Redefined

Taking a break from creativity

I haven't posted any entries for the past two weeks or so and, during that time, I also put away the in-progress projects in my studio. I just didn't feel much like being creative for a while. However, I wasn't exactly sitting around, as I've been looking at art, reading about art and doing a lot of hand dyeing, but I haven't been creating or writing anything. Last night, I had a great idea for a new project and the ol' juices began flowing again. Looking back, I think I needed a mental vacation from being creative. CPAs get vacations, why don't we?

Several nice things have happened since I last posted. First, I received official notification that I was awarded a 2008 Mid-Career Artist Fellowship from the Kansas Arts Commission. Of course, I splashed the news all over my website right away, but if I missed mentioning it on a page or two, please let me know and I'll correct the problem. On March 10th, there will be a reception for all the fellowship recipients at the state capital in Topeka where I will receive my check. With the price of gas these days, that might not even cover my travel expenses!

Second, I've been asked to jury a Studio Art Quilt Associates regional exhibition. I'll post more about it when everything is finalized.

Third, I followed a link to an unknown blog and was delighted to find that it was written by Susan Lenz. In the past, she's left some very insightful and completely accurate comments on my blog telling me how wonderful my work is and feeding my ego to an unhealthy degree. On the blog I discovered, Susan explained that she is curating an invitational exhibit to be held at a Columbia, South Carolina gallery next January. When I scrolled down, I was surprised to learn I was on her wish list for artists for this exhibit. You can read more about the general exhibition here. Of course, I accepted her invitation and I'm honored that she thought of me.

A plethora of news and pictures

I found out yesterday that I received a 2008 Mid-Career Artist Fellowship from the Kansas Arts Commission. It's actually not official yet because the KAC board needs to approve the list. However, I find it hard to believe that a majority of the board members would look at the list and say, "Jill Rumoshosky Werner? Oh no, we don't want her to get an award. She's a real creep and we can't stand her artwork. Give that award to someone else." Most of them have no idea who I am, so if they rejected me, it would probably be based on the difficulty factor of my name alone. They might feel it's too long to fit on the 3-foot tall, diamond-encrusted trophy that I'm sure I am going to receive.

Since I attended the selection panel meeting and saw the work of all the other visual arts candidates, I know how tough the competition was this year. They had restructured the fellowship rules and many previous winners were allowed to apply again, so there were a lot of candidates and most of them did very good work. I feel privileged to have been one of the eight artists chosen and I intend to be insufferably smug for the next few days. If it gets any longer than that, stage an intervention and slap me in rehab.

I secretly added some new artwork to my website after getting it photographed by my excellent photographer,  Gordon Bernstein. He makes my work look really, really  good. You've seen most of these projects on my blog and followed their progress, so this may not be a surprise to you, but look what he did with Dispensed. Click on the picture to see a larger version or you can see the detail pictures here.

Another work I had photographed was Laced. I wrote a lot about it in previous posts so I won't talk about this one either, but here are the detail shots.

A smaller piece that I finished recently can be found here. I decided to call it Isolated. I know it's a semi-creepy name, but it seemed appropriate. I guess I've spent too much time in my basement and it's beginning to get to me.

Pictures of Portable Picnic, the collaborative project currently in an Oklahoma City gallery, are here. If my part of this project doesn't sell, I'll bring it home, make my own tableware for it and enter it into shows.

Last but not least is Awarded. I made most of this two years ago, but it never felt finished. I didn't want to enter it into shows, but I did post pictures of it on my website and publish them in the first version of my brochure. I finally realized what needed to be added and had it rephotographed. I added the "War Master" part and the work finally says what I wanted it to say artistically. I have created several human rights related artworks in the past, but never one as political as this one. However, there is another secret meaning  here which I prefer to keep to myself for now. If you know the answer, then you know I consider you a good friend. If you don't know the secret meaning, pump me full of cheap chocolates someday and I might tell you.

Dinner in the Deuce

Last Friday, I traveled to Oklahoma City for an opening reception at a very special contemporary art gallery called Untitled [ArtSpace]. The exhibit was Dinner in the Deuce, referring to the neighborhood's name, Deep Deuce. All the projects were collaborations, made up of people from different artistic mediums and different physical locations. Considering the logistics of the project and all the artistic egos involved (including my own), the end result was magical. Each dinner setting had a theme and they were all very different from each other.

Portable Picnic was raised off the floor so no one would step on it. The pedestal they used was one of the massive, original sliding doors from the old warehouse building where the gallery is located. We were the only group who didn't have a table, so some visitors assumed that the door was part of our display. It might make the picnic a little less portable if you had to carry the door around, don't you think?

The ceramics were created by Barbara Broadwell from Edmond, OK and the pewter pieces were made by Margareta Grill from Tulsa, OK. I'm really pleased with the the way our work looks together and proud to have been part of this project. Thanks to Laura Warriner and her gallery staff for coordinating such a wonderful exhibit.

Fellowship fun

I drove 620 miles in the past two days, roundtrip from Wichita to Topeka, KS on Thursday and round trip to Oklahoma City on Friday. My finger got tired of resetting the cruise control button as I left the rest areas. In this post, I'll tell you about Thursday.

A few months ago, I applied for a Kansas Arts Commission Mid-Career Artist Fellowship. The Visual Arts selection panel met in Topeka a couple of days ago and I went to watch them deliberate. I won an Individual Artist Mini-Fellowship from the KAC in 2000 and in 2001, I was on the selection committee myself, so I had a good perspective on the process already. The public and the applicants were invited to attend, but I was the only person to actually turn up. I arrived late in the morning because I was #41 on the agenda of 43 applicants (the W name, you know).

When I came in, the director of the KAC, Llewellyn Crain, grabbed me and pulled me into another room. I had met her about a year earlier, so she knew who I was. I was told that I was welcome to observe, but I wasn't allowed to interact with the panel members in any way.

As I walked in the room, I realized I already knew some of the panel members or at least knew who they were. One was Dr. Patricia McDonnell, the director of the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University. I love this museum, as it's "the" place for great contemporary art in Wichita. Another was Novalene Ross, the former director of the Wichita Art Museum and a true leader in the Kansas arts community. One board member from the KAC is required to be there and conduct the proceedings. This time, it turned out to be a man I used to work with at IBM. We worked in the same branch, but were located in cities a distance apart, so I wasn't even sure that he remembered me from 20-25 years ago. I did not know the other three panel members.

I sat quietly through the rest of the evaluations that afternoon, listening to what they said about each applicant's work. Dr. McDonnell did not vote or comment on my art, citing conflict of interest (she knows me). The comments about my work included:
innovative, original (this was said a lot)
took quilting in a whole new direction
craftsmanship is excellent
sensuous appeal
transcends wearables and bedcovers
very good statement in fine craft

The only negative things mentioned were that my statement was more a biography than a statement and that I had a great resume, but didn't have enough solo shows on it. This is my year to look for solo shows, so if you have one to offer me, I'm yours! I'll even lick your boots, if you want me to, but only if it's done in public and advertised as performance art.

When the scoring was finalized, I was allowed to introduce myself. I absolutely love to hear myself talk, so I also took the opportunity to tell them my positive experience with receiving a mini-fellowship and how my art was tremendously affected by listening to the comments of the panel that year. Being a panel member is a lot of work, so I wanted them to know what an impact they were having on the artists and the ripples the fellowships sent out into the world.

I was allowed to look at the final scores after the process was over, but I was so busy talking to people that I barely got a chance to glance at the sheet before they wanted it back. Out of 19 in my category, I was ranked 5th. However, there are two other (much smaller) groups whose scores will be integrated with ours and they are only giving awards to the top eight. I think I'm on the bubble as to whether I'll receive an award or not, but I won't get upset if I don't. I saw how tough the competition was this year and I know I did well, so I am happy with my ranking either way. The way I look at it, I had the opportunity to have a number of art heavyweights see my work and critique it, plus I had the chance to talk to most of them personally. Forget the fellowship money, that experience was priceless.

How I make my quilts 3D

A couple of years ago, I received an email from a Canadian quilt guild. The workshop chair had found my website and asked if I would teach a multi-day workshop for them on how to make 3D quilts. Although I love to teach, I had to tell them no because the kind of work I do is not dependent on a particular technique or material. It can't be taught.

In my artwork, the concept is the most important thing, so the pieces can look quite different, even within the same series. Because each piece is unique, I have to invent different solutions to create the effects I want. I start with the concept and then spend a lot of time designing how I will physically execute the idea. There's at least one quilted form in each artwork, but otherwise I don't limit myself in regards to materials and techniques. In addition to artistic considerations, I also have to think about ease of shipping (size, weight, shape) and ease of installation, because they are major influences on the final design, too.

What I put inside the quilt has the most influence on the finished shape. Batting is the soft stuff you put inside of quilts to make them cuddly, but I tend to use many different materials inside the quilts, depending on the needs of the design.

When I want a soft quilt, I use Warm and White cotton batting and have even used this in my freestanding sculptures, such as Discombobulated and Melted. Sometimes, I'll even use another layer of fabric in lieu of any form of batting, if I want to cut down on bulk and weight.

Here are some of the materials I've used to make stiffer quilts.

- Extruded required a quilt that would project out from the wall horizontally for a distance before dipping to the floor. To accomplish this, I used buckram, which is a very stiff fabric that is typically used inside of baseball caps. The design required the quilt to be the stiffest at the top, so I started with four layers of buckram at that point, sandwiched between two layers of cotton batting and, of course, the two outside layers of fabric. As the quilt got further from the "extruder", it needed to droop down and touch the floor, so I removed a layer of buckram every few inches. I was left with one buckram layer by the time it reached the ground.

- I wanted to see if I could make a freestanding sculpture similar to Melted, but easier to install on site, so I made Tangled. Instead of batting, I used a very stiff, thick version of interfacing, called Peltex. This turned out to be less satisfactory than the cotton batting, so I won't use it in this fashion again.

- Plastic needlepoint canvas was used inside the "heads" in Emotional Entanglement. Yes, I hand quilted through all three layers.

- In one of my older Art Deco pieces, Simple Yet Elegant, I created a long, skinny quilt using several layers of heavy duty aluminum foil as the "batting". Silver mesh fabric was used for the outside layers. Once it was quilted and bound, the silver quilt was attached to another, much larger quilt.

If you've been following along as I made two artworks, Dispensed and Laced, I just received the photos from my photographer and I will post them here in the next few days. They are great! Be sure to check back soon.

New Year's resolutions

1. Send my cat to an eating disorder clinic for her bulemia.

2. Write another blog entry that becomes as successful as Top Ten Reasons for Becoming an Artist. Maybe I should write one called Top Ten Reasons for NOT Becoming an Artist, but I don't think it would deter anyone from becoming one. Lack of money usually does that after a few years anyway.

3. Finally get an entry accepted into Quilt National, damn it.

4. Transform my body into Carmen Electra's, but without her taste in husbands.

5. Add a couple of rooms to my studio, including a wet studio for painting and dyeing, plus a large, climate-controlled storage room for the finished work that's piling up. Adding extra rooms might be a problem, however, since my studio is in the basement. Maybe I could dig a secret tunnel through the wall using a sharpened spoon and carve out a few underground caverns.

6. Take down all the traditional quilts displayed in my house. I made them almost 15 years ago, when I first started quilting. I think I can do better now. I've just been too lazy to make something to replace them.

7. Reconnect with all the people I should have sent replies to months and months ago. Yes, I dropped off the face of the earth, but that's no excuse not to send a friendly email every now and then from my current location, wherever that is.

8. Get dressed earlier in the day.

9. Be  discovered by a Big Name gallery owner or museum curator. I want to be the hottest ticket on the block, right after Jeff Koons and Grandma Moses. Offers for solo shows will rain down upon my shoulders and I will need to hire several cute young men to assist me with my paperwork. My work will sell for millions of dollars. Hey, it could happen.

10. Did I mention Carmen Elektra's figure? Change that to Halle Berry's. Same caveat about the husbands, though.