The Organic Landscape exhibited in Brazil

The Organic Landscape, as part of the SAQA exhibit Seasonal Palette, is on exhibit at the Festival Internacional de Patchwork e Arts Afins, Curitiba, Brazil, August 27 - 30, 2014.

The exhibit is a juried invitational, with artists creating work specifically for the theme and addressing one of the four seasons.  My work, The Organic Landscape, references summer, and depicts some of the ornamental plants I grow in my organic gardens.  Each artist was also asked to keep an artist journal of their inspirations and working process, and the journals are exhibited along with the works.  You can see the works online here, and the journals here.  If you are at all interested in process the journals are well worth your time to read. There is also an excellent hardcover catalog of the works available here. 
  SAQA—Studio Art Quilt Associates—continues to improve their exhibition process and is consistently mounting great shows and marketing them extensively.  I am very grateful to the organization at large and the the curators of Seasonal Palette, Vicki Mangum and Kathleen McCabe, for the work they have done.  It is complicated and can be difficult to exhibit work overseas, and this is providing me with opportunities I would be hard pressed to duplicate on my own.  Below is the list of all the venues, past and future, for Seasonal Palette; if any of them are near to you, I hope you have the chance to view it.

Premiere at International Quilt Festival - Houston, November 1-4, 2012
Texas Quilt Museum, La Grange, Texas, January 10 - March 31, 2013
International Quilt Festival - Cincinnati, Ohio, April 2013
International Quilt Festival - Long Beach, California, July 2013
National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, September 12 - December 2, 2013
The Original Creative Festival at the Sharonville Convention Center, Sharonville (Cincinnati), Ohio, June 12-14, 2014
Festival Internacional de Patchwork e Arts Afins, Curitiba, Brazil, August 27 - 30, 2014
New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, Massachusetts, April 5 – July 6, 2015
Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition 2016, National Tainan Living Art Center, Tainan City, Taiwan, April 30-May 29, 2016

As always, thanks for reading and commenting!

“The Organic Landscape” Artist Journal Online

As part of the SAQA Seasonal Palette exhibit, each artist made an Artist Journal about their creative process, materials, and techniques.  The journals are an integral part of the exhibit and are displayed along with the quilts in the exhibit venues.  Now many of the journals, including the one for my work, The Organic Landscape, are available as PDFs on the SAQA website here.  The direct link to mine is here.


I am working my way through them, and they are absolutely fascinating and illuminating.  If you wanted a crash course/master course in How to Create an Art Quilt, you could spend some time with these Journals and learn a tremendous amount.  I love the way each artist approached making the Journal differently, just as each quilt is unique.

The Seasonal Palette exhibit will be at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, from September 12 through December 2, 2013.  There’s also an excellent hardcover catalog available here.

For more about The Organic Landscape, you can track back my blog posts by clicking the Seasonal Palette tab on the blog header, or go here.

MQU Magazine Echo Quilting Article

In the better late than never department, I want to acknowledge an article in the July/August 2013 edition of Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine that features a few images of my work.  The article is “Echo Quilting” by the wonderful and talented Diane Rusin Doran, and it breaks down and explains everything you ever wanted and needed to know about this versatile and effective technique.  The spread from the article above shows a detail from my Big Root Geranium, bottom left, and The Organic Landscape, top center.  Other details on these pages are by the fabulous Nancy G. Cook; also included in the article is the work of the award winning quilter  Cindy Seitz-Krug.

If you are not yet familiar with this magazine, use this as your motivation to get a copy and check it out. It’s always an excellent blend of beautiful, interesting quilts and information you can actually use.

“The Organic Landscape” in American Quilter Magazine

The March issue of American Quilter Magazine, published by AQS (The American Quilter’s Society), has a gorgeous article about the SAQA Seasonal Palette exhibit.  The Organic Landscape was chosen as one of the illustrations representing summer.  Also seen in the spread above, from l - r, is Reflections of Summer, by Jenny Hearn, Autumn in the South by Nancy Wittington, and Recovery, by Hsin Lin.

Many thanks to AQS for their sponsorship of the exhibit and the wonderful hardcover catalog. 

To see more about my work and the exhibit, click the Seasonal Palette tab at the top, or go here.

Seasonal Palette at The Texas Quilt Museum

I am thrilled and honored that The Organic Landscape, as part of the Seasonal Palette exhibit, is currently on display at the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, TX.  The exhibit runs until March 31st.  Because of space constraints, the full exhibit of 37 quilts needed to be edited down to a selection of 23.  I don’t envy the curators their task, as the works are all unique and amazing, but I am very grateful to have my work included. Vicki Mangum shared these photos from the installation; above is a general view, with The Organic Landscape on the right.  Below it is flanked by Fervor by Maya Chaimovich on the left, and Delicate Ambiguity by Judith Larzelere on the right.

Here’s another installation view, showing how gorgeous the works looks against that warm brick wall. 

For installation photos by photographer Gregory Case from the premier exhibit at the International Quilt Festival this past fall, including a video, and links for more information, go to the SAQA site. 

I also want to recommend the wonderful hardcover catalogue of the exhibition, with works by 37 artists celebrating the four seasons, including materials and techniques, and introductory essays by the juror, curator and sponsors. It includes special section of studio/inspiration photos.
It’s a bargain at only $20, with a 6 x 10-inch format and 103 pages. Here’s my work, shown held up before the decidedly wintery version of the landscape that inspired the work.
To track back my blog posts of the work in progress, click the Seasonal Palette tab at the top, or go here.
As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

New Work - The Organic Landscape

Now that the Seasonal Palette exhibit has debuted at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this past week, I am delighted to be able to share the images of The Organic Landscape here on my blog and on my website as part of my Garden series.

I truly enjoyed every part of the process of creating this art quilt, from design through construction, and I think my joy shines through in the finished work.

Seasonal Palette is an invitational SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibit, where each artist was asked to produce work to a standard size, 78”h x 32”w, and  relating to one of the four seasons of the year.  I was asked to interpret summer, and I chose my palette of colors from the warm and rich tones of the landscape in the height of the season.  I have gardened organically at this property for decades, and am always working to become more closely attuned to the rhythms and fluctuations  in the life cycles of the plants, animals, and insects --the flora and fauna--of the bit of earth I have stewardship over.  It’s the visual artist’s variation of the writer’s dictum, “write what you know”.  My work stems from deep rather than casual observation.
I began by making cyanotype prints of some favorite and reliable plants; painted ferns, big root perennial geraniums, japanese anemones, plume poppies, and two varieties of ornamental sweet potato vines.  Most of these have figured in previous works, and are always welcome subjects for new interpretations of their forms and presence in the landscape.  I began by making cyanotype prints and heliographic prints of the leaves.  I also hand painted cottons in the colors I needed, and combined them with silks I brought back from India, as well as commercial fabrics, for Seminole piecework. You can track back the the work in progress here, or by clicking the Seasonal Palette tab at the top of the blog.

One of the requirements for the exhibit was the documentation of the creative process.  This is my normal studio practice, to keep samples and make notes as I go along, so I expanded on it to produce the material for a portfolio book which is being shown along with the quilt.  Early reports from Houston indicate that these portfolios were an terrific enhancement to the experience.  There is also a catalogue for the exhibit, available in the SAQA store.  I don’t have my copy yet but I can’t wait to see it! The entire exhibit is now online, it is absolutely fabulous, and I am once again deeply honored to be a part of it.  Most of the quilts are also available for purchase--the link to mine is here.

The exhibit will now travel to:
The International Quilt Festival - Cincinnati, April 11-12, 2013
The International Quilt Festival - Long Beach, August 2-4, 2013
The National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, September 12 - December 2, 2013 with possible further venues to be announced.   If you saw the exhibit in Houston I would love to hear your reaction.

As always, thank you for reading and commenting. 

Upcoming Exhibits - Houston and Chandler

Lots of excitement in the weeks ahead, as my work will be on display in some wonderful venues.  The center of the quilt universe will be in Houston, TX for Quilt Market, October 27 - 29, and The International Quilt Festival,  November 1 - 4.   The invitational Studio Art Quilts Associates exhibit “Seasonal Palette” will be unveiled at the Festival, including my work “The Organic Landscape”.  The exhibit will hang in a special hard wall gallery space. Each quilt will be accompanied by a gallery book with pictures, text, and samples detailing the process by which each artist created their work.  The roster of artists involved in this project is pretty fabulous, and it should be an outstanding exhibit!  There will also be a catalogue available, and gallery talks will take place Friday, November 2nd at 11:00 and Saturday, November 3rd at 2:00.

I’ll put “The Organic Landscape” up on my website after the debut, but for now there’s a teaser detail, above, and you can track back the work in progress by clicking the Seasonal Palette tab at the top of the blog. 


Also at Houston, my Columbine will be part of the “In Full Bloom” Exhibit.  There’s a lot of wonderful texture in this one, with cyanotypes on silk, and silk, cotton, and wool patchwork.  Like most textile works it is best appreciated in person so I am delighted to have this opportunity to share it.
 

My Watt & Shand #9 will be part of the “Tactile Architecture” Exhibit.  All three exhibits will travel on the  Quilt Festivals in Cincinnati, OH and Long Beach CA in 2013.

Watt & Shand #9 is also included in the feature article on this series, The Structures in the October issue of The Quilt Life magazine, on news stands now. 


My Houston cup runneth over with the inclusion of two of my macro photographs in “The Quilters Eye” exhibit.  I’m keeping them under wraps for the moment as well by showing a similar photo, above, but they were previously published on my Facebook and Instagram accounts.   Instagram is my newest passion; if you are also there, feel free to follow me @suereno.  I post lots of insects, flowers, landscapes, and architecture shots, and get boundless inspiration from the beauty of the images that I scroll through each day in my feed. 


I am equally excited and honored that my Squirrel and Locust is part of “Art Quilts XVII: Integrating a Paradox”, opening Nov. 2, 2012  and running through Jan. 19. 2013 at the  Chandler Center for the Arts, Chandler AZ.  This is a premier venue, and again I am in the company of some amazing fiber/quilt artists.  Stella Belikiewicz has done a excellent blog post about the exhibit; you can read and enjoy it  on her blog, The Art of Inclusion.  Thanks for your work in putting this together, Stella!

Seasonal Palette - Update 7

This is as messy as I ever get in the studio, but it’s a good kind of disorder, a happy fiber frenzy with good results.  Once I have all my components readied, and a basic layout organized on the design wall, it’s time to assemble everything, to make it all work together and fit together.  It’s a trial and error process, but with less error as I gain experience.  Bit by bit I cut pieces to fit, seam things together, press, trim, and repeat.  I like to set aside an otherwise unencumbered day for it, as it works best when I can get into an uninterrupted state of flow.  For this project, I was slightly constrained by needing it to all work out to a predetermined size--not a simple equation, as the quilting, and then the rinsing, shrinks it down a bit.  But it all worked out well and the top came together quite nicely.

The next step is to layer the top with batting and a backing fabric.  I use a type of “fusible” batting; it doesn’t have a permanent bond, but pressing activates a sticky resin coating that holds things together temporarily.  On a big piece like this I also do some pinning to help keep things unified.  Any shifting that occurs while handling and quilting can be corrected by re-aligning and re-pressing, and the resin rinses out after quilting and leaves the hand of the fabrics unaffected.

Then it’s time to put the assemblage under the needle.  First I use a walking foot to quilt along major seam lines to anchor everything together.

Then I switch to a free motion foot and do the intensive and closely spaced quilting that adds so much dimension and texture.  At this point the I drop the feed dogs (those little teeth in the bed of the machine that move the fabric along) , put on gloves with grippy finger tips, and move the quilt under the needle by hand.  It’s analogous to a drawing where the pen (the needle) is stationary, and the paper (the fabric) is moved to create a design.  I work in a completely free-form fashion, without marking the top in any way, constructing a grid or maze where I move in and back out again and again.  It’s a very meditative and Zen like activity, except that it goes by very quickly, at umpteen stitches per minute.  It helps to keep an eye on where you are going next, and only half an eye on where you actually are.  There’s probably a parable in there somewhere….

There’s also a bit of an upper body workout involved, to move the bulk of the quilt around and keep it where it needs to be.  Lots of breaks to stretch and get more beverages help.

When the quilting is finished at last, the work is rinsed, laid flat and blocked to dry, trimmed, and bound around the edges.  Finally, a hanging sleeve and label are hand sewn on the back.  I failed to photo-document these parts, but they are not all that compelling.  I do them in a solid craftsman-like way, but by then I’m sort of over it; I’m more of a process person than a product person.

I’ve officially named this one “The Organic Landscape”, as it was originally envisioned as a sort of companion piece to my “The Organic Garden”.  I hope you’ve enjoyed following along as I’ve shared the inspiration and the process.  (You can track it back by clicking the “Seasonal Palette” tab at the top of the blog.)  The final reveal will have to wait until it is unveiled at its first venue, the SAQA Seasonal Palette Exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX, Nov. 1 - 4, 2012.  Included in the exhibit will be documentation of the process that each artist has assembled.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the work of the other artists involved in this project, and I know that collectively it will be amazing.  The good news is that there will be a book published on the exhibit, so stay tuned for further updates this fall.

And as always, thanks for reading and commenting.

Seasonal Palette - Update 6

Having assembled my components - the cyanotype prints and the Seminole patchwork strips - it was time to work on the overall design and assembly of the quilt top.  I started by arranging the cyanotype prints on my one of my movable design walls (a large sheet of construction foam, covered with felt and mounted on a wooden framework).  I don’t dither a lot at this stage of the process.  I have a general idea in my head all along of how I’d like thing to go, and putting it up on the wall mainly serves to validate my internal vision.  I do take some time with the process, though, studying it over the course of several days, walking into the room and glancing at it like I was discovering it for the first time.  In this instance, I ended up switching the position of the fern and the Japanese anemone prints, putting the fern on the top right.  I liked the way it curved, and directed the eye, in that position.

While I was  thinking about the positioning, I took each print down and did the first round of stitching on it.  I often work this way, layering a print with batting and a thin backing, and doing intensive quilting on it while it’s small enough to be relatively easily maneuverable under the needle.  I do all of my work, piecing and quilting, on a domestic sewing machine (as opposed to a long arm quilting machine, where the entire quilt sandwich is mounted on rollers and quilted by a movable machine head), and over the years I have developed methods for adding a lot of detailed stitching work without threatening my sanity.

The next, and exciting step, was to mock up the entire quilt top, pinning on the patchwork strips in their probable locales.  At this point the vision starts to become manifest, and it’s very gratifying!  Again, I will tweak things a bit, making sure that the colors  and values are balanced across the work, and that the eye travels as you view it but doesn’t wander too far.  But for the most part this is a close approximation of the final composition.  This is the mystical part, where if I am wise I will turn off any internal dialogue and let my unconscious  take the wheel.  I don’t do sketches, or diagrams, or plan things out quantitatively ahead of time.  It all takes shape in my head, I think about it intently as I work to assemble the components, and I’ve learned to trust myself.  Amazingly, I usually end up with exactly the right amounts of patchwork, with just a bit to spare. 

This might be a good place to admit that I hate measuring things.  I don’t do it when I cook, for the most part, and I do as little of it a possible when working in the studio.  I find that putting a numerical value on an object unnecessarily places a barrier between myself and  the experience of the object.   I understand and in fact applaud the use of valuation in the scientific method - I’m a big fan of science - but my artwork is not a scientific process.  It’s the telling of a story, and the conveyance and expression of an occurrence in time and space.  Breaking it down into measurements is not helpful for me.  So with experience I’ve developed a set of strategies that allow me to mostly delay measurement until the work is completed and I need to record the dimensions.  This project was a bit trickier because I had to build it to a specific size, rather than my usual method of letting it grow organically, but I was able to make the necessary mental leaps and it worked out ok.

Logistical note:  this quilt is actually finished, as the photo deadline was some time ago. I’m still working on finishing up the documentation, and looking forward to the big reveal of all the quilts in this exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this fall.  Thanks for reading and following along!

Seasonal Palette - Update 5

Making Seminole patchwork strips to use in the Seasonal Palette piece proceeds methodically.  After picking the fabrics, cutting strips, and sewing sets of strips together, the next step is to slice up the strips into short lengths.  The cuts are made either at right angles or a 45 degree angle, depending on the type of patchwork desired.  There’s dozens and dozens of ways to combine and assemble these, but over the years I’ve developed my favorite sets and can proceed with relative confidence as I assemble them.  The short strips are pinned together precisely, two by two, with an offset that will create the pattern, and sewn together.  These pairs are then offset, pinned and precisely stitched, and so on, as I build long strips.

The white fabrics you are seeing in these top two photos are the backs of the silk fabrics I’m using.  I love working with silk, but some of them are lightweight, and all of them are slippery.  One strategy is to fuse them to non-woven stabilizers, but I dislike using fusibles, partly because of concerns about their long term stability, but mostly because they give a flat visual effect to the silk.  So I take the extra step of machine basting the strips of silk onto a cotton muslin beforehand.  It’s fiddly and time consuming, but in the end, after the work has been quilted, the silk will ripple just a bit and have wonderful dimension and sheen, so it’s worthwhile for me.

Once the strips are sewn together, they are pressed and ready to combine with the cyanotype panels on the design wall as I work out the design.  The edges will be trimmed and evened up as I go along. 

I enjoy making and using Seminole patchwork and revisit the technique from time to time.  The concept was originated by the Seminole Indians, who used it for stunningly graphic and wonderful garments, as they made the best of a bad situation.   Here I’ve used it in White Mulberry:

Tall Blue Lettuce:

Margarita:

and Five Days Last Fall:

You can click on the links and read more about each of these quilts on my website.

On another note, my friend and fellow fiber artist Franki Kohler has done me the honor of including me in her post on  the Leibster Blog awards.  Thank you Franki, I really appreciate the recognition and your kind words.  One of the best aspects of blogging is the sense of community it builds, and the friendships that develop between bloggers, and I have been very fortunate in that regard!  As part of the deal I am to pass along the award to five of my favorite blogs--a challenging task, as my blog reader list is extensive and I am continually amazed and inspired by the artists I follow.  While I work on that, you can always see many of my favorites by touring through one of the blog rolls featured in the right side bar.

Seasonal Palette - Update 4

I love picking out fabrics for a new project.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the process--exciting and stimulating to the little grey cells.  It involves choosing the color scheme, but since I am working with textiles, there are also the secondary factors of texture, fiber content, and patterning. 


I think I have a different relationship with the fabrics in my stash than a lot of other quilters.  With me it’s personal.  I have a collection going back decades to dressmaking scraps from the clothes I wore as a child. I am not sentimental about them, but I relate to them in terms of their context in time and space.  Other fabrics that I’ve purchased were all deliberate acquisitions, and I can remember the general time frame and location of where I obtained them.  Same thing with fabric that has been generously gifted to me, or that I’ve purchased from other craftswomen--they are linked in my mind with the person and the circumstance.  The fabric has meaning and history, some are heavy favorites that have been used in multiple projects, and all of that comes into play when I am auditioning them for something new.  None of these factors will necessarily be evident to the viewer of the finished work, but it’s highly relevant to whatever it is that happens in my conscious and subconscious mind as I  am working.

Given that context, I am genuinely puzzled by the popularity of fat quarter bundles ( a fat quarter is 18” x 22”) or jelly roll bundles (2.5” by 44” strips) on the market.  I can’t imagine letting someone else pick out my fabrics for me, even granting that they are lovely and well coordinated assortments.  If I like a textile and am going to include it in my repertoire, I need at least a yard, ideally more.  And I need to be able to find it when I want it, so I am fairly well organized in that regard.  I needed some publicity shots of me in my studio, so here in the background you can see some of the labeled bins I store things in.  I sort by fabric content and then by color.  I’m not afraid of disarray while I’m working, but when I’m done it all needs to be sorted out again.  Part of the sorting is keeping swatches of everything used in a project.  The swatches go into binders with notes and other relevant ephemera associated with each quilt.  I’ve done this from the very start of my art practice, so when documentation was called for as part of the Seasonal Palette exhibit I was very much on board.


For this project I wanted mostly the clear, bright, somewhat saturated colors that signify mid to late summer to me.  I’m using a few commercial fabrics, some silks I brought back from my trip to India and cottons I’ve hand painted and printed.  (If you are new here, be sure to click on the “India” tab at the top to see recent and vintage India travelogue posts.)  Here you see them cut into strips and sewn into sets preliminary to being cut up for Seminole patchwork. I’m quite pleased about the one on the right with the leaf prints. 
I’m a huge fan of the plume poppy plant, and have used its leaves in numerous small projects and a huge art quilt. One of its attractions is its large leaves, but the scale of this project wouldn’t accommodate them. So I focused on the tiny leaves that sprout up in the intersections and tops of the stalks.

I picked dozens and dozens of the little leaves, and laid them out in a grid to make a heliographic print of them with green textile paint.  You can see a similar print, with larger leaves, in process below:

I cut the printed fabric into strips and used it in the piecing.  It’s very fiddly and time consuming work, like a lot of what I do, but well worth it for the story it tells in the cloth.

Seasonal Palette - Update 3

One of the recurring themes in my work is the use of cyanotype to make prints on fabric.  I never tire of the process.  It is exciting and almost magical each and every time.  It encompasses so many of my happy obsessions--plants, photography, fabric, and working outdoors, at the (hopefully tender) mercies of the elements.  I could set up UV lights and expose the prints safely indoors, and I’m all for keeping my options open, but I think that would take some of the pleasure out of the experience.  Of course the viewer can’t tell where and how I made the print, they simply see the result, but my joy in making it is an integral part of the process for me.  Perhaps that’s why most of my work is so cheerful, however somber my intentions in beginning it might be. 

Above is one of the prints I showed underway in my last Seasonal Palette post, a painted fern specimen.  The lighter blue lines top and bottom are from the edges of the sheet of glass used to hold the fern in place, and they won’t be in the finished work in this instance.  Below is a section of another print, a length of ornamental sweet potato vine.  I pinned it in place for the exposure, and you can see lovely variations in shading along the edges of some leaves where they lifted a bit.

I made five prints for this work, and pinned them up on a design board to think about them for a bit.  One of the criteria for this exhibit is that the work must be a specific size, 78” tall by 32” wide.  I wanted the design to be engaging all along its length, so it took some rumination and experimentation with placement to work all that out.  My usual working method is to start with the prints and add patchwork elements around them, working outward until the proportions and flow seem correct.  At the end I square everything up and then measure it.  It’s a nice advantage IMO to working with fiber and/or mixed media; the imagery can grow organically.  For this piece, I needed to think more like a painter who starts with a specific size of canvas, where everything needs to contained and constrained proportionally within that space.  I’ve had to think IN the box, as it were.  Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Seasonal Palette, Update 2

I’ve been working joyously on my entry for the SAQA juried invitational exhibit, Seasonal Palette, that will debut at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX this autumn.  My season of choice when applying was summer, and happily I received it as my assignment.  Since so much of my work is botanically based, and I love making images of fresh plant specimens, I knew I would have plenty of material to work with, both conceptually and literally.

The Organic Garden

Of the works in my resume I submitted to the jurors, they particularly liked The Organic Garden, and requested that my new work for the exhibit be in a similar vein.  It’s a good choice, and one I can willingly riff on.  I’m not looking to duplicate it, but to capture the same kind of botanical exuberance and abundance, while using the saturated colors of high-to-late summer. 

The timing of the acceptance was such that I had a limited window of opportunity to make summery prints, so even before I was sure of the ultimate direction and composition of the work, I ordered some treated cyanotype fabric and got busy.  Depending on the type of plant, and the size of the print desired, I pinned the specimens to a board, or flattened them under glass.

Making cyanotypes is a fascinating blend of science and art--because I am dependent on the angle of the sun and the meteorological conditions on any given day, as well as the freshness of the treated fabric and other variables, the exposure time for a print is reckoned both by counting the minutes and by guesswork based on experience.  The cyanotype gods were with me on this occasion, and I got some wonderfully crisp and vivid prints to work with.

Part of the criteria for this exhibit is the documentation of the creative process.  I don’t like sketching and formal preplanning of my work, but I do love documentation.  I always take pictures of the work as I go, save fabric samples, and often do work-in-progress blog posts, so this is right up my alley.  I will be continuing to share parts of the process here, so stay tuned, and as always, thanks for reading!