Hello again everyone ,
I have sent almost everyone images from the Blog It exhibition apart from a couple , the emails of whom Hilary will be sending through to me . Hope you all like the way it was set up .
One of the other exhibitions is called "HER Story" which is about ground breaking women from the past . Our fellow blogger, Claire has a piece in that exhibition and so I am sending through the image of Kate Sheppard which is Claires and then 2 others which caught my eye . The whole exhibition was wonderful . Rosemary

Hello everyone ,
The NZ Quilt Symposium is on and the blog exhibition is up and receiving many visitors and being much enjoyed by the many viewers. I will be showing  photos on the blog soon . So thanks everyone for making this possible .  Rosemary

Art by the Lake

I thought  I’d share a video of my show last weekend with the Lakeshore Artists. We exhibit twice a year, in the fall at this beautiful outdoor location, in the grounds of a local cultural centre. One-third of the proceeds goes to a local food bank. I am thrilled to report that I did very well, selling 7 pieces, including Fiesta, our latest 12btd, and the large blue circle you see in the video, Coral Reef. I am the only textile artist in the group of about 50 professional artists. 

 

This is my piece titled Vice Versa which I entered into the South African National Quilt Festival, held in Johannesburg last month. I was thrilled to win Best Interpretation of Theme, which was Interchange. This piece, with others, will be shown in Germany and also Ireland in the next few months. Enjoy. 

Andriacci inspired quilts

For once I think I'm glad, or maybe that should be relieved, that my sewing room is out of action. This round of quilts is amazing, the variety of interpretations and the standard of the work is wonderful, I'm not sure that I would have made the cut! I salute you all.

After five long months we are actually moving in two days time. Although not much smaller than our present house the bungalow we are moving to has a very different layout so I don't know how long it will be before I'm sewing properly again but I hope to pick up the group challenges again soon. I've no doubt that I won't have to wait as long as Mai-Britt did!

Hello everyone ,
My apologies for apparently not putting up my Andriacci piece by the 31st . My only excuse is that I have been travelling (US, SA and AUS )during the past 6 weeks and only arrived back in the early hours of 1st . September . However I thought I had scheduled it to appear on 31st August . It has not appeared !! Where it is in cyber space I have no idea ??? Anyway here goes:

ANDRIACCI appeals to me immensely as an artist because of his naive style but also because he makes his naive shapes more interesting by filling the primary shape with secondary shapes . In my quilting I do a lot of stylised flowers and so having zoomorphic symbols to deal with instead is a good challenge for me . I have done several Andriacci inspired quilts now and may do others in the future as the more you look at a work of his the more you see in it . I am really glad that most of you got some fun out of your beautiful interpretations . Here are mine :The Inspiration

My Frog

My latest piece done while visiting Patricia in SA where we had so much fun sewing together . I based this piece on Andriacci tree images which ,of course, are less structured than mine. I really loved doing this one . So much fun and bright colours.

Something Fishy

I found Fernando Andriacci's work a little bit to colourful for me, but I was happy to find his painting "Hidden Guys" which colours spoke to me. It's a funny painting, I keep finding more "guys" every time I look. 

This is my piece "Somthing Fishy" based on the right side of the painting.

I'm happy to have finished in time as I had several technical problems with my newly unpacked sewing machine (after a six month in hibernation), not to mention starting a "bit" late....... Next time - give my self more time. I'm ready for your challenge Allison. 

When the Crocodile eats the Moon

I was excited when I first saw the work of Fernando Andriacci but then I started to think about my piece and it suddenly seemed more challenging than I expected.  To the extent that I started using distraction tactics not to have to think about it.  I had to give myself permission to be as ridiculous as possible and to let my imagination run riot to get the ideas flowing.  What fun!

The title refers to the title of a book I have just read by Peter Godwin about life in Zimbabwe in the recent past (harrowing).  It is what the indigenous people say when there is a solar eclipse - a crocodile has eaten the sun!  I love that.

So my piece is an elephant which is my sewing machine with the LCD screen (and me!), knobs, thread, rotary cutter AND the crocodile eating the sun!

It is a wholecloth, painted and machine quilted.  I used a black laundry marker to draw the outline, then quilted the sandwich in those lines.  I have used Inktense pencils and blocks, ordinary artist's acrylic paints, Fabrico markers, Koh-I-Nohr paints and ink pad (to stamp) - and NO water.  It was all done with Aloe Vera gel and I didn't have a single bleed of colour anywhere.  I thoroughly recommend this idea.

This is the work of Andriacci that inspired my piece.  Thanks, Rosemary.  

Hilary

Dreaming of multicoloured mice

   I've already introduced our resident mouser JP. Although he is not our cat, he spends a lot of time in our garden, the attraction being the mice who live under our terrace . Other cats have always shown a passing interest in mouseville, but none have been as dedicated as JP. He spends hours lying in wait, and sometimes he is successful. When he is not mouse hunting, he sleeps on the terrace, or in the flower patch.

 . I liked Andriacci's paintings with the brightly coloured animals, si I decided to use JP as a model for my quilt and took several photos of him (from a distance). When I was designing my quilt, I tried to make the cat and the mice angular as in some of Andriacci's work, but they didn't look right, so I decided to keep them a little more rounded and realistic .  I quilted them first and then painted them with inktense blocks and pencils. I was pleased with the result once I finished the quilting, but was disappointed when I had finished colouring the quilt. I like the way JP has come out, but I'm not satisfied with my colour choices, finding the overall result not quite right. I think it's the background: it might have been better left in white.

Haida Gwaii

This summer we had  a fascinating trip aboard a very small ship (12 passengers) that took us around the national park of Gwaii Hanaas in Haida Gwaii.  We hiked through rain forests and visited abandoned villages where we were given talks by local Haidas about life there.  We saw bald eagles, ravens, one bear and lots of other birds and some deer.  We paddled in kayaks around tidal pools, and learned a lot about the west coast environment from the marine biologist on board. 

West coast art, particularly Haida art is very distinctive.  I wanted to be influenced by it, but not copy it - in these days of cultural appropriation sensitivity I tried to avoid copying.  So this is an example of this style of art.  It is a small piece that I bought from a young local artist and you can see the complexity of the design.  It is in part a whale  and a raven.  Not sure about the RHS. 

The piece by Fernando Andriacci that I used as my influence:

And my piece:

LOGGERHEAD TURTLES

In keeping with my African roots I picked up on his under water scenes and in particular the turtles and have connected it to a scenario that happens almost every year off our southern shores.  Baby Loggerhead Turtles , a threatened species, for some reason find themselves caught in the cold seas which slow them down and eventually they find themselves  washed up on the beaches around the Cape.  In May this year over 200 we're washed up onto the beaches along with many who did not make it. They are rescued by volunteers and transported to the Two Oceans Aquarium where they are looked after until fit enough to be released.  They are then transported to Ushaka Marine World in Durban where they are released into the warm currents off our shores.  Many of those that did not make it had injested plastic, a very real and worrying problem in our oceans as we are all aware.

My piece is a homage to these little fighters who are faced with a growing pollution of plastic in our seas. Turtles are appliqued, the pale blue swirls and dots are actually a plastic bag that I have stitched on and then cut away with a soldering iron.  I have quilted the background with bubbles as the area was quite restrictive and this fitted in best.

Do Amigos - 2 Superheroes

This artist has been so much fun, as many of us predicted. Thank you Rosemary for bringing Fernando Andriacci to us.

I made this quilt almost as soon as Rosemary set the challenge - such was my enthusiasm! It was a case of just getting out some inks and fabric paints and spending an afternoon just letting my paintbrush wander - and this was the result.

The two funny characters I painted are very obviously inspired by Andriacci's own characters, although much simpler. I love the way he nests little 'personages' inside each of his characters - the more you look the more you find. It made me wonder whether Andriacci perhaps took some of his own inspiration from Paul Klee - I am thinking of his piece, 'The Cat and the Bird'.

Paul Klee: 'The Cat and the Bird'  (Public domain)

I decided to try and make my two characters as vibrant as I could - and as they took shape I imagined them as two friends who dress up as superheroes - with little jet-packs on their backs, ready to zoom off and save some poor soul who needs cheering up. It sounds silly but as I painted them I created imaginary personalities for the pair, who I named Pancho and Paloma and completely lost myself in the moment. It was bliss!

Superheroes:Inspired by the art of Fernando Andriacci

I loved making this so much I might even make a few more! Thanks Rosemary!

I forgot to add the piece I used for my inspiration ..............

Original artwork by Fernando Andriacci