Halloween/Entries/PIQF

I recently heard from another juried fiber art gallery show that I attempted to enter, and as has been the norm, I did not get in. I had sent in three pieces to be considered and I guess they were not competitive enough. This particular show received over 250 entries and accepted 50, so I am definitely not alone. And it probably won't be the last time I don't get in to an art show!

I am still waiting to hear from the Art Meets Science exhibition as to whether any of those entries are accepted. I should hear in the next few days. The time waiting is always a bit painful--particularly when it ends in a "decline" notification! This is a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) sponsored show so only SAQA members are allowed to enter, but there are a great many of those!

I am still working on small pieces for an attempt at some holiday sales. I have been showing them wherever I go and because of that I just sold two of them to friends. It is definitely worth showing pieces off to anyone willing to look! That means I need to make some more so I have small ones to hang in two shows in the next two weeks. Here are a couple of "in process" photos of one of the small pieces I hope to sell:

Halloween was fun with my 7-year old this year. He wanted to be a Ninja and I talked him out of that by suggesting one of his favorite movie stars----Groucho Marx! I made a big brown cigar, some felt eyebrows and mustache, and found some wire frame glasses at the thrift shop. I put him in a white shirt, black pants, a large suit jacket, and a skinny tie. He looked really cute and funny, but he was rather disappointed that none of the kids knew who he was! His teacher knew immediately and told him a story about her parents taking her baby sister to a baseball game and being asked by Groucho Marx to let him hold her and she ended up watching the game with him. Michael was impressed. Even most of the parents are too young to know who he was (I'm one of those older moms!). I heard a couple of them agreeing that he must be the guy from the Monopoly game (I think they were referring to the banker). When I took him to a community event on Halloween most of the adults running the games and many of the people with their kids or grandkids knew who he was and loved the costume. He just wanted to take it off----the eyebrows itched! He has to put it on one more time so I can take pictures since I keep forgetting to get out the camera when he has it on!

A friend of my mom's went to the Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) in California where I recently had two quilts exhibited. She sent me some pictures of my pieces hanging there. I was very disappointed to see that they were both hanging at the bottom of the panels they were on, near the floor. It is my experience that when pieces are hung underneath other pieces and near the floor they are virtually invisible to most passersby and get very little attention. They just do not get good light and are below eye level so people don't notice them. It is really too bad as they both have wonderful beading and quilting on them that if they were hung at eye level would catch the light and show well. I did receive a very nice e-mail from a woman I didn't know from Seattle who also went to the show and did manage to notice my pieces and really enjoyed them. She then checked out my website and blog and was very complimentary about my work. I thought it was very nice of her to take the time to share that with me and I really appreciated that she took the time to e-mail me. The judges' comments on both of my pieces were also very complimentary and I was very appreciative of those as well. One of these days they'll be good enough to actually win an award at one of these shows!

I need to get a binding stitched on my latest piece so I can move to the next one!

Creating Small Works to Sell for the Holiday Shows

Long time no write!  I just had to share the pictures above that I took of an early morning October sunrise.  It was truly awe-inspiring.

I have been busy creating and trying to get some small art works done for the holiday venues I have lined up. I will be showing my work at a gallery in Hamilton, Montana called Art City beginning with their holiday show at the end of November. I will have some pieces at our local Stevensville Art and Sculpture Society (SASS) holiday show on the first Friday in December, and I will show (sell?) some pieces at our church's holiday fair on November 20. In order to actually make some sales at the events I think I need to make some smaller, simpler pieces that I can price a bit lower than my usual work. I am finding it difficult not to spend too much time on these small pieces or putting on too many pricey beads which might bring up the cost, but I'm giving it the old college try. I am enjoying just putting together wonderful fabrics and covering them with intricate quilting. Hopefully someone else will find them worthy of hanging on their wall or giving as a gift. Wish me luck!

Here are a few small pieces I made this week:

I recently put in an entry to a show entitled "Art Meets Science" sponsored by SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates). I submitted three pieces I felt had strong scientific themes to them, and now I am waiting to hear whether or not any of them will be accepted. This is another traveling show and starts out in Birgminham, England at the Festival of Quilts and hits some other really good shows as well. I would really love to get into this one. One of the pieces has a centerpiece that is painted using a blue glue resist and was created to look like blood cells, although the coloration is green and blue (artistic license!). It is called "Sangre Azul" which means "Blue Blood" in Spanish. The term "Blue Blood" refers to the light skinned aristocratic Spaniards (as opposed to the dark-skinned Moors), and how the blood appears blue under their light skin. I wasn't able to verbalize this in my artist's statement as it doesn't connect the piece to science necessarily (and I could only use 25 words), but I thought it was interesting.

Tomorrow we are having a brunch for my parents who recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My sister and I both love to cook for parties like this and usually get rather carried away, but I tried to keep control of myself this time. I will be putting a ham in the crockpot in the middle of the night, but other than that the preparation has been and will be fairly easy. I am doing a couple of new recipes, so that is always risky, but I usually have pretty good luck in selecting good recipes. And if not, the Boca Negra (Black Mouth), which is an (almost) flourless chocolate cake with white chocolate cream, will leave everyone with a giddy, happy feeling! It's the best! (I've made it several times and it always comes out reallllllly good!)

My pieces came back from the Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) this week and the comments from the judges were very complimentary. I didn't win any awards, but they didn't have any negative comments either. I had a very nice e-mail from a woman from Seattle who went to the show and admired my pieces there. She proceeded to check out my website and blog and then let me know how much she enjoyed them. That positive feedback sure was nice. All the pictures I have seen posted on the web from PIQF don’t' show any work that is like mine with lots of beading (including fringe), although that is sometimes difficult to see in pictures. I'm going to try to enter these two pieces in some of the art quilt shows coming up this next year.

I took my son in today to get the nasal mist of the H1N1 vaccine and was able to get it for myself as well. Since it is free and I would feel awful if he got sick and I didn't do this, it was well worth the effort. A family from our church has a very sick boy with this flu, and I would never want to go through the agony they are dealing with. I think there is way too much "scare" about this flu, but when it comes to my son, I lean towards "better safe than sorry"!

This week I'm planning to get several new small pieces completed. I'm hoping that my husband gets his deer that he is hunting for, but not until at least Thursday so I have the beginning of the week to hibernate in my studio!