Intentional UFO

A few weeks ago I was talking with the faculty at the university where I'll be having a solo show starting in December, and they suggested showing some work-in-progress so the students can see how I work. I thought this would be a great idea, and got excited about not finishing this piece "Alien Invasion" because I though it would be funny to have a UFO (unidentified flying object) that is also a UFO (un-finished object). ha ha, right?

But then I realized that I really needed to finish it because I needed an image for the show postcard, and I needed to finish it before leaving town for the International Quilt Festival in Houston -- yikes!

So for the last week instead of working an average of 3-4 hours a day in the studio (a schedule I started this fall to get ready for the solo show), I've been working more like 8-11 hours a day. Which tends to make me a little cranky. But luckily I had the trip to Houston to look forward to, the carrot at the end of the tunnel.

In addition to finishing quilts, I've been organizing lots of things for the process part of my show -- like drawings, stitching samples, and inspiration sources. I'm really having fun with this idea of making the show more experimental. We just finished building eight new pin-boards that will be installed in the gallery for that part of the exhibit. Hope to show you some photos of that stuff when I get back home!

Yummy Halloween Treats

Yuummm! Plate full of eyeballs....sounds good coming up on Halloween, doesn't it? Actually I baked these this morning using Sculpty for my current quilt, Alien Invasion, so they're not for eating.

And what's an alien invasion without an abducted cow? I have to laugh as I make things like barns and cows for this quilt because they're not your typical colors.

I didn't have had much time to work in my studio over the weekend because I had to suit up in my adventure outfit....(don't ask me to bend over in this costume, I barely got in it without dislocating my shoulder.)

Now I'm sure you think I'm off to the wild jungle in this outfit, but actually I'm off to the back yard to cut down all the water plants in our fish pond. I hate to cut them when all the water lilies are blooming and beautiful, so I usually wait until they start to fade in October and there's usually only one or two days that are warm enough to even THINK about getting into the water...

Oh my, I look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon! Actually I learned this face from my three-year-old nephew, I think he calls it his lion face. Good idea for a Halloween costume though.

And where has Russ been? Out at the Heartland Racetrack in freezing cold Kansas waiting to race his Porsche. Actually I was supposed to be the navigator in the road rally, but after reading only one out of four pages of complex driving directions, I got so incredibly car sick that we both had to bail out of the rally (last prize was still pretty good though.) The next day he raced at the track, and I got to stay in the hotel and watch cartoons and draw. Now that's my idea of a good weekend!

The Relationship between Yoga and Food

Here's PaMdora again, ready for quilting. Oooo, look! Her toes are curling up at the thought of going under the needle. I wonder if it feels something like getting a tattoo?

Now her hair is curling up too! Just kidding, this is another in the series of Yoga 101 quilts that I'm working on -- The Corkscrew pose.

Since this is a departure from some of the other color palettes that I've use before, I had to take my fabric swatches to the store and get some new threads. Browns -- never thought I'd be looking in that section! But I have been collecting some cool brown fabrics for a long time, and hey, aren't corks kind of brown??

And as usual, I practice doodling on paper before I do the actual quilting. But now I've started doing it in color because it's more fun that way.

Where does this yoga and food series come from? I go to this 6 am yoga class MWF when I can make it ;) Even though I don't really consider myself a morning person. I think the yoga makes me more creative, in fact I'm so creative that I'm occasionally inventing new poses during class.

I'm told during yoga that I should be focusing on breathing and clearing my mind, but since this is 6 am, it's difficult for me to clear from my mind the one overwhelming thought I usually have at this time of day which is, "what's for breakfast?" So maybe that's where the connection starts.

Or maybe it has its origins in childhood. I remember in my pre-school days attending a ballet (or was it a modern dance?) class. Now if this were a movie instead of a blog, the present day scene would dissolve into a black and white clip from the 1960's....

I'm in a big room with a wooden floor. I'm sure that in a matter of minutes, I'm going to be dancing around on my toes, but the dance instructor is telling all of us to lay down on the floor, or curl up in a ball, and pretend --- no, not pretend, but to BE a refrigerator. Now she's telling us to BE a refrigerator full of all kinds of food. Now she's telling us to BE an empty refrigerator. I decide I prefer being a full refrigerator because what's more lonely than an empty refrigerator? But then that's where the memory begins to fade.....

Windows of Color

Friday I drove to St. Louis for another funeral. The service was held in St. Paul's Lutheran Church early in the morning, and the morning light filled the church with a colorful glow through the stained glass windows.

The windows reminded me of patchwork quilts, and I especially liked how the small symbols were intermingled with the blocks of color -- each different, each one with a special meaning that was unique to this church and community. After the service, I happened to met a member of the church who helped to design the windows, and he explained how the symbols were selected.

Exciting Studio News

Only recently I learned my quilt PaMdora's Box will be at the San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum as part of Quilt National 2005. Yesterday I received this postcard in the mail -- PaMdora is a cover girl! It's very cool to be in this museum because I have lots of family out in that area who have never seen my work (except on my website.) So I'm excited to hear what they think of the show.

This has been a good season for my quilts. "It's Only a Leaf" was accepted into Quilt National 2007 and "The Vintage Purse" was accepted into FiberArts International 2007. I almost didn't enter QN this year because my own slides for the entry turned out pinky and stinky, but Russ re-took them and then they were beautiful (he's so great!).

I had my doubts about FiberArts International also, especially after ordering the last two published catalogs. I wanted to see previous years, to see whether my work might fit in. I tried counted up the quilts in the shows because this exhibition features much more than quilts. I thought I spotted about 8-10 out of approximately 90 pieces per show, but it's hard to tell because many fiber arts disquise their quilts with descriptions like "fabric construction" and "layered, stitched medium." There are even some artists who simply use the term "own process" -- what's that??

Lisa Call has already posted a lot of information about the FiberArts show. She got in both shows also -- yay, Lisa! Her work will probably end up on the cover or the book liner again...

Other excitment of a different sort...
Last week a Mexican bakery down the street from our studio blew up because of a gas leak in the kitchen. This building used to be the Catfish house -- full of knotted pine paneling, big rope decor, and all you can eat catfish buffets. Then someone remodeled it, and leased it out to four separate businesses.

Some students at the university across the street said that the explosion happend around midnight, and it shook the ground across the street, rattled windows, and blew open doors. Luckily no one was hurt, and there was no damage to our studio other than burnt books falling all over our studio lawn, because there used to be a bookstore right next to the bakery. No more! The back of the building looks even worse than the front. They've also taken down the Sprint and Subway signs. I haven't tried drawing flying Mexican pastries and burning books, but imagine someday this too may find its way into some kind of art.

Cartoon Logic and Old Cars

I've been driving around for about a week now with a really big bug splat on my windshield -- to be able to study the shape and attributes of bug splats, and also to remind myself to put some bug splats on this quilted car. Now that the car and the windshield are done, I guess I can go wash my real car.

I was also thinking about quilting little bugs flying in the headlight beams, then happily found this dotty print that kind looks like dust flecks floating in light. I still might try the bug idea too, maybe just one or two little lonely gnats.

Cartoons requires a sort of logic, which I often contemplate while drawing. For instance, this car is inspired by a photo I found of a convertible Thunderbird from the 60's. The real car had four headlights, but when I drew them all in the picture, I ran into the problem of how does an old car headlights high-beam look? I got all confused about high-beams and low-beams, so I eliminated one set of headlights. Now the car kind of looked funny in the front, but oh well, I'd moved on...

Because then I realized my original drawing was flawed in another way. If an alien tractor-beam spotlight were directed onto a car, where the light wasn't, the car would be dark, right? but how to do that in fabric....? My solution was to change to darker fabrics, but I don't like the way the front tire turned out, so may re-do that.

The reason I choose a Thunderbird is because I once had a similar car. My dad gave me a 1967 Thunderbird to drive to high school, except mine wasn't a convertible. It was my grandmother's until it became too unreliable for a grandmother, but not too unreliable for a high schooler. You can see it in this old photo -- me with my obligatory 70's Farah Fawcett hairdo created under the torture of a curling iron, and I have no idea who that little dog is. I loved that car, the inside had all kind of electric do-dads, and it was like sitting in a spaceship. I named her "Bernice," and all my friends called her that too.

I was wondering the other day why so many of my quilts have cars and trucks in them, then I remembered that when I was growing up, my dad was kind of a car nut. He always had some kind of old vintage car around in various states of restoration. When you're a kid, can sort of draw and have no money, it naturally occurs to you to draw pictures and give them away instead of buying gifts. So I used to draw my dad's cars and give the drawings to him, and he had to frame them of course. But my drawings of cars have always looked sort of fat and squatty, like cartoons.

"Gilded" Closing Reception

This weekend was the closing reception for the Uncommon Threads "Gilded" show -- aka Art Quilts at the Creamery. The Creamery is a historic building downtown that has been donated to our Arts Council and is undergoing a million-dollar renovation, so we were lucky to be able to have a show there.

Several out-of-town artists who participated in this invitational came to Springfield for the weekend. We got the opportunity to host Jill Rumoshosky Werner who is standing by her quilt above. The theme of the Gilded show was to incorporate metallic fabrics, threads or paints into a quilt. Since I don't usually use metallics, I was sort of at a loss for something to do. I tried working on a spaceship, but it sort of morphed into a polka-dotish thing, so regretably, I'm not part of this show. Jill had a great piece though -- it had a thin foil quilt appliqued on top of another quilt background of blacks and whites --sort of had a vintage feel which I love.

And here's Jill hamming it up right in the middle of the show. We had a great time during her and the other artists' visits. The reception was timed with the First Friday Art Walk downtown, so there was LOTS of art openings (more than you can see in one night, and under a full moon!)

In a couple of weeks, after the participating artists receive their work back and a photo cd of the show, I'll be posting images of the show on the Uncommon Threads website.

Last Day of Summer

Okay it's not really summer, but yesterday hit 89, one of the last really warm days of the season. I've been working hard lately to get ready for this show. Truthfully, I'm kind of freaking out because I'd hoped to have a lot more work done by now, and I only have two month left to get ready. But I've been having a pretty good week, so we took the afternoon off to go water skiing.

Although it was warm out, the water was a bit chilly (well what do you expect on October 3rd?) But it was a gorgeous afternoon and with hardly any other boats on the lake, the water was like a mirror -- slick and smooth. Skiing into the setting sun was like sailing into heaven. Then we anchored in a cove, let the dog swim around snapping up bugs, and listened to the birds and the leaves fall while eating some homemade (lopsided) sushi as the sun finally dropped behind the trees.

When we got back to the boat docks, there was an almost full moon in the sky. I suddenly remembered as I looked that the boat lights reflecting in the water, several years ago I had seen a similar scene. I had just stumbled across Paula Burbidge's Quilt Studio, the first quilt book I ever bought. Paula's book shows her amazing studies of light reflecting on water. At the time I was so excited and overwhelmed by the idea of making art using fabric, so jazzed up by the photos of her studio, that I barely knew where to begin.

Although I'm truely awed by these glimses of great beauty, I find it difficult to even think about doing art. Nature is a much better artist than me, so I'm pretty happy just being an observer and making art about other things -- like snowcones and toothbrushes. There was lots of inspiring road construction along the highway around the lake, and it's true, I got more ideas from that.