Saturday, October 24, 2009

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!

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