Redefined

My name in lights!

My solo exhibition starts tomorrow, in conjunction with Wichita's Final Friday gallery crawl. Here is the information, if you are in the area.

Newman University
Steckline Gallery - De Mattias Fine Arts Center
3100 McCormick Avenue, Wichita, Kansas

Opening reception- August 29, 5 pm - 7 pm
Art for Lunch presentation- September 2, 12 noon - 1 pm (open to the public and you get a free lunch!)
Gallery hours- Mon-Fri, 9 am - 4 pm or by appointment
For more information, call 316-942-4291 x2199
Gallery director- Mary Werner (no relation)

As I was driving over there yesterday to do some last minute adjustments, I spotted the school's LED sign with my exhibit information on it. My jaw literally dropped! This sign is right next to the highway, so a lot of people will be seeing it.

They even spelled Rumoshosky right. What more could I ask for?

 

Popping up in Oklahoma City

This weekend, I travelled to Oklahoma City for a workshop on pop-up structures with Carol Barton. She is a paper engineer from Maryland, a wonderful person and a very good teacher. Her instructions were clear and she paced the workshop just right, so you didn't feel rushed or bored at any time.

We worked with very colorful paper and after a while, the table looked like it had been hit by a flourescent blizzard of scraps. I always thought I was a creative person, but some of the people in the workshop made me feel very uncreative by comparison. I was sitting next to Elia Woods (who is also an art quilter and textile artist) and she was doing some amazing work. She even created a pop-up table that was covered with bright scraps of paper like our workshop tables and had recognizable pop-up versions of people around it who were in the class, like the teacher.

Here is an example of what I made. I tend not to pour all my creativity into workshop models, but instead absorb the techniques and ideas. All the time I was working, I was thinking about how I could apply the principles to my own work. A while ago, I created a piece based on pop-up ideas that is appropriately called Popped. It is currently travelling with an exhibit through the Kansas Art Quilters group. Unfortunately, I realized too late that you couldn't really tell it was a pop-up when it was installed. This workshop gave me some wonderful ideas about better ways to make that more obvious when the piece is opened and just sitting there. Ah well, you live and learn, which is why I took this workshop, obviously.

Collapsed is done!

I finished another new artwork today! This is going to be shown for the first time at my upcoming solo exhibit in a few weeks. It's called Collapsed (that's the name of the artwork, not the show). To give you a sense of scale, the legs are 28" long. If you have followed my posts about the constuction, you know that the quilt tube changes to different colors all the way around, so I'm going to show you another view of it, too.

For some reason, I took this second picture while sitting on the floor, so you can actually see the underside of the base a bit. You should never see this part of the artwork unless you are under the age of 1 or have had a little too much wine at the opening reception. If both conditions apply, then I think you've got more problems than I can solve in a blog post.

New artwork

New Artwork

I finally finished a couple of new artworks, had them photographed professionally and posted them on my website. The first, which I've shown here before, is called Unmatched. The matchbook cover is a very stiff quilt and the match "stems" are made of wood. The matchheads are constructed of cotton batting and paint. Like real matches, the heads are bigger than the width of the rows, causing the two rows to stagger and appear as if they are really four rows. After I had completed the project, I broke off the one black-headed match which is, of course, supposed to appear burned.

You may not be able to see it in the small picture, but Misti dots her letter i's with little hearts. After I'd already written the name inside of the matchbook, my friend Vicky said that I should have used her name instead and another friend said I should have used the name Bambi. I'm sure there are other names that are just as good, but I guess I'll have to settle for Misti this time. I wonder if she ever hooked up with the guy who got her phone number in that bar?

The second project is called Splashed. I've worked on this piece for several years and it was a lot more work than it looks. The water is constructed by sandwiching hand dyed cotton batting in between two layers of gold mesh fabric. I stitched it all together, trimmed it to size and sewed a satin stitch around the edge. Afterwards, it was backed with black wool felt and stitched again. I probably have about $100 worth of black cotton thread in this.

The water is actually two separate pieces that sit on a two-piece base that is hidden underneath, but which lifts them up from the table.

The spout is made from PVC pipe sections that were modified, glued together and painted with metallic paint from the model train store. The handle that turns the water on and off is a modified Allen wrench. Pull it out and the upper water section separates from the rest of the spout, with just a small section of pipe attached permanently to it. The part that hangs on the wall was originally a floor drain, so it conveniently already had holes in it for hanging purposes. The local hardware store is a wealth of art materials, if you keep your mind open to the possibilities!

Solo Exhibit

My solo show is coming up here pretty quickly. It officially opens on August 29th during Wichita's Final Friday Gallery Crawl, but several days ago, the gallery director asked me to move the installation date forward by 10 days to August 15th. I agreed to do it, but I still need to finish two more artworks that will be displayed, called Collapsed and Posted. Obviously, I can't ship them off to Boston to have them photographed beforehand, but it'll probably happen after the show is taken down in September.