I am thrilled to announce that my newest art quilt, Under the Pink Moon, will be part of the invitational exhibit Soft Associations.
Fiber artists Meredith Grimsley and Paula Swett have curated this special fiber art exhibition. Artists in this show explore the meaning of soft associations: defined as the moment of awe in our relationship with nature - the moments that take our breath away. Soft Associations will be on display in the Olewine Gallery of the Ned Smith Center for Art and Culture in Millersburg, PA, from February 28th to May 20th. A free reception and gallery talk with drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be held on April 22nd from 2-5pm.
Particpating artists include Beth Carney, Cathy
Stechschulte, Linda Colsh, Rachel Dorr, Sue Reno, Betty
Busby, Andrea Finch, Merrill Cormeau, Elena Stokes,
Petra Fallaux, Daphne Taylor, Libby Cerullo, Sarah
Dugger, Meredith Grimsley, Paula Swett,
Arle Sklar-Weinsten and Elizabeth Bennett. To learn more about the artists, click HERE
I am honored to be invited to exhibit with this roster of exceptional artists.
Under the Pink Moon
I had a solo show in the Olewine gallery in the fall of 2017, and can testify that it's a fabulous space to display art, located in a beautiful nature preserve. I am tickled that my quilt about April's full moon will be on display in the month of April.
Thanks as always for reading! You can also follow along on your platform of choice:
The exhibit is comprised of 30 of my art quilts, related to the theme of plant life, animal life, and the Susquehanna River. It's a rare opportunity to see this many of my quilts in one place.
These pictures are from the installation last week--the signage, etc. is not in place, but you can get a sense of how spacious and wonderfully lit the gallery space is. It's the perfect setting for my work.
The exhibit has a nice long run, through December 31, 2017. Hours and directions are on the website. It's a 30 minute drive north of Harrisburg, PA through pretty country.
I'd love to see you at the reception on Saturday, October 21, at 6:30 p.m. in the Olewine Gallery. The event is free, but please register by calling 717-692-3699, or email smartin@nedsmithcenter.org. There will be refreshments.
And you can make a day of it! Located on the outskirts of historic Millersburg, the Ned Smith Center Lands and Trails encompass more than 500 acres of forest and meadow that stretch from the scenic Wiconisco Creek to the top of Berry's Mountain. The land includes a mature hardwood forest alive with deer, bear, wild turkey, grouse and fox, along with hundreds of species of songbirds, insects and reptiles.
Here's a quick video I took while working on the installation--what a wonderful space the Olewine Gallery is!
Here's the press release with all the details:
Flora, Fauna and Flow
Contemporary Quilts – Inspired by Nature Presented by Sue Reno
Sue Reno is an award winning
fiber artist who lives and works in Lancaster County, PA. Her rich and
intricate art quilts reflect her local environment and incorporate imagery
drawn from her studies of botany, wildlife, and the Susquehanna River.
Sue grew up in central PA, with a Pennsylvania
Dutch heritage that valued self-reliance and a strong work ethic. She began
sewing at a young age, making clothing and then quilts from the dressmaking
scraps. Her early quilts were traditional, giving her an excellent grounding in
sound craftsmanship.
But quilts have always followed
fashion and reflected the trends and technologies of the times. Sue began
incorporating modern design elements into her quilts, and moved them from the
bed onto the wall. Today she employs surface design techniques including cyanotype,
mono printing, digital image transfer, and needle felting as the basis for
works that also incorporate hand painted fabrics, hand and machine stitching,
and beadwork.
For Flora, Fauna and Flow,
Sue is exhibiting a large group of quilts from her ongoing textile explorations.
Florais represented by quilts depicting plants from the garden and leaves
collected in the woods. Jack in the
Pulpit was inspired by a specimen that volunteered in a flowerbed. She printed
photographs of it, and made cyanotypes and monoprints directly from the leaves,
harvesting only one or two a year over a three year period so as not to stress
the plant. Plume Poppy is a life
sized depiction of this huge, architecturally grand perennial plant. The vivid
white and Prussian blue of the cyanotype is softened by stitching and beadwork.
Sycamore uses leaf prints,
photographs, and extensive beadwork with semi-precious stones to represent the
textural richness of these splendid trees.
Jack in the Pulpit
The Fauna quilts feature
skulls of native mammals; she is fascinated by their structure and inherent
beauty. She photographs the skulls and uses the images to make cyanotype
prints, and combines them with leaf prints and bits of vintage needlework. Skunk and Garlic Mustard has both the
skull and the delicate small bones of the skeleton—her daughter found them and
gifted them to her for Mother’s Day. Groundhog
and Green Bean records the saga of when groundhog was victorious and the
vegetable garden was subsequently fenced in.
Skunk and Garlic Mustard
Sue grew up near the Susquehanna, and loves to hike the river trails in Lancaster and York Counties. The ever-changing conditions of the river are a constant source of inspiration, as evidenced by the Flow quilts. Ice Jam was made one winter when the river froze and thawed repeatedly. Sue used felted wool, hand printed cotton, and lots of sparkly beads to capture that experience. Her tour de force, 52 Ways to Look at the River, was a yearlong project in which she travelled to the river each week, took a picture, then made a fiber panel in response. At the end of the year she combined them all into a huge quilt that marks the passage of time and the seasons.
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