Final Days of Solo Exhibition, Other Venues

My solo exhibition at The Artist's Shop in Missoula, Montana will be taken down on Wednesday this week (October 5). I have now sold 7 pieces there and am very happy with the success of the show. It has been well received and I've had lots of wonderful comments about my work. Please stop in and see the show if you are in Missoula--and sign my guestbook!

I do not have any other shows booked in the area until next spring. In February I will participate in the annual fiber art show in Hamilton, "An Affair of the heART" sponsored by In Good Company. There are many fiber artists in the Missoula/Bitterroot area that participate in this and it is always a wonderful show.

I will be curating a show in Stevensville, Montana (River's Mist Gallery) in April, 2012, that will focus on fiber of different types including clothing, weaving, quilting, and whatever else I might find in the next few months to feature in the show. I haven't worked out the parameters of this show yet but I am currently keeping an eye out for artists to include in the mix.

I have a solo exhibition booked at Montana Art and Framing in Missoula for May, 2012. I'm hoping to have another show in Hamilton and am waiting for a gallery there to get back to me to finalize this. I'll keep you posted...

Remember, you can always find my work at The Artist's Shop in Missoula, Art City in Hamilton, and River's Mist in Stevensville. I will be giving a lecture/trunk show at the Missoula Quilt Guild at their November meeting. I am no longer showing at Madison Creek Furnishings. For details on the galleries please visit my website: http://www.heidizielinski.com/CurrentVenues.html

I just sent three pieces to Portland for the juried Machine Quilting Exposition West. If you are going to Houston for Quilt Festival look for my piece, "Glorious Leaves" in the SAQA Sense of Adventure special exhibit, which will also travel to the other IQF shows and to the Gerald Ford Museum.

As always I am waiting to hear from a couple of shows as to whether my work has been accepted or not and I am getting ready to fill out a couple more show entries. It is never ending! Hopefully one of my pieces will be in a venue near you sometime soon!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Let me know if you see my work at one of these venues and what you think of it. I can take it!! Also, if you would like to receive notification of my upcoming shows, please e-mail me your snail mail and/or e-mail addresses and I'll send you a postcard or e-mail you the info. (heidi@heidizielinski.com)

New Year's News

Well, I have survived through the holidays and I sold a few ornaments for some spare change (but not much else)! Now I am hoping for some success in this new year in selling a few pieces and maybe getting something published. I am planning to submit some articles to see if there is any interest in publishing my writing but first I need to get images to go with them. Most of the magazines seem to want images illustrating your discussion up front so that is what is currently holding me up. Hopefully I can work on that in between upcoming deadlines.

Our yearly TART's show of fiber art will be February 11-13 at the Hamilton City Hall (old Bedford Building) at Bedford and South 2nd streets in Hamilton, Montana. I will have some pieces in the show and am currently working on a piece for their challenge. Hopefully I will have some new work that no one has seen yet. This has always been a pretty good venue and I usually sell a piece or two so I'm hopeful!

There has not been much success in getting people to sign up for the classes at Patchwork Quilts and I think I will try to come up with a condensed class that will be more inexpensive for people. Maybe just a one day class on a Saturday. I'm planning to work on that this week . Since I have all the plans outlined for the three session class I'm sure I can work up a shorter class fairly easily. I certainly understand why people don't want to spend the money I'm asking for, so I'll just have to adjust my plans and see if I can't offer what they want. That is really the goal, isn't it?

I have mentioned that my piece, "Blackberries and Dandelions" is in the Art Quilts XV show in Chandler, Arizona. I was interviewed by a reporter from the Phoenix newspaper (Arizona Republic) about my piece. The article was about the new space that the Vision Gallery is occupying and they mentioned several other artists in the show who are from Arizona and the names and prices of their work. She went into a little more detail about my work and my background. The reporter incorrectly stated that I created the batik fabrics in the piece, but they are commercial fabrics. I did dye one of the fabrics in the piece and she misunderstood what I said about that. Unfortunately they did not publish a picture of the quilt as she had hoped and they didn't give my website address, but it was nice publicity to be mentioned prominently in the article. The reporter told me that my piece was her favorite in the show which was very flattering since there are almost 100 pieces and many much more seasoned artists than I. Hopefully the article will send some more people to the show--and someone will buy something. I heard that only one piece has sold so far. I believe the exhibit is supposed to be taken down on January 18.

I am currently working on a small piece to send to Studio Art Quilt Associates for their Traveling Trunk Show. The pieces are supposed to give people an idea of the great variety of techniques and styles being used in art quilts and hopefully my piece portrays what I am doing. I have finished the piece and need to write up a description of the work and techniques used so I can send it off. The pieces are sent out to lots of places all over the country for interested people/groups to look at and be inspired by. We had some of them come here locally last year and enjoyed the variety and quality of the work very much. I regretted that I hadn't submitted anything for that grouping, so I'm making to sure to get one in this year! I'll put a picture up soon...

Friday evening I attended the opening of the Missoula Art Museum's auction exhibition at which one of my pieces, "In A Heartbeat" is displayed. It is in the silent auction which will take place the same evening as the live auction in February. It was a wonderful exhibition of art from many local artists (and others) and I enjoyed the great variety and quality of the work. I do hope that there is interest in my piece as I would be somewhat embarrassed for them to have to give it back to me! There was only one other fiber art piece and it was quite different from mine (by Nancy Erickson) and I don't believe it was a recent work. This was a juried submission process so we had to send images of some pieces to be considered and I was honored to be included.

I have been somewhat disappointed in the lack of comments on my blog and wanted to ask if there are any problems people are having doing that, or if you just don't have anything to say. Please e-mail me at heidi@heidizielinski.com if you experience any problems with commenting. I'm curious as to how other bloggers get people to make comments and get feedback for what they are sharing. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Recent Works

This is my first post and I'm new to blogging, so bear with me!  I want you to see what I'm doing in the fiber art world so keep reading!



I've been stymied by one piece I'm working on (see above) and now I have some prior commitments to attend to outside the studio, so I guess it will remain undone on my design wall until I can be inspired to return to it.  It is a bold and colorful quilt that is much different than my usual---although I'm not sure I have a "usual" style!  It is also larger than most of my recent pieces and it seems to be a difficult size for me.   It is hard sometimes for me to show people my works in progress as they are quite rough compared to what they will eventually become.  Unfortunately I don't have a clear vision of this one and how it will look, but you can get an idea of the lines and bold color.  I definitely have some work in front of me to tie this together and balance it out.  It will come, it will come....!

I have just finished a piece (picture of it below before it was completely done) that is based on the log cabin pattern but has modern twist to the piecing and color.  I love how the colors (purple and lime) play in this one and I'm really happy with how the embellishments worked out.  It was a stubborn quilt when it came to actually quilting it and I had to put it aside for several weeks.  My machine kept skipping stitches and breaking the thread constantly.  I finally picked it up again last week and zipped right along with the quilting with very few problems, even using metallic threads.  I had planned to enter it in a show but that deadline passed and I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  It just did not want to be done for that one! I'm sure something else will come along for it.  I will be showing it at a trunk show on November 5 along with many of my other art pieces.  



My goal these days is to sell my quilts so I'm trying to get them out there for everyone to see and let people know about what I am doing.  I'll try to get some more pictures onto my blog so you can see the work I've been doing.  Right now I need to get ready for my quilt guild meeting tomorrow night so come back again later to see what I'm up to!