Midnight Juried into Vision Gallery
Midnight was juried into Vision Gallery’s 30th Art Quilts Palette Cleansing Exhibition featuring juror, Susan Allred. Susan Allred wrote in the call for entry: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Terre des Hommes
(published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars)
With the constant onslaught of news media around us, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and disconnected from the world around us. As a respite from these intense narratives, exploring minimalism through art offers a refreshing Palette Cleanser, inviting us to reflect on simplicity in a chaotic world.”
When I was invited to my friend’s sheep shearing, my first sheep shearing to boot, I had not yet designed a quilt that meet the entry date requirements. I was really going to the shearing because I expressed interest to my friends about using dyed wool in some of my thread paintings as a base material before I thread painted the surface. I actually thought, “I will just go and learn what I can, not expecting to buy any wool that day.” I was super busy on other projects and was in the midst of a building a new studio, so thought the time is not right, maybe next year. Riiiiiggghhht. Well, standing there skirting my first fleece ideas starting going through my head about how I could use the wool in an art quilt. Standing right there, Midnight was born. I saw exactly what I wanted to do. Added bonus, if it came our right, it would meet the call for entry requirements. I went home with not one full fleece but two! One was a white fleece that became part of Midnight.
At the shearing, there were many members from the Arizona Weavers Guild. After the shearing, they had a felting demonstration with a hands-on make and take. That next Saturday I went to the Arizona Weavers Guild monthly meeting, joined and took home some books from their library on wool, including felting techniques. After reading the books, I hand washed my fleeces and got to felting. Everything worked out the way I planned. I had to experiment with how to attach the finished felt to the quilt. That took a bit of experimenting over a couple of weeks, but the end method worked well and it is invisible.
I random invite from a friend, ended up as an experimental quilt juried into Visions Gallery. This call was right up my alley, as the past five years has been spent making minimalist quilts. In my next blog, I will tell the story of my other quilt juried into this same exhibition. I will be at the opening reception, although late, as I am teaching a class that day sponsored by the Fiber Arts Center of Arizona. If you want to learn how to yarn couch birds, check out their website and sign up for my class.