A Quirky Quilt Top

Scrolling through ebay is my secret pleasure, and this unusual quilt top jumped out at me.  I bid on it, and before too long it arrived at my door, in "as is" condition.  I soon realized that it was paper-pieced, and very musty, with some old indigo and mourning prints. So, I picked the paper off and gave the whole thing a gentle wash. I saved the paper of course...you never know when something like this will be needed.  Some of the paper looked like a bus or train timetable, one small fragment mentioned Milk St., Boston.  The quilt came from Wichita, Kansas.  It looks like someone put together the beginnings or leftovers from several different projects and said "good enough."  Yet, it was never made into a finished quilt, so maybe not quite good enough? We'll never know, and that is what intrigues me about using repurposed textiles in my artwork.  I am able to imagine new narratives in old cloth.  I don't know where I will take this, but I am thinking about it.

I have two small pieces from my Out Loud series showing in South Haven, MI, at the South Haven Center For the Arts this fall.  The exhibit is called WITH (re)PURPOSE, and will be on display from September 13 through November 3, 2018.

Summer Reading

These are a few titles I have enjoyed this summer:   Birds of Wonder, by Cynthia Robinson; The Life List of Adrian Mandrick, by Chris White; The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penney; Saints at the River, by Ron Rash; and a very thought-provoking read, Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent. I can't believe that summer is almost gone, I must have spent it reading and sewing...

Together for Four Decades

The Indiana Women's Caucus for Art is celebrating our 40th anniversary as an organization with an exhibit of member work at the South Bend Museum of Art, through August 12.  Founded in 1978 as a chapter of the national Women's Caucus for Art,  this group has given artistic support to me and many other women artists for four decades.  These are my art friends. They have encouraged me, given helpful critiques and provided a circle of connection for most of my adult life. It can be isolating to be an artist, especially a woman artist, and IWCA has kept me focused and engaged in the work I am doing, and the wider art world.  You can read more about how WCA has been creating opportunities for women in the visual arts by clicking the link in my sidebar. Nora McGreevy wrote a great article for the South Bend Tribune about the IWCA and the show, linked below:

https://www.southbendtribune.com/entertainment/inthebend/arts/indiana-women-s-caucus-for-art-celebrates-years-at-south/article_970b7f9d-0bf8-5765-a2da-cc652ba1ac83.html 

My piece, Outspoken, is included with the works of 20 IWCA members at the South Bend Museum of Art.

Here are a few titles I have enjoyed this summer:

The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout; Across a Hundred Mountains, by Reyna Grande; Before Mars, by Emma Newman; and Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell.

Starched and Pressed

My quilt, Starched and Pressed, will be on view at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, CO from July 6 through September 1, 2018.  The exhibit, 36th Annual New Legacies: Contemporary Art Quilts, opens July 20 at the Lincoln Center.

Starched and Pressed, cotton, linen, found white shirts

This piece had a bumpy start, I ended up cutting a whole section out of the center, then mending in a new section to fill the gap.  The result is a more dramatic, less symmetrical composition. Like the other pieces in this series, Starched and Pressed was created from fragments of a dozen cotton dress shirts. A detail appears below.

Starched and Pressed, (detail)

What I'm Reading Lately:

West, by Carys Davis (I loved this spare, well told story); The Winter Station, by Jody Shields; Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje; The Distance Between Us, by Reyna Grande; A Reckoning, by Linda Spaulding.

Uprooted

This week is the opening of Form not Function, at the Carnegie Center for Arts and History, New Albany, Indiana.

This is the first time I have had a quilt accepted for this exhibition, so I am delighted to tell a little bit more about it, and the interesting back story behind it.

I have had a copy of Quilts of Indiana: Crossroads of Memories, since it came out in the early 1990's. A record of the Indiana Quilt Registry Project, the quilts are very well documented, and are a fascinating visual history of women and the times they lived through. One quilt story stood out for me.  It was a Mariner's Compass quilt, made by Susan Brackney Clayton (1848- 1942) when she was a preteen girl.  The book documents the quilt as it is today, a photo of the maker with the quilt, and excerpts from her extensive diaries, all cherished by her family. Her poignant words, written so long ago, have drawn me back again and again.

The diary selections were written in 1890, from a sod house near Elton, Nebraska.  Susan writes with longing for the home and loved ones left behind in Indiana, and the loneliness and isolation "far away on western prairie wild.  I can look as far as my eyes will let me see...it is one vast prairie there is not a tree..." (pg 41) She speaks about the quiet, the stillness, except for an ever-blowing wind.  Hers are the words of a woman that has been uprooted, separated.

Territorial Road: Crosses and Losses, (detail)

My quilt, Territorial Road: Crosses and Losses, was inspired by Susan Brackney Clayton's writings.  The quilt imagines an expanse of night sky, over a tiny sod structure.  I have used stitching (lots) to suggest the endless starry firmament and the blowing wind.  My intention is that this will be the first in a series of quilts on this theme.  I have a very damaged cats cradle pattern quilt from the 1890's that might give a structure to further visual ideas. 

Yesterday I looked into the alley and saw a huge turtle, about 10 inches end to end. This is particularly remarkable because I live smack in the city, though about two blocks from the St. Joseph River.  In many cultures this is considered to be very auspicious, so I invited the turtle in through the gate and watched it move on, probably looking for love, and a mate.  I gave the men that mow the lawn next door a heads-up to be careful of this lovely turtle.

Take a look at Amy Meissner's blog post about the jaw-dropping solo show she has opened at the Anchorage Museum, called The Inheritance Project.  I have long admired Amy's textile work, but am equally taken by how beautifully she writes. I wish I could see this show in person, Alaska seems so very far away.

A Dozen White Shirts

For the past few months, my sisters and I have been emptying our parent's house to get it ready for sale.  This has been an eye-opening journey, full of emotional pot-holes, happy memories and a lot of hard work for three women of a certain age.  Ever on the look-out for textile detritus, I made a discovery in a basement box of rags.  Wadded and stuffed into the corner, as if in a time-capsule, were a dozen white cotton dress shirts.

The shirts are from the early 1960s, some even have the date of purchase written on the shirttail with a laundry marker.  All of the shirts were also marked with the Union Label, a rare sight today. My father was a high school social studies teacher, and my mother laundered and ironed six white shirts a week for him to wear to school, and church on Sunday. I loved the smell of the fresh laundry, the spray starch and the hot iron.  My mom would put up the ironing board and tune in "As the World Turns" on the black and white TV, ironing until her show was over. So many stolen hours spent washing, line-drying, dampening, starching and ironing. 

These white shirts are the focus of a new series of quilts in A History of Toil, all about laundry. I have done plenty of laundry myself, so I have a lot of imagery to draw from.  Coin Op Laundry, the first in the series, was selected for the upcoming exhibit of Artist as Quiltmaker, at the Firelands Association for the Arts, in Oberlin, Ohio, May 12 through July 29, 2018. 

Coin Op Laundry, 44" x 41", cotton, linen, found white dress shirts painted and dyed, hand embroidered and stitched

I will write more about some of the textile processes I have used in these works as I go along.  The white cotton has been a blank canvas for all kinds of interesting exploration of surface design.

Spring Reading

Here are some of the titles I have read the past few weeks:  Happiness, by Aminatta Forna; An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones; Alternate Side, by Anna Quindlen; The Flight of the Sparrow, by Amy Belding Brown; and Varina, by Charles Frazier.

Rites of Passage

Saturday my oldest daughter was married. Surrounded by family and friends, we celebrated the beginning of a journey, two young people venturing forth into a new life together.  An amazing handmade lace tablecloth came along for the party.  This beautiful domestic linen belonged to my maternal grandmother and graced her huge mahogany dining set. We gave it pride of place on a liquid-free welcome table, set with childhood photos of the bride and groom, some Jordan almonds and the seating chart.

Handmade lace tablecloth, from the Chicago home of my grandmother.

This is a really big cloth, easily covering the standard 8 foot rectangular dining table, with some amazing handwork, in perfect condition.  I especially like the cupid motif around the edges, shown in the detail below.

Women save these special textiles, hoping to have the special occasion to use them, kept safe in our cupboards and closets as reminders of the family matriarchs.  Grandma didn't make this, but she sure had an eye for beautiful things. It may yet see the light of day again in my lifetime for my other daughters and niece.  

My daughter looking into a crystal ball, about age 5

We had some serious flooding here in South Bend, and after the 6-8 inches of water in the basement drained off and we dried the place out, I decided to go through the plastic tubs that were labeled "kids art." Had we not had that flood, I would never have found this gem, made by my daughter all those years ago.  To be honest, she was not a very princess-y girl, but did go through an artistic period of queens, princesses and brides, of which this is a surviving example. I framed this and had it on that welcome table too. So, many happy moments, memories and hopes.  I am writing this post, then heading to the studio to resume my art life!

Standing Amazed at Woman Made

Shape Garden 1, from the Standing Amazed series, is on view in the Woman Made Midwest Open through March 24.  Woman Made Gallery has recently moved to 2150 S. Canalport, Chicago. If you follow the link you can see all the work selected for the exhibition. The stars are not going to align for me to be able to see the show, but I am hoping that my daughters that live in Chicago will be able to get over to see it.

Busy month ahead, I have a whole list of entry possibilities, I need to take some photos (my least favorite job) and write some proposals and statements.  Maybe I can squeeze in some sewing!

What I am reading:

Here are a few of the titles I have recently read:  American Rust, by Philipp Meyer; Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke; Elmet, by Fiona Mozley; Heart Spring Mountain, by Robin MacArthur; and The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg.

Letting Go

I checked out this slim little volume at the library a couple of weeks ago.  Since my father's passing at new year, and my mother's last spring, my sisters and I are faced with the dispersal of a lifetime of stuff from the family home.  The questions around what people choose to keep and what they eventually let go of,  are central to my practice as an artist.  Most of the materials I use, even the threads, have lived in other places, been kept by someone, for some reason. So much of it came from the basement and closets of the same home we are now cleaning out, piece by piece. In the book, Margareta Magnusson is advocating we do our "death cleaning" before we die.  I'm on board. Deep breath.

Mother Nature and climate change did some of my stuff reduction for me.  In the late summer of 2016, we had 11 or 12 inches of rain in as many hours, unprecedented, and in amounts that our aging storm sewers could not handle.  For the first time in the 30 years we have lived in our 1920 house, the basement flooded, badly. The water receded quickly, leaving behind a sodden mess. A lot of the wet stuff was paper--mat board and cardboard, college papers from the whole family, notebooks, lesson plans, my high school diploma, college portfolio, yearbooks, 35 years of National Geographic; all hard to discard when dry, not salvageable when wet.  There is more to be done down there, but the total was reduced by at least half. We also have a walk-up attic, full of carelessly stashed stuff.  Another deep breath.

I have been working on a large series of work focused on laundry.  Based on fragments from a dozen found white men's dress shirts, cotton and wrinkly, this series is yet another chapter in the history of toil.  The white shirts were a perfect canvas for mark-making and fabric manipulation. Dr. Ruth R. Benerito, a chemist working for the USDA, is credited with the discovery and development of wrinkle-free cotton and permanent press fabrics.  No surprise this revolutionary idea was pioneered by a woman. More on this series to come.

Reading List

Here are a few titles from my 2018 reading:  The Music Shop, by Rachel Joyce; The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs, by Janet Peery; In the Midst of Winter, by Isabel Allende; and a blast from the past, Birdy, by William Wharton.

The Wool Season

Mike and I spent the winter solstice eve at a special "Here Comes the Sun" performance by Molly Moon and Riley O'Conner as a benefit for new solar panels on the roof of the Purple Porch Food Co-op--how crunchy is that? This was a fun evening, followed by a fresh snow on Christmas Eve that left us with about eight lovely white inches on the ground. Now, a few days later, we are staying warm indoors as the temperatures go into digits minus zero.  Winter in northern Indiana is a time for making things with wool.

I like to have some portable projects for when I am a passenger in the car, or just watching the news or a movie at home.  I unearthed a horde of single and damaged work gloves in my parent's basement and then cut them in half and embroidered them to tweedy whole cloth with wool tapestry yarn.  Who knows why so many gloves were saved (there are dozens, all colors, sizes and fibers), or what possible purpose they were intended for, but here I am, finding a purpose for them! These are evidence of the power of depression-era thinking. I know I have not yet found them all.  Many of my friends have passed on to me other textile caches, found when they eventually needed to empty the family home for sale.  Those are artifacts often loaded with memory and grief, but these gloves, they' re just wacky.

Embroidered work gloves, a few of many

I have started to combine the individual gloves into a larger whole with felted wool from deconstructed garments and blankets.  I love working with wool, but only in the winter,  it needles so nicely, and the colors are so deeply saturated. I am using mostly wool for the stitching, and a bit of perle cotton.  Here are a few details:

What I Am Reading:

I reread The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.  I read it in the 80's, and it was just as chilling in 2017.  Also, The House Among the Trees, by Julia Glass, The Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman, Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich, Under a Pole Star, by Stef Penney, and State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2018!

Flightless Birds

In March of 1911, horrified New Yorkers watched as garment workers, mostly young immigrant women and girls, plunged to their deaths from the burning upper floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.  The doors to the workroom were locked, the elevator stopped operating and the flimsy fire escape collapsed. I used a delicate shirtwaist blouse from that time to imagine a terrible choice; to perish in the flames or step off the window ledge.

Artist Statement, Quilts=Art=Quilts, 2017

I have been working with the theme of women and toil for a number of years. I read a novel, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman, that was set at the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, and this sparked a year of research about the fire, including photos, first person accounts and primary source documents.  This is a story that touches on many issues relevant today.  It is a story that made me sad and angry.

Of the 146 people who died in the fire, almost all were young women and teenage girls, recent immigrants from Italy and eastern Europe. Working long hours, for a few dollars a week, most of these girls were helping to support their families, looking forward to new lives in a new country.  The tragedy fueled activism by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union as well as other groups of advocates for worker safety and improved working conditions in the garment trade. We should know more about this fire, we should remember what unregulated corporate greed looks like. The Cornell University IRL School has a comprehensive research collection online, with a wealth of information about the fire, all in one place.

I had a delicate cotton shirtwaist blouse in my archives, given to me as a child by a friend of my grandmother for dress-up clothes.  Somehow it survived these many years and  I could use it in the quilts I made for this project. This was emotionally difficult work to do.  I was very pleased to have two quilts accepted for exhibit in Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY, where they will be on display through the end of the year. There are many other wonderful quilts in this exhibit, and the Schweinfurth has made a  video available to show how they have been displayed.

The Triangle Fire: Flightless Birds 1

The Triangle Fire: Flightless Birds 2