NYC Artists Retreat

After our family adventures in NYC, I met up with artist friends Kristin, Robin, Natalya and Vivien at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
We went to see the Alexander McQueen show. You can see lots of images of the astounding show here and follow other links from that page to explore even more.

The Met was super crowded. It felt like quintessential NYC.

There was also a Richard Serra special exhibit of his "drawings." I snapped this picture before the security person scolded me since photos were not allowed in this particular space.
That's Kristin and Natalya's with the back packs. This exhibit generated lots of discussion. Mostly punctuated by lots of question marks and furled brows. Ahem. Robin noted that the security guards in the galleries were more interesting than the art.

A much more exciting gallery here.
Happy happy happy happy happy!
Check out this stupendous floral arrangement at the Met with pops of *orange.*

Then we went fabric shopping at Mood, made famous because Project Runway designers shop here. But, also famous just for it's amazing variety of fabrics.
We also shopped for beads, buttons, ribbon and trims in the garment district and took a snack break where Robin drank something called "yoga bunny detox."

I didn't take too many pictures of the rest of our time spent sharing work, talking about art, making plans, setting goals and getting to know each other. Amazingly, most of us only know each other through years of reading our blogs, but it felt completely natural. There is certainly more to come from this group!

I've been away...

... seeing lots of amazing people, places and things.




I'm still absorbing it all.

Quilt National Stats

I got my Quilt National catalog a couple of weeks ago and I've been studying, pondering and enjoying it. I am a member of a small art quilt group and we are planning to discuss the show at our meeting tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to that.


As I was looking through the collection, I thought it might be fun to pull together some random thoughts in the form of statistics. This is what I came up with. These are just categories that popped into my mind because they focus on techniques or materials or concepts that I use in my own work. Nothing is hard and fast here. I'm not making any claims of accuracy. Just my thoughts from flipping through the book.

Total quilts: 85

Countries represented: USA, UK, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Canada

Artists I know personally: Naomi Adams, Benedicte Caneill and Katie PM,

Artists I kinda or should know personally: Mary Beth Frezon (we almost connected at the Sacred Threads opening), Judy Kirpich (she lives very nearby), Barbara Lange (she's a member of the same small art quilt group I was a member of in Dallas, but she moved to Germany before I moved to Dallas), Dominie Nash (also lives very close)

Quilts that include digital imagery: 12

Quilts that include images of people: 13

Quilts made with old fabrics: 4

Longest side: 108" (54x108)

Shortest side: 13" (13x48)

Seemingly smallest pieces: 18x18" and 27x27"

Other unusual materials: clothing, mesh fruit bags, chocolate wrappers, plastic bags, maxi-pad wrappers, bed sheets, card board, wool blankets, handkerchief, dish towel, copper wire, copper mesh

Primarily pieced (no surface design or other techniques): 15

Whole cloth: 11 (I'm guessing... or going with quilts that probably could have been whole cloth)

Irregular edges: 17

Main focus is dyed fabrics: 7 (the fabric almost stands on it's own)

Quilts with words on them: 8

Insane amount of hand stitching: 11

I could go on and on coming up with crazy categories, but I'll leave it there for now. Was that as interesting to you as it was to me? (I won't be offended or surprised if you say no.)

Vivien blogged her thoughts about the book here. Linda Teddlie Minton's thoughts here.

Gray Reveal

Here's my art quilt for the Gray Theme in the 12x12 Challenge.

It's titled In Light Of. You can read more about it here.


This is the eleventh of our twelve themes for the color play challenge. Of course, we already completed twelve quilts in our original theme challenge (on which our book is based.) So, that's 23 small art quilts in my collection -- and several more also-rans.

Check out all the gray quilts on the 12x12 blog.

Textile Museum

I've wanted to visit the Textile Museum ever since we moved to Maryland. We finally made it happen a couple of weeks ago. It was a great outing into the district.

We found a parking place directly in front of the museum. Rock stars!


The Textile Museum is converted from an old house and nestled in a neighborhood of embassies, in fact it's next door to Myanmar. It's smaller than I thought it would be. Just two main exhibit areas: downstairs and upstairs, plus an excellent education room.

Here is Claire studying the "pattern" display. If you click this picture, you will see that it shows the same image created in weaving, patchwork, embroidery and printing. Cool.

Here is Benjamin drawing a pattern on graph paper, theoretically planning a design for a loom.There were also hands on displays of various kinds of looms. Really nice!

The current main exhibit is "Green: the color and the cause." It's pretty impressive. (Though I've heard that the previous exhibits, Red and Blue were better.) There is an EXCELLENT online catalog of the show. Click on the Artists tab, then click on the first artist and just scroll through the whole show with the next button. There are just 35 pieces in the show, so it's a fairly quick scroll. The photography is excellent and the artist statements are informative. In some cases, there are links to videos or other sites associated with the artist. It's interesting to have seen the show in person and go back and look at the pieces again in this online format.

I overheard (eavesdropped on) a discussion between a staff person and a viewer. The viewer said she wished she could buy a catalog of the show. The staff person said it's too expensive to print and they felt it went more with the theme of the show to have the catalog online. I think that makes good sense.

There are a few pieces that would be considered art quilts in the show.

Teresa Barkley's Freedom from Hunger: Cabbage and Potatoes seems rather literal to me, in both the theme and the construction and format. It seems more like a traditional quilt. The more I look at it online, the more I like it, but it felt a bit out of place in the exhibit.

Jane Dunnewold's piece Sacred Planet: The Pride of Barbados/Mask/Price of Barbados is digitally printed, dyed, screen printed and stitched. Jane's from Texas and I've met her a few times. I'm not sure it's really "three layers stitched together," but Jane is a powerful presence in the art quilt world and this is a powerful piece.

Linda Gass' Treatment is stunning and greets the viewer at the end of the green hall at the entrance to the exhibit. I am so impressed with the dimension she achieves with her quilting and the masterful use of silk. It's so luminescent!

I loved Maggy Rozycki Hiltner's Hot House Flowers. Her use of reclaimed fabrics, especially from old table cloths and hankies, is inspiring and the embroidery is so subtle and subversive. It's 144 x 18" so the image online doesn't really give you a good close up view. In the piece she questions society's increasing pressure on children to excel and achieve and our decreasing relationship with nature. (With that in mind, I'm taking my kids blueberry picking today. Seriously.)

Claire's favorite piece with by Emily Dvorin titled Verdundant. (A fantastic title!) It was a basket woven with green zip ties. I bought a package of zip ties at the Dollar Store last week...

Benjamin's favorite piece was the 3D woven Fig Leaf by Emily DuBois. He also was drawn to Osmose by Brigitte Amarger. Xray images are sewn into the shape of life size figures and hang from the ceiling. He thought they were kind of odd.

None of us could quite get behind Enmesh by Kristina Estell: beakers made from nylon netting with dead leaves sitting in them. I get it. I appreciate it. I respect it. I just didn't really like it.

My favorite piece was Susan Lentz's Wasted Words: Global Warnings. It's a woven basket with tiny bundles of book pages, buttons and yarn. I saw it from across the room and was drawn to it immediately, so it was a delight to realize it was Susan's work. I saw a solo show of her work a couple of years ago in Texas. She is amazing! I must send her an email and tell her how great she is and how fun it was to see her work in such a prestigious setting.

There is one piece out in the garden, Arbor Lace by Michele Brody. (No pictures were allowed inside, but I snapped several outside.)

A quick stop in the restroom before leaving...

Afternoon noshing at Hello Cupcake.
I could give you a whole review of these cupcakes, but I think it wise to just leave you with the thoughts about the art.