New Work - Partly Cloudy

Partly Cloudy

I am thrilled to share with you all one of my newest works, Partly Cloudy. It's just one of the new quilts that will be in my upcoming solo exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum, Beyond the Blue: Contemporary Narrative Quilts by Sue Reno. The exhibit will run from August 16 - October 22, 2022. I am planning on attending a reception at the Museum on September 23.

Partly Cloudy, detail 1

Along with so many other things, the pandemic changed my working style. I was accustomed to making a quilt, sharing the process and result in real time, then looking for a suitable venue for it. Because so many opportunities were cancelled or postponed during the past few years that was no longer a viable strategy.

Partly Cloudy, detail 2

I was fortunate in being able to mostly isolate in my studio during this time. I had worked towards this goal for years, and had just moved to Pittsburgh, with a new home studio and fewer outside obligations on my time and energies. The question remained--how to responsibly use this privilege? I made a point to work through fear and uncertainty and maintain a daily studio practice, but what about subject material? Like many, I was and remain appalled at the repercussions from extreme right wing politics, and the abrogation of human rights, but I am not skilled at making overtly political artwork. 

Partly Cloudy, detail 3

What I am skilled at is making work full of beautiful and joyful imagery. I am skilled at a variety of technical processes that allow me to develop this imagery. I am skilled at making work that gently touches on environmental themes of awareness and preservation and the effects of climate change. I am skilled at making work that reflects my individual story and experiences, while leaving room for others to bring their own interpretation to the work, so that my narrative can become a group narrative. In difficult times we need beauty and joy, to calm the fear left by looking into the screaming void. So this is how I have passed the pandemic, and I have built a new body of work.

I am so grateful to the Virginia Quilt Museum for giving me space to share this new work! My exhibit will consist of ten quilts. Two have been shown before online but not at a physical venue, one was exhibited once but deserves more exposure, and seven of them are brand new, and I will be sharing them individually in the weeks to come. I think you will be as excited about this work as I am.

Partly Cloudy, detail 4

About Partly Cloudy in particular--I wasn't planning on this one, it developed organically. Through the dark winter nights I have a practice of sitting and doing hand sewing, and of late that has involved the obsessive production of English paper pieced hexagons (thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope artist project for setting me on this path). I had randomly pulled some silk scraps to piece, then began thinking about making an all silk quilt. I had these wet cyanotype prints on silk noil in my inventory, and felt they worked perfectly with the crisp lines of the hexagons. As I was working with the imagery on my design wall, the soft outlines of the prints reminded me of a cloudy day in midsummer, so here we are with another addition to my informal weather related series.

The plants used are sweet gum, wood poppy, Solomon's seal, bleeding heart, and calla lily. I handpainted the three main background panels and added in commercial silks from India and Thailand. The hexagons include silks from those same sources, as well an re-purposed men's silk ties. The finished work is 51" x 43".

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