"More Than Fiber" Reception

Last Thursday I attended the opening reception for the "More Than Fiber" exhibit at the Goggleworks in Reading, PA. There I am standing happily in front of my Fireball. I love it when my work is well displayed, well lit, and in the company of a diverse lot of wonderful works of art. The Goggleworks is a great facility and they did things up right for the reception, including tasty nibbles. They also had the good taste to put Fireball up on their home page--how cool is that?

Here's Jill Rumoshosky Werner, who came all the way from Kansas for the opening, talking about her "Picniced" to an appreciative audience. Jill specializes in conceptual and 3-d work; this piece won the second place award. I've known Jill online for many years, and was delighted to finally meet her in person and have a chance to talk with her.

I also met Toni Kersey, shown here standing with "Urban Voodoo 3", one of two works she had int the show. I love the energy and vibrancy of this piece, and chatting with Toni was a real treat. I hope to see more of her and of her work in the future.

I was too busy talking to get more pictures, but I also had a great time meeting Mary Stoudt, who had two quilts in the show. Mary showed me her studio space upstairs at the Goggleworks, where I was lucky enough to see more of her work and her process.

The exhibit is up until April 18th--go if you get the chance!

Watt & Shand Series Completed!

I am very pleased to announce that my "Watt & Shand" series is complete and the images are uploaded to my website. To see all ten in the series, including #6, above, and #9, below, with detail shots and descriptions, click on the Structures gallery.

Nine of them (#2 has already been sold) will be debuting in my solo show "Transformation: The Watt & Shand Series" at the Arts Hotel Gallery in Lancaster, PA, with the opening reception on Friday, March 19th. I will be in attendance and would love to meet you there. I'll post with more details as the time draws near.

This body of work is the culmination of a long process of exploration and design for me. I started taking pictures of the historic Watt & Shand building in Lancaster, PA back in April of 2007. The building had been demolished to make way for a hotel and convention center, but the facade was saved and supported with an elaborate scaffolding; I was mesmerized with the way the light came through the empty windows.

I made the first art quilt in the series in January of last year and have working on the series almost non-stop since then. I culled through hundreds of my photographs to use the images that captured something essential about the construction process and the visual tableau it presented. By clicking on "Watt & Shand" under Labels in the right sidebar, you can track back the works in progress.

Thanks for all the support and encouragement I've received on this project to date, and I hope you enjoy the results of my journey into architectural depictions.

More Than Fiber Card, and some snow

I got the exhibit postcards for the More Than Fiber exhibit at the Goggleworks, and I've reproduced it here so you can see the list of exhibition artists. There were only 33 artists accepted--I am really honored to be one of them.

Not much studio time today here today. I've been dealing with the after effects of a major snowstorm here on the east coast--i.e., shoveling. I made some progress but have more to do tomorrow. Here the view on my back deck, showing about 28-30 inches of snow piled up on the patio table:

And here's a view out the front. There's a Prius under there somwhere!

AQS Lancaster Acceptance

More good news in the mail--March is becoming an embarrassment of riches in terms of wonderful venues in which to exhibit my work. Big Root Geranium was juried into the AQS show in Lancaster, PA, March 24-27. I am thrilled to be in the company of these other artists and quiltmakers. This is the first year that the AQS (American Quilter's Society) is having a show in Lancaster; it replaces, after a fashion, the venerable Quilter's Heritage Celebration which ended last year. The AQS show will be the largest event yet held in the new Lancaster County Convention center, which of course is the end result of the project I just finished documenting in my Watt & Shand series. (If you are new here, you can read all about by clicking on Watt & Shand under Labels in the right sidebar.) There's a lovely confluence of the threads of my artistic life coming together right now.

R.I.P. Random Racoon

As I wind down the Watt & Shand series, my mind is racing furiously in pursuit of my next project. I'm going to be focusing on the native animal life, and am currently gathering images and inspiration. So imagine my excitement when I went for a walk at Grubb Lake and stumbled upon a new deceased raccoon! I couldn't see any obvious signs of trauma, so I'm guessing it was hit on the highway and crawled off some distance to shuffle off this mortal coil. I took a lot of pictures, but decided NOT to bring it home for further study. I will do a lot of seemingly odd things in my occupation as an artist, but we all have to draw the line somewhere, and for me, the line not crossed involves collecting roadkill. For the squeamish, I have limited myself here to a picture of the beautiful tail, which I have manipulated to abstract it a bit and show off the patterning.

Also in the department of Things Found on a Woodsy Path, I was gifted with this wonderful branch, which rattles cheerfully when shaken. After eliminating all the things it wasn't, I wandered the highways and byways of google for a while until I found out what it was (thanks and a tip of the hat to this Tree ID site). It's a branch with seed pods from a Royal Paulownia tree, already one of my favorites because of the leaves, and the focus of this piece.

It joins this enormous leaf, more than two feet across, that fell in my path late last year, in the queue of images that deserve further attention.

The seed pods have very graceful shapes. The background specks are the actual seeds.

And while I'm distorting things, how cool is this?

Watt & Shand Series Progress

I have been stitching away very diligently on the remaining works in my Watt & Shand series and am making good progress. I am well on track to having it done with time to spare before the series debuts at the Arts Hotel Gallery in Lancaster, PA in March. I took some quick pics today to share; the colors are a bit off, but you can get the general idea. The quilting is done on #7, above and below, and I am still really thrilled about how cool my leaning construction worker looks.

Stitching is also done on #8:

And #9:

And #10:

Sometimes I question why I am involved in a medium that is so incredibly time and labor intensive, but when I look at the finished results I have no qualms, there's simply no other way to get such incredible texture, movement, and dimensionality. I still need to do the rest of the stitching on #5 and #6. Don't ask why I'm working backwards with the quilting, it just worked out that way. Then some binding and finishing, photography and photo editing, etc., and I will be ready for the big reveal. (If you are new here, you can track back the origins and progress of this series by clicking on Watt & Shand under "Labels" on the right sidebar.) Many thanks for following along so far, and stay tuned!

"More Than Fiber" at the GoggleWorks Center acceptance

I am very pleased to announce that "Fireball" has been accepted into "More Than Fiber" in the Cohen Gallery at the GoogleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, PA. The Juror for the show is Warren Selig. There will be a catalogue for the exhibit.

The show runs from March 7th until April 18th, with a public reception on Sunday, March 14 from 11 am to 4 pm. I plan to attend, and hope to see some of you there--it promises to be a fabulous exhibit!

African Threads

I've just received this wonderful embroidery I purchased through Valerie Hearder's African Threads.
Valerie buys the embroideries directly from the African women who create them; they provide a valuable source of desperately needed income for basic survival. She also donates a portion of the proceeds to the SLF Grandmother's Campaign, which supports grandmothers who are caring for children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

So I felt good about my purchase even before it arrived; now that I can see first hand how wonderful the colors and composition are, how skilled the needleworker is, and the overall quality of the piece, I am thrilled.

There are similar ones available in the African Threads Etsy Shop--go and find your own treasure!
As a bonus, sewn to the back was a paper with this explanation of the work:
And pinned to that was this translation: