Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Five Projects: Good News!

Hooray! My "tall me" project was accepted for the Reflections exhibit hosted by Dinner at Eight Artists. It will premier at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in late October. My piece is titled Waning Crescent Meditation.

You may remember that I wrote a post about my inspiration for this piece including Rene Magritte's silhouettes and moons. Also symmetrical compositions. So, you can see how all of those bits of inspiration added up to this.


I used an actual photograph of myself, manipulated it a bit, enlarged it to fit the required 24x60" size and created a pattern. Here's my feet.


I love botanical imagery and this exploration of a tree within a body.

Tiny Y stitches and French knots.

The teal/navy pattern is stamped with paint. At first I was distressed about the hard edges between the stamped areas and the unstamped areas. I decided to use blue embroidery floss stitched in a square shape to soften those areas. That worked really well.

Scattering of variegated red stitches.

My friend Robin wrote some very thoughtful words about this quilt. In fact, she picked up on things I didn't even know I was creating and wrote it so beautifully. What an amazing feeling to think I created something that she interpreted in this way. 

"I'm loving your imagery and use of the female form as an underlay for other symbols.  The tree with its upwards turned branches speak to some sort of internal depth which (naturally) my mind reads as vasculature branching off a large vessel supplying nutrients to the periphery.  Those little stitches flying up and over your left shoulder seem to sweep upwards passing over and through the heart.  The quarter-moon where cognition lies almost evoking the thought of perceiving only what the pale moonlight reveals." 

Are you planning to go to Festival in Houston? I am! I'd love to see you there!

4 comments:

Rachel Parris said...

This is so you...inside out! I love it;and thank you for sharing the process.

Misty said...

really lovely

Doris Buchanan Johnson said...

Deborah, to add to your Robin's comment, the moment I saw the tree growing inside your body, I thought immediately of an icon I saw at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, where in her pregnant womb was also the burning bush of Moses (Jesus being the new Moses). Life within life...always reaching outward to the world. Wonderful imagery from you...as always! Kudos on another inspired piece.

Vivien Zepf said...

Yep, ditto what everyone else said. I love this piece.