home again

Blogger is not letting me upload pictures tonight, so words alone will have to do. The week was very special on all levels - my students, seeing all the art unfold, meeting those of you in person I've been talking to here and in e-mail and feeling as though you are old friends; meeting new friends, etc. etc. and ETC. I just walked in - it is almost midnight eastern time, and the refrigerator is empty. I am eating matzoh and peanut butter:so much for gourmet meals. It is drizzling here and in the 40's and some local roads are still closed due to flooding. I think I will stay home tomorrow. hugs to all.

days and evenings in Berkeley (long)

When you spend your days with a group of talented artists who are also fun people, time flies. Here are the lovely Gerrie Congdon, Dee Danley-Brown, and Kristina Adams paying close attention to something. Or someone. Andrea Van Voorhis, Patricia Smith, and Denissa Schulman look equally rapt - so we must have been having our critique session today. I was delighted that Patricia had signed up for the workshop - she was a friend from New Jersey who moved to Berkeley, so it was a great opportunity to see each other again. We did two days of printing, and then spent the third day doing creative exercises and working with the fabric they had printed. Dee had gelatin-printed a beautiful piece in grays with some copper paint added (yesterday's first post). She cut into it (ouch!)

and by today she had a clear idea of what else she was going to do with this piece. Gerrie's happy with a board full of small studies and things to finish at home.
I was especially pleased to see the results ofthe people who had never done surface design or made an art quilt before! Look at this piece that Denissa Schulman put together.

Not only were my days busy, but evenings were full, too. We went back to the classroom every night after dinner and a speaker.

Sunday night, my class played without me because I had an important dinner engagement with the handsome and talented author and erstwhile blogger on this site -Ted Orland, of Art & Fear and The View from the Studio Door. To protect his privacy and keep him from being beseiged by fans and groupies(other than me, of course) I did not reveal his identity to my class until the next day. Unfortunately, I was too flustered in the face of his fame to ask him to autograph my dinner napkin. But he was full of good advice on a number of topics, so it was a rewarding evening.

I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a flight, but I expect to be sitting around the airport because of weather in Newark so I will have time to post some more work from the classroom. Tune in tomorrow.

who are these people?

and why are they hiding?

finally - time to post

My week teaching at Art Quilt Claremont is just too much fun! The food is good, the hotel is gorgeous, and the company is great. The class feels like one big party - and I am thrilled with the fabric they are printing. The first two days were nonstop surface design and just look at some of these pieces! Amazing that some of the artists in the class had never even printed before. Here are some of them at work. And here is some of the fabric they - and others - produced. Evenings have been busy, too - but more about that in another post.

Art Quilt Claremont pre-day 1

Who are these people and why are they laughing? Class doesn't even start till tomorrow, but Gerrie Congdon and Lizzie Berg are already having fun. Me, too! I arrived at the hotel this morning and spent a good part of the day unpacking boxes and getting set up. This is the Claremont Hotel and Spa - gorgeous and out of another era. When I first saw it I was reminded of the Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego.
Later, I found out it was designed by the same architectSince Deb Roby and Gerrie Congdon were taking pictures of the food at dinner, you can check their blogs for images of dessert and salad. My images are a bit more pedestrian.

This is where I ate lunch and I did not take a picture of the food.Tomorrow is a busy day - class starts at 8:30 am. So here is where I am off to in a few minutes.

Berkeley

Spent a busy day in the bay area today. Tonight,on the way back to Berkeley, we stopped the car to look at this view.
Tomorrow, checking into the Claremont Hotel and looking forward to seeing old and new friends.

gadzooks

Where has the time gone? (as usual). I've been packing and packing and packing, it seems, for days. And then, repacking. Tomorrow morning, no matter what, I am out the door to the airport. Why do I always think I am forgetting something vital? Then it turns out that I have overpacked. I never learn.

Despite my best intentions, I never got to the studio this week and I will have to e-mail my studio mate to ask if she can water my plants. I should also take postcards to address for Open Studios, since I have not had time to do so. Something to do on the plane, I suppose. Oh, yippee.

Meantime, in the hopes I could dye some nice fabric to take and impress my students with, I threw some pieces in the dyepot this afternoon. The less said about the results, the better. One piece was sooo bad that I decided to experiment with discharge and see what happened. I tore it into three pieces. Here is the original. This is a flattering picture. It is much more blah in person. I threw one piece in a container with that blue cleaning gel - whatever it is. Then, of course, I put it in anti-chlor.
Better, but still not as nice as this picture. Finally, I put discharge paste on the third third, wrapped it up and steamed it for 10 min. Aargh.
It looks diseased. I can hardly wait to see the improvement on all of these after I have printed on them at Art Quilt Claremont. I will post from California.

the long weekend

Very long. Friday seemed like Sat. Today felt like Sunday, and tomorrow will probably feel like Sunday again. Maybe because it will be! Happy Easter Sunday to all of you who celebrate it: I guess it feels more like Thanksgiving or Christmas, depending on where you are.

In case you are wondering what that piece of fabric is, it is a discharge experiment. It is wrinkled because I have not ironed it; I will wait till it dries because I don't want it to discharge any more than it already has. Pretty, huh?
What did I say about this being an unpredictable process?

Now, where was I?

I've been up since 4 this morning - so if I'm a bit fuzzy, excuse me. Bed, soon. You know when you have umpteen things on your mind? That was me. I had to get up and pack my supplies to ship to Art Quilts Claremont so I could teach my workshop. Ack. Finally got a box packed; the rest will go in my suitcases. But I had to send it air, it was so late - and I could practically have bought my own ticket for what it cost.

Spent some time in STUDIO today - and I'll let you in on a secret: I sewed. Shhhh.... I was supposed to be printing. But I had a piece on the wall and just couldn't stand it any more - so I plugged in my Viking 210 basic machine and got to work. What a treat!

The printing did yield a couple of nice bits, among which was this one:

Tomorrow - back to work. For now - bed.

my lecture on art quilts

I was invited to give a lecture on contemporary quilts to the Decorative and Fine Arts Society here in New Jersey, which I did this afternoon. The program chair is an admirer of Eleanor McCain's work and has fallen in love with art quilts in general. She decided that the group to which she belongs needed an education about what is being done today in the art quilt world. I brought along, in addition to the slides, a few of my own pieces. This one,"Bad Hair Day," garnered the most enthusiasm. Interesting.

Before I started talking about art quilts, I showed the audience a few of my own antique pieces.I'll share them with you, too - and you really need to click and enlarge them. This Tumbling Blocks top is so vividly graphic that it knocks me over every time I look at it.
I adore this wonderfully quirky pattern and Marty fell in love with it,too, years ago at the Piers in NY, so we bought. I hve been told by someone who should know, that this is very likely an African American piece because of the pieced strips between the rows of blocks. If anybody out there can verify this, I'd be interested in knowing more. I love this top! It was never finished and seems to have been cut off at the bottom.
I bought this one in Denver more than a decade ago. Chimney Sweep? It's an album quilt and some of the blocks have been signed in pencil but none has ever been embroidered. 1860's-1880's, I think.
Finally, two quilts I actually use. I rescued both of these from oblivion when they were dirty old tops. I washed, added batting/backing/binding and HAND QUILTED both of them. The first one is 1910-20; I think I replaced one of the stars that was rotting.It lives in the downstairs guest bedroom.
The next one lives with me: I cuddle under it when I am tired or cold; it is made of feedsacks from the '30's and was so filthy when I found it, tied with an old sheet and red & white striped bakery string, that I didn't think it would every be healthy again. For that reason, it is dear to my heart.
The audience was gracious and enthusiastic and asked lots of questions. Hooray for education! By the time I was done with my slide lecture (thanks to those of you who sent me jpgs or slides) these folks wanted to know when the next juried art quilt exhibit in this area would be so they could take a trip! I'll keep them posted on the next Sedgwick (or whatever it is now called) in Philadelphia, which is a 2 hour drive from here. We've gained a whole new audience - isn't that nice?

chicken soup and laughter

This is not chicken soup: this is a brisket, just as I took it out of the oven last night. Because of Marty's eye surgery, I declined to make this year's seder and we just opted to stay home ourselves. So we bought matzo and I made a brisket. Tomorrow night, we will go to our daughter Hilary's. She asked me to make matzo balls but I didn't have matzo meal. So I had to run to the butcher's and while I was there, I bought a chicken. So the house smells like chicken soup, which reminds me of my grandmother. But you didn't need to know this.

What you do need to know is that yesterday I had the best two hours I've had in what feels like centuries. Kerr Grabowski was teaching at the Newark Museum yesterday and we needed to catch up with each other's lives, so I ran down to see her after her class was over. In the meantime, I needed to see Diane Savona , who just got home from spending a month in the fiber studio at Peters Valleydoing a residency. She had all that time to try out some wonderful new surface design experiments. Kerr wanted to meet Diane and see what she had done, so Diane came and I introduced them. Here 1s a great picture of both of them. Diane had just finished showing Kerr this gorgeous piece of fabric she had printed. And here is the laughter -- pure joy and silliness worth its weight in gold.
We don't do that often enough, do we? When I got home, I felt like a new person. I am NOT a new person, but you can't have everything.

Wishing a sweet Passover to all of you who celebrate it, and a happy Easter to those of you who will celebrate over the weekend.