This last year, the size was 30×50, and we were asked to choose one of the themes from the past nine years.  Honestly, my quilt could fit under many of the themes.

The way it works is in November (or thereabouts), Jamie and Leslie sent out a theme to a group of invited artists.  You them made a quilt, only one, to fit the theme and size and submitted it by the due date.  Then you waited to see if you made it in to the exhibit.  I am beyond honored to have had my works next to so many spectacular works—truly, go browse the exhibits for each year and even go buy the catalogs (links on the Dinner@8 site).

THANK YOU Jamie and Leslie:  you have created through these exhibits a body of the best of the best, and I am beyond gobsmacked that I have been able to be a part of these exhibits.

To see all the interviews this year and those from past years, click on the Dinner@8 Blog link.

I love it when things come full circle.  I was reading a Studio Art Quilt Associates Friday e-Blast newsletter, which had a link to an article in the NYT about the 20 best books on business for artists. Let’s face it:  as an artist, we’d rather make art and not think about business.  But if you don’t, you may not be able to afford to stay an artist.  Book number 6 on the list is Art Inc.: The Essential Guide for Building Your Career as an Artist by Lisa Congdon, whom I first came to know about because her mom,  Gerrie Congdon, is a textile artist and SAS Member.  Find Gerrie’s artwork here.  Find Lisa’s website (and further links to her Etsy, Instagram, FB and other social media presence) here.   Full circle!

Art Inc.: The Essential Guide for Building Your Career as an Artist by Lisa Congdon.  Since she actually DID what she is talking about in this book, I believe her.  I also love that each chapter has an interview with an incredibly successful artist–from a very wide range of places and backgrounds and media–talking about things that pertain both to the chapter where they are included but also to life as a working artist no matter what.

I WISH I had had this book when I started out!   I was able to borrow it on interlibrary loan, but given the modest price, if you are anywhere near the start of your career, just buy it. Here’s the Table of Contents to give you an idea of the scope of this small but mighty book:

Table of contents for Art, Inc. by Lisa Congdon, available on Amazon both in print as a Kindle book. 

I was actually delighted as I read through the first four chapters to say “check!  Done that!”  BUT I wish I had known about all this when I began.  I have learned a lot from other quilt artists, first on the QuiltArt listserv, then on Facebook as many of us migrated to social media, and then more from my peers in SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates).  But I felt validated that someone who took The Big Leap into being a full time professional artist was saying to do what I had done.   But the book also helped me now when I feel like I am sorta mid-career.  What do I do now, how can I better market my work and myself?  What goals do I have and how can I achieve them?  The chapters on selling, exhibiting, licensing and managing workload were GREAT.

As I was reading I thought…OK, let’s buckle down and start making a cohesive group of works–perhaps 12-20–for a themed exhibit of my work, then market it…..   So I now have a daunting goal, but I also have a goal–a specific thing I want to do.  Will I make it happen?  Who knows, but the only way to find out is to try.  And I can use some of the guidance in the latter half of this book to help me find out how to get from where I am to where I want to be.  You can’t ask much more from a book than that!

So, I am going to get a few smaller projects done, get ready to teach at International Quilt Festival in Houston again this fall, but while I’m working on those I’m going to start mapping out that series of works, thinking about how I want to present them, create them, and then get going!