There have been countless debates over the art verses craft of quilts.  I definitely come down on the side that art quilts ARE art.  They are pieces of art using fiber as the medium.  Artists, such as myself, study design and art principles and utilize and analyze them during the making of their art pieces.  They are generally not utilitarian crafts, but made and presented as pieces of art.  I digress on this topic for a purpose.  It can be difficult to get exhibition space due to this issue.  Museums and galleries limit the number of art quilt exhibits.  I heard back from a gallery space saying that they had already exhibited quilts and felt that two quilt exhibits in two years would be too many.  Would they have said that about two watercolor exhibits?  Two oil painting exhibits?

The acceptance of art quilts by museums, galleries, and art academics has been an ongoing struggle since at least the 1970s.  I am very grateful to those who have been persistently working toward respect for cloth as a valid art medium.  SAQA, and it’s founder, Yvonne Porcella who passed recently,  have been integral in this movement toward expanding the value of art quilts in the art world.  There are now museums specific to fiber arts and quilts, due in a great part, to the popularity of quilting and the continued efforts to show this art to a broader audience.  This exhibit may be ground breaking.  I wonder if anyone knows of another art museum that has had two simultaneous quilt exhibits.  I thank Niloo Paydar for her efforts to make this exhibit a reality.  I hope that we artists did not disappoint her in our resulting pieces for the call and that the IMA gets good feedback on the dual exhibit so that they will expand their exhibiting of art quilts in the future, while modeling the value of quilt art for other museums and galleries.

Susie Goodwin with one of her pieces during the opening

I attended the opening evening’s artist panel where the topic: When Artists Step Out of Their Comfort Zone was very interesting given that our pieces were to be artist responses to the quilts and body of work of Marie Webster.  Drawing inspiration to make an art quilt based on something so removed from contemporary art quilts was a challenge for many of us and it was interesting to hear how four of the exhibiting artists dealt with this disparity.  An album of some quilts from the Marie Webster exhibit are at the bottom of the page.  The panel was comprised of two Indiana artists, Pamela Burns and Terry Pate, and two regional artists, Barbara Schneider and Kathleen Loomis.

Joan Webb at opening night with her quilt

Marie was a Hoosier quilter in the early 1900s.  While today her quilts seem very traditional, back in her time they were cutting edge.  Her quilts and their patterns were published and sought after.  She became an entrepreneur in a time when it was unusual for married women to work, let alone be an entrepreneur.  She published the first book on quilting.  I did not know much of anything about Marie Webster before I began and did research into her and her work because the pieces were to be “dialogues” with Marie.  I will expand on my journey for this exhibit in a future blog.  For brevity on this post, suffice it to say, I did enjoy my “dialogue” with Marie and am grateful for this exhibit for all I learned about Marie Webster, her work, and her process.

My quilt Dragonflies (submission photo). The dragonfly wings in the white border are quilted in metallic threads that is also surrounding each dragonfly.

There were so many beautiful quilts in the exhibit, I decided to give myself some guidelines in selecting which pieces to post here. Just like any jurying process, that does not mean there were not many other equally beautiful pieces I could have chosen.  I decided to choose some overall photos of the gallery and quilts from Hoosier quilters whom I  know.  I will say, that due to the fact that most of Marie Webster’s quilts are floral, so are the responses.  There are only two quilts that do not have flowers:  mine and Kathleen Loomis’ (seen above on the pilar in the second gallery photo).  Mine is below, but I chose to use my submission image since it is a better photograph than I was able to take in the gallery.  I also include the submission photo of Sonia Martin’s piece since I took that for her and the natural lighting is better for photography.

Sonia Martin Brown’s submission photo

At the bottom of the page is a slideshow of  some of the quilts in the Marie Webster exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  The lighting is low to protect the quilts as much as possible during the exhibit.  They are also on angle for less stress on the fibers.  So, it does not provide the best possible scenario for photographing the quilts.  The quilts are pastels in general and I adjusted the photographs.  During adjustments, they either turn out too bright or still too dim.  I over adjusted some and under adjusted others to give you more of an idea range of color.  The truth lies in between.

[See image gallery at triscartsi.com]

Since I brought up lighting issues with quilts, I also ran into lighting issues with the SAQA exhibit.  You don’t want bright continuous light on a quilt because light fades fabric.  The quilts were tricky to photograph and adjust as well.  You don’t want to use flashes with quilts on exhibit which would have helped even out the lighting on the quilts, but adds to the light exposure to the fabrics.  I almost always have my cameras set to no flash since I am often photographing where there is no flash or flash is distracting to others.  I wanted to show the difference in the pictures with straight from the camera and adjusted in software.

This doesn’t truly represent the light level in the room (it isn’t dark in the room), but does show that it is difficult for a camera to photograph without flash in a low light indoor situation intended to lessen the light exposure to textiles in an exhibit.

This is an adjusted version of the same photo. If you go much lighter, the colors in the quilts look faded. Again, this still does not represent the actual look and feel of the room. It is much brighter than it appears in the photo

The Marie Webster exhibit has a very serene feel with the big pastel antique quilts.  It was curated and presented beautifully by Niloo Paydar.  I felt joy in their beauty and calm in their presentation.  I hope you have a chance to visit both exhibits.  The SAQA Dialogues exhibit closes Sept 4th 2016 and the Marie Webster exhibit closes January 7 2017.  More information can be found at the IMAs website.

[See image gallery at triscartsi.com]

Carol Marlin’s 200 theme quilt

INfiber, an Indianapolis area fiber arts group of which I’m a member, is holding an exhibit at Fishers City Hall.  The exhibit area is spacious to allow the group to put several pieces from each member.  Members did pieces specific for Indiana’s bicentennial this year.  Entitled 200: Threads of time, the challenge pieces all had a bicentennial or 200 theme and received the Indiana Bicentennial’s official endorsement.

The following are a few from the 200: Threads of Time Indiana Bicentennial portion of the exhibit.

Jerri Warner (top) Joan Webb (bottom)

Monica Vogel

Audrey McFarland (left) Mary Strinka (right)

Joan Webb

Ann Luther

Barbara Triscari Bicentennial Orchid rust and ink wholecloth

We had a small grouping of Indianapolis themed quilts.

Here are my pieces (other than Bicentennial Orchid which is pictured above with the Bicentennial themed quilts) that are in the exhibit.

Here is a small sampling of the rest of the exhibit.  It is an honor to be a part of such a talented group of fiber artists.  Fishers City Hall: 1 Municiple Drive, Fishers, Indiana.  Open business hours and during special events.  June 6 -July 30 2016

Ann Luther (left) Jeri Warner (both on the right)

Judy Ireland

Leigh Leighton

Mary Strinka

Dance of Dusk

Photo of tree printed on copper

The first is my first quilt mixing leather, weaving and quilting, not to mention metal.  The quilt basically has a giant hole in it where the woven leather sun is.  The top is a rod pocket to hang from a bamboo rod.

Dance of Dusk was made to evoke a sunset and fence line at dusk as the birds are scurrying to finish up the day with one last bite, flight or snuggle before heading back to the nest as the sun goes down.  What at first seems to be a quiet calm reveals that there are pockets of quiet motion of the birds.

Photos printed on leather

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk detail

This piece was fun to try out some more techniques like bobbin work and using some fabrics with surface designs.  I also embellished with some silk fibers and a carrier rod.  This quilt also used my original photos on fabric and leather and evokes the same business of dusk in the life of birds.

There is an artists’ reception this Friday March 2,  6-10 pm. and will hang through March 30th.

Harrison Center for the Arts

1505 N. Delaware St

Indianapolis, In

The large tree in the foreground is a dark maroon leather applique.  I have been enjoying using leather in my quilts over the last year and do not feel I have finished exploring its use in quilting.

stamped and thermofax screened trees

I used the tree challenge fabric to make a similar hand carved stamp that I used with thickened dyes on hand dyed fabric, the unobstructed tree in the photo to the right. The tree on the left partially covered is a thermofax screen print and is from a photo of a tree I took in Bolzano Vicentino, Italy,  Where I lived for three years.  My sister and her husband came to visit and we decided to take a walk and found a path with a sign about an old church that led back behind houses and into a field where the church was.  The old church is utilized once a year for a communal celebration.  We enjoyed seeing the old church (look for a quilt with photos of the church in the future) and found a tree with the trunk covered in ivy.

The other thermofax screens were made with my photographs as well, one in Italy and one since moving back to the U.S.  I enjoyed using so many different techniques and exploring the use of various methods to overdye and remove color from the commercial fabrics.  You can scroll down to earlier posts as I worked on dyeing the fabrics.