Uta in the spotlight - SAQA Journal Vol 28 no 1

I was eating my breakfast this morning and reading my new SAQA journal that had just arrived in the mail and there was an article about Uta and her work on p. 29. No time now to include a photo as I am running out the door. Uta, maybe you can tell us more about it and share a link! Congratulations! Great article and beautiful quilt....

Results in exhibition

Last week I spent four long and interesting days at the Biennale International d'Art Textile in France, presenting a small show of my series 'text messages'. As two of the pieces I have made for the challenges in this group belong in this series, they, too, were included in the exhibition. And they made a very nice pair:

top: text messages 16,
below: text messages 15

Thank you to the group for the inspirations for these pieces. I am looking forward to working on other challenges when the art symposium is over in May and I can think of other things again.

Here is a view of some more of the exhibition:

Dear Bloggers ,

The day of the blog exhibition with my Auckland Quiltmakers group is fast approaching (5th and 6th May). I have compiled notes on each artist which have so far  been chosen by members and then gathered all our interpretations from our postings on the blog. I have carefully labelled everyones piece of work with first names and decided that the format will look like the enclosed photo. The first part is about the artist and I have shown samples of works. The second part shows everyones labelled  piece of work and the third part is my completed quilt.   Each artist and our interpretations will have a similar format .

 If any of you are unhappy about having your work shown in this way please let me know ASAP and I can delete you from the information sheets.

I think it could be a very interesting exhibition and I hope will be enjoyed by everyone who sees it. I am very excited by it all . When the exhibition is up and running I will send you further pictures.
Please email me at roserush@xtra.co.nz if you wish to contact me directly.

(The second picture is a close up of the information sheets .)

Cheers .
Rosemary

       

Exciting exhibition news

Exciting news! "Moon Dance" has been selected for SAQA's upcoming juried exhibition, Dusk to Dawn. A collection of abstract nightscapes, animal portraits, and other nighttime observations, these pieces offer a glimpse of the mysterious world that emerges when darkness arrives.
Dusk to Dawn premieres in 2018 at Quilt Festival Houston featuring quilts by artists from Canada, across the US and around the world. I am thrilled to be in such talented company.

We have a new member

Too much excitement - a new artist and a new member.  She is a South African, living in Durban and Phil approached her with the invitation to join us.  I am delighted to say she has accepted.  I have sent her an invite to register with our blog so she can post things, but in the meantime she has sent this bio:

          My name is Allison Moorcroft and I started quilting in 1993.  After a slow start, I completed a few commissioned quilts and have exhibited my work in England, France, USA, Japan, Taiwan and of course, South Africa.

          Won an Over-locker and later an Embroidery machine entering Bernina Competitions.  Over the years I have gravitated to Fibre Art work away from Traditional quilting.   Besides being a member of one of our local Quilting Guilds, I am also part of a small group called ‘The Arty Farty girls’.

          As we live on a yacht, I simply do not have the luxury of a reasonably sized studio which compels me to create smaller pieces of artwork.  My artist husband is my worst critic [or is it best?].

A picture I found of Allison sewing a commissioned quilt designed by her husband - it is a special kind of sailing spinnaker parachute (2014).

Welcome Allison, good to have you join us.

Hilary

And the next artist is .....

I'm not long back home from my week away with the NW Contemporary Quilt group which was as inspiring and informative as you could imagine.

I haven't had time to catch up on all the recent posts but I was excited to see that it's my turn to choose the next artist.

I've enjoyed meeting new artists, particularly those that have been chosen for their shared nationality and thought that I would do likewise. But I wanted to add another element - here we all are, twelve women working away at our art but so far the chosen artists have been men. I'm far from being a rampant feminist but thought that it was time for a change so I give you .....

Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham

Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham worked in a variety of styles during her life so I'm hoping there will be something for everyone. Enjoy!

Still Life Variations

   I had not heard of Lundstrom before, so it was good to discover another artist who was new to me. I especially like his still lifes with their bright colours, especially the blues and oranges, a favourite combination of mine. I decided set up and draw my own still life, using my favourite blue mug, along with a jug and orange.

   For a while I have been wanting to try a multiple coloured lino print and I thought that the simple shapes of the drawing might work for this. I expected it to be more difficult than it was and was delighted when it worked the first time that I tried it out on paper. After trying various combinations, I spent a couple of days making prints on fabric. I have plenty left over after making the quilt to use to experiment with stitch, and some with just the black outline that I want to try colouring with inktense pencils and other methods. The printing may have been less complicated than I thought, but the simple piecing did not go so well: even though the pieces were the correct size, I couldn't get one row to fit together and gave up , leaving it until after the weekend. Needless to say it went together with no trouble on Monday. I would have finished it yesterday, if I had not almost attached my finger to the quilt! Fortunately I missed putting the sewing machine needle through my nail by 2-3 millimetres, though I have a nice groove in the side of my finger! Needless to say, I am glad to have finished it at last.  

   I am quite pleased with the resulting prints and like the way in which each is a little different. The one thing I would change is to make the black outlines a little thinner. I did not want to cut away any more as I was worried about cutting away too much and having to start again. I must practise cutting thinner lines.

The next person to choose a new artist is..........

..........Linda B!

So looking forward to a new challenge, perhaps I might even start a little earlier this time, three days really isn't enough.

The Couple - A Sketch

My original thought had been to try to create a nude in his style, but after I saw the sketch (below) I could not get it out of my mind. I did the thread sketch in black thread on two shades on blue tulle to emulate the blue backgrounds he often used, along with a layer of orange tulle as a nod to the oranges often found in the still lifes.
Here is the original sketch.

Sammensætning

I couldn’t make my mind up on which painting to choose as my inspiration, when low and behold, I found my solution in a danish television program. I was watching a program about the daily life in an auction house and one expert was sent to a private home to value a modern painting. And, yes you guessed it; it was a Lundstrøm, never before seen by other than friends and family. It had been bought in the sixties, straight from Lundstrøm and arrived in the house with the paint still wet! That got me very excited and I hurried to take a screen print for reference - long live the iPad.

Inspiration

Background quilted

First I added layers of of textured bits, then I quilted the piece. 

Gesso applied

Then I added a layer of gesso with a heavy hand, and acrylic paint with a very light hand. 

Sammensætning

 The motives was fused and apliqued with black thread. I am very pleased with the result, it will not be the last time I use this technique, great fun!

Lundstrom meets Gascoigne

I really enjoyed being introduced to Vilhelm Lundstrøm. I love his flat colours and use of negative space, but once again I struggled with interpreting one of the images I liked in fabric. As I was looking through the catalogue of his work I came across his crate series. 

I didn't particularly like these pieces but they did put me in mind of the work of Australian artist Rosalie Gasgoine whose work I do like. 

The fabric was coloured as one piece. Serendipity created additional marks as I used an old quilt as a printing pad!  Once coloured I ripped the fabric into squares and bonded it to the background, additional marks, stenciled text and minimal stitch completed the piece.

text messages 16 - Lundstrøm by Uta

Thanks to Maj-Britt's suggestion I made acquaintance with another artist I had never heard about - but although I liked the pictures of his works I could find on the internet, again neither of them inspired me to use it as some kind of push-off for a quilt of mine. So for a while I was rather hesitant about what to do with this challenge, until I had an idea how to make a bit of graphic use of the special Danish letter
ø  included in his name.
 I repeated his name several times in a large script and also enlarged that special letter, overlaying the repetition of the name.

Then I chose a piece of fabric I had once treated to an attempt at shibori - realizing in that process that that is not my kind of technique, but that is an entirely other story - and started stitching.

That took a little while, but experience has taught me to be more generous with myself about the density of stitching needed before I consider the whole thing 'sufficiently' filled.  The letters of the name outside the graphic center were stitched only on the outline, within the graphic center I added a bit of a blue stitching line to mark the edge more precisely. 
Experience has also taught me that the most successful way to dissolve the stitching foil and the stabilizer beneath is to not only pour boiling water over it, but to boil the whole thing for a little while. Otherwise there will always be some residue left. 
Then I dry the piece on the heater - easy enought these days with the kind of temperatures we are having here right now! - and iron it flat.
Quilting around the edges of the graphic center. And this is it. I admit - not bound yet. But practically finished.

text messages 16