The Images art exhibit starts today

 I had to drop off my Pittsburgh art piece yesterday and the exhibit opens today. When I dropped it off the woman that accepted it made quite a fuss over it. That made me feel good.

Pittsburgh in the Snow 2: Cathedral

Here’s a link to the 51 pieces in the exhibit.   https://arts-festival.com/images-exhibition-gallery/ 

There’s a lot of nice artwork in the exhibit. I’m so happy I was able to get in with such stiff competition.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Love, hate, and avoidance

 

This has been a week where I’ve been avoiding working on my Boston quilt. At this point all I have left to add to the quilt top are the long brownstones on the left side of the quilt. Yesterday I finally lined up the pieces for these 2 brownstones on top of the pattern as you can see in this photo. You can also see my abstract “Light in Darkness” and a smidge of the quilt of my parents house. 

The brownstones are longer than my cutting table which is 60 inches long. That certainly doesn’t make it any easier. 

I’ve spent time this week thinking about how I want to tackle this section. I think I will iron all the pieces together as a unit and then iron it to the quilt top. The debate in my mind is whether I should hang the rest of the quilt back up on the design wall or just use the last 2 photos I took of the quilt and the pattern to position the brownstones. Well maybe I’ll get the pieces fused together today. 

The last 2 photos are below.

One minute I love this quilt and the next I hate it. It’s been going on too long. It’s coming up on 2 years since I started it.  This is certainly not the longest I’ve ever worked on a quilt. A few come to mind. A hand quilted double wedding ring, the isle of Skye quilt. They both took longer than 2 years, but I was working at the time. What can possibly be my excuse now? Do you ever have a love/hate relationship with a quilt?

On a different note I received the official email saying my Pittsburgh piece got into the Images fine art show. Here’s what it said:

Hello Christine,

10116.503462.1915045 Pittsburgh in the Snow 2: Cathedral, price: NFS 

Congratulations! Your piece listed above has been selected by our juror James Farrah for Images 2023, the juried fine art exhibition of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. James selected 51 works from the 374 submitted for inclusion in this prestigious show. 

Images 2023 will hang in Schlow Centre Region Library from July 1 to July 31. The library is right in the heart of what becomes the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts from July 12 to July 16. 

The acceptance rate was even less than last year. I’m so happy to have been juried in. 51/374 is only 1/7 or 14 % acceptance. That’s incredible to be in that group.

Linking to Nina-Marie. https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading. 

Chris

I’m in!!!!

I just saw on my entry into the Images art show that one of my pieces was accepted. The official announcement comes on June 1 so I was surprised to see that last night a piece got in.  This is a big art show in central Pa in July. It’s all kinds of 2-D art from painting to photos to mixed media. It also includes fiber, but mainly all the more traditional forms of art. 

Here’s my entry. They make you downsize the photos so the quality is not great.

Here’s some better photos of “Pittsburgh in the Snow 2: Cathedral.”

I doubt that I will win anything. There are very few prizes and I don’t qualify for most of them…..best in show, best photo, best pastel, best student submission. Those don’t seem likely. That leaves about 4 prizes and about 50 entries. I was really thrilled to get in. You are never guaranteed with fiber art to get in to this show. This it the 4th time I’ve entered and I’ve gotten in every time. So that in itself is fantastic. I’ve gotten in competing against all those traditional forms of art….GO GIRL!!!!! I will need to fire off a email to Natalya about getting in with this piece. 

I’m still stitching away on my Boston quilt. I’m nearly at the point when I can add the long Brownstones on the left side back to the quilt. It’s been stressful stitching these many pieces down. My machine was really acting up. It was skipping stitches during the zig zag. It would do the zig, but not the zag. I yelled at the machine and changed needles, but that did not help. Even cleaning the machine did not help. Eventually I began to question whether it was the Superior invisible thread. I changed to some YLI invisible that I had and the problem went away. So apparently my machine does not like the Superior invisible thread. 

Linking to Nina-Marie. https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Accepted!

 My “Dawn on the Charles Bridge” art quilt was accepted into Images 2022 in central Pennsylvania. 

This was my entry.

Here’s my acceptance email. They only accepted 52/285 entries.

I’m pretty excited. I’ve entered 6 juried shows and have gotten accepted all 6 times. Yesterday I had a lot of self doubts and thought I was going to be rejected. You never know in the art world if an art quilt will be accepted. Usually it’s paintings or photos that get in. I’m pleased people will get to see a fiber piece. 

Thanks for reading.Linking to Nina-Marie. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Chris

Time to enter some artwork

This summer the arts festival in central PA is going live rather than virtual. So I’m going to enter 2 pieces in the Images juried exhibition. https://arts-festival.com/images-juried-exhibition

My first piece is “Dawn on the Charles Bridge.”

Dawn on the Charles Bridge 36 in by 36 in

My second piece is “Abandoned Cement Works.”

Abandoned Cement Works 18 in by 18 in

Hopefully one of them will get in. Thoughts on revising my artist statement are appreciated. This is what I have used before. I'm thinking that it needs some work or a lot of work. It probably does not need that bit about doing art since I was a kid. Do you have any advise on this?

I have been doing art in one form or another since I was a child. I have sketched, painted, made baskets, done metal punch and worked with stained glass. For the last 35 years quilting has become my obsession. The inspiration for my quilts comes from nature, my love and fascination with old buildings as well as my attraction to things like cement works, oil rigs, and energy sources. My career spent teaching physics, astronomy, and meteorology has had a strong influence on my art. This can be seen particularly in my energy/environmental series.

Of course you are asking what about the Pittsburgh pieces. You can only enter 3 artworks and they have to have been done in the past 3 years. So for the Charles Bridge it is now or never. I doubt that if you entered 3 pieces that all 3 would get in. Sometime I wonder if I should only enter the Charles Bridge so I'm not competing against myself with both the bridge and the cement works. Or even how important that is. I will enter the Pittsburgh pieces next year.

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Not sure how I feel about entering art shows

"Starry Scary Night"

Well last night was the awards reception for the juried show I entered called Images 2018. The artwork was amazing. Here's a link to the art that was in the show.

https://arts-festival.com/images-exhibition-gallery

I really felt out of place with my quilt like it was not on the same level as the other art. The thing I noticed is that people did not really spend much time looking at it. Plus I heard some girl say to someone...."it's just sewing."  At first that made me angry like I'd like to see you do that sewing. Then I realized that to a lot of people it is just sewing. They look at what I do as something too easy and not creative. Or sewing is just a craft. Hey I could say that about someone's photo. All you do is take a photo and edit it and print and frame it. Not sure I would enter anything like this again. Or maybe I just have to up my game.....I sometimes feel that art quilts are in some never land....not accepted as art and not accepted by traditional quilters. Am I just over reacting? I so wish I could have entered my canal houses. It was beyond the 36 inch height requirement. Or my cardinal quilt. That one was not made in the last 3 years and also was taller than 36 inches.

Well I need to get my walk done early today and then finally stencil the numbers on my toxic barrels. I have put that off long enough. I have chosen the title "Taking its Toll" for this quilt. I thank Sheila for her thoughts on that from my last blog. I need to move on from my experience last night. 

"Taking Its Toll"

Linking to Nina-Marie.  

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading and putting up with today's rant...

Chris

Good news

Well May has been the month of good news. As you know from several blogs back I entered 3 of my quilts in a juried exhibition of the central Pennsylvania arts festival. Here is that blog.

Yesterday was the decision day. One of my pieces made it in!! It was not the one I would have thought it would have been. I would have thought it would have been the wind turbines. But, I'm in! I never entered anything before and this feels great. Here's the piece they accepted. It is Starry Scary Night. Of course I got the rejection letter for the other 2 pieces. Apparently they accepted only 36 pieces out of 264 entered. That astounds me. The art works will be on display the entire month of July. The reception on July 12 should be really fun.

Starry Scary Night

The other good news is I recently joined the artist directory for the Bellefonte art museum, a local art museum. I was invited by the museum to exhibit my quilts in January 2019.  They are interested in my energy series, my pixel series, and my architectural series. How exciting is that? You can see the series by clicking on the tabs at the top of my blog. Holy cow! 

Now as if that's not enough I signed up to teach an Olli class on making an art quilt from a photo. I submitted the course proposal 2 weeks ago. I hear it will be accepted and will run either in the fall or next spring. 

So things got really "crazy" really fast!

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris