Artquilts for U.S Department of State Art in Embassies Program

 I'm so excited! Two of my artquilts have just been picked up and are on their way to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, as part of the Art in Embassies Program. They were chosen, with the assistance of a curator, by incoming Ambassador Ann Marie Yastishock. I am grateful to the Ambassador for her selection of my work. I hope they bring her and her guests much pleasure as they hang on the walls of the Embassy.

Selected were On the Verge: 

On the Verge

Materials: artist-painted and commercial silk and cotton fabric

Techniques: wet process cyanotype/solar dye, patchwork, stitching

Size: 54”h x 49”w

and The Organic Landscape:

The Organic Landscape

Materials: artist-painted and commercial cotton and silk fabrics

Techniques: cyanotype prints, Seminole style piecework, machine stitching

Size: 78"h x 32"w

Thanks to the SAQA Global Exhibit Seasonal Palette, The Organic Landscape has already toured many venues in the US, as well as in Taiwan and Brazil. I am thrilled to add another county to its exhibit history.

I was part of the Art in Embassies program once before, with the Organic Garden in Vientiane, Laos. It gives me a particular kind of patriotic pride to be able to make a contribution by loaning my artwork to this excellent program with a great history.

As always, thanks for reading and for your support. Pick your platform to find and follow my content: 

Threads: www.threads.net/@sue_reno_studio

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/suerenostudio

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/ 

Vividly Yours Exhibit at Creative York

In Dreams I Saw the Colors Change

I am pleased to announce that three of my art quilts are included in the exhibit, Vividly Yours, at the Creative York Gallery, York PA. The exhibit runs from May 3rd to June 16th, with an opening reception on the 3rd from 6 - 8. I will be attending, and I hope to see some of my local friends there.

In Dreams I Climbed the Cliffs

 My work in the exhibit includes In Dreams I Climbed the Cliffs, In Dreams I Saw the Colors Change - both from my series The River- and The Organic Landscape from The Garden series.  All work is for sale.

The Organic Landscape

 Vividly Yours is a group exhibit showcasing available works by some of the artists that were featured in our Art In Residence: Vivid event in April – a one-night-only exhibit of works from privately-owned collections. Participating artists are: Rob Evans, Quang Ho, Carol Oldenburg, Sue Reno, Justin Ruby, Dillon Samuelson, Clifton Santiago, Andi Simpson, Adrienne Stein, Rita Whitney, and Brenda Wintermyer.

November Pawpaw

My work in the Artist in Residence event was November Pawpaw, from the private collection of artist and curator Rob Evans.

The Garden at the Autumnal Equinox

I posted in the spring about the big changes in my garden—taking down a huge locust tree, and revamping the vegetable plot.  The autumnal equinox is a good time to report in on how things evolved from there.  In a word—fantastic!  The tree, and the shade it provided, were missed, but opening up the garden to the full sun, and removing the competition from the tree roots, gave me my best garden success in many years. It also helped that I rototilled in a lot of compost, and that the weather was cooperative, with plenty of sun and rain.   As an aside, the locust did not give up the fight readily, sprouting small saplings from the root structure all over the yard. 
The tomatoes were excellent.  No blight or disease, and a big crop of 6 different varieties for snacking and cooking.  They are still going strong.
The eggplants exploded.  I had several varieties, the round Italian types and the long Japanese, and they were both abundant, tender, and sweet without bitterness. They are still covered with blossoms, although at this point they have little chance of maturing into fruits.
Years ago I made a small art quilt with a cyanotype print of eggplants from that year’s garden.
I planted two long rows of rainbow swiss chard and have been overwhelmed by it, in a good way.  I put it in (almost) everything I cook, and eat the small leaves raw.  It will last until hard frost and then I will miss it terribly. 
I had both bush beans and Kentucky wonder pole beans.  The pole beans grew so enthusiastically that I fell behind in picking them, and quite frankly I grew a bit tired of beans.  So there are a lot of them there to shell out as soup beans, if I find the time and make the effort.
Kentucky wonder bean vines are a cyanotype feature on my art quilt The Organic Garden.
In the spring I randomly planted marigolds here and there in with the veggies, and they have flourished as well.

The fennel still has a few Black Swallowtail caterpillars feasting on it.  These latecomers to the party will go into chrysalis form to spend the winter.
Each year I plant tall red cannas.  The rhizomes are not hardy here in Pennsylvania, so I dig them and store them indoors over the winter.  This year I had a bunch of them crop up unexpectedly in a bed some distance away; my assumption is that squirrels buried some seed pods.  This is very unusual in my experience.  Their blooms are all different shades of reds and soft oranges, proof that genetics is a wonderful thing.

In the landscape beds, the black eyed Susan flowers had a good year. They are starting to fade out in a blowsy, lovely manner.
 The ever reliable Japanese anemones are putting on their fall show.
They are a cyanotype feature on my art quilt The Organic Landscape.

Equally reliable and beautiful are the stonecrops; this one is Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.
And last but not least, here is some goldenrod.  It is NOT responsible for hay fever allergies, its pollen is heavy and not windblown.  (The culprit is ragweed, which blooms at the same time.)  It is covered with bees and wasps of all sorts during the day.  As the sun sets, and the air cools quickly, some of the bees just stop and stay put until morning.

I am not showing you the weeds that got away from me, and the various few things that did not do well this year. That is the gardener’s privilege, to focus on the beauty and the joy and the satisfaction of a job well done.  Those will keep me fulfilled through the long winter, dreaming of next year’s glories.

For ongoing, macro image coverage of the local flora and fauna, check out my Flickr page.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting!

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.

“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 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.