Redefined

Cyber Fyber

Sweet Marguerite
Last week, I travelled to South Carolina and spent a couple of days visiting my 92 year old mother. She doesn't look her age, but I'm not surprised because she's always looked like she was 15 years younger than she really was. Oh, I just love the whole idea of "inherited traits".

My mother is deep in the throes of Alzheimers and there are some days that doesn't speak at all, but some of her personality is still leaking out around the edges. Just as I was getting ready to leave, I reminded her who I was and told her I loved her, but was about to go. Very slowly, she said, "I would like to live... the rest of my life... in the land of Jill". I love you too, Mom.

Cyber Fyber
After leaving the nursing home, I drove to Columbia, SC and attended the opening of Cyber Fyber, a very interesting exhibit of fiber art that was curated by Susan Lenz. Her whole idea was to demonstrate the connections that she has made with other artists on the internet and the influences they have had on her art and her life. In one part of the exhibit, there were small artworks the size of postcards and trading cards, mounted by the hundreds upon the walls. They were created by artists from all over the world. In the side room, there were larger artworks made by 19 international artists who Susan had invited. Here is a picture of my artwork, Transformed, in the show.

I walked into Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, where the exhibit was installed, about 5 minutes before the reception officially opened. I recognized Susan from pictures I had seen of her, so I went over and introduced myself to her. From then on, she made me feel like a rock star.

Susan is an absolute ball of fire and I kept expecting to see sparks flying off her fingertips. Here she is in the middle of the picture, along with her mother and sister, Linda and Sonya. What a great family! They obviously love each other a lot and support each other.

Here's another picture of Susan with Stephen Chesley, a painter who has a studio there.  He's helped Susan quite a lot with her career. Interestingly, Steve and I are only 5 months apart in age and our fathers worked in the same building in New York City, probably at the same time. How strange is that?

I was so impressed with the way that Susan curated this exhibit. It had a central theme that went far beyond "aren't these pretty quilts" and she created 12 different blogs to document everything going on. Here is the main one. She even has a blog filled with videos of the reception and exhibit. In the blog for the invited artists, I love her description of the installation of my work.

Another wonderful thing that Susan did was to recruit Cindi Boiter, a professional writer, to produce and distribute press releases. They both did a wonderful job and the show has been reviewed in a number of publications, such as undefined, an excellent arts journal for South Carolina. See p. 30 for the start of the article and P. 31, column 2 for the writeup about me.

The day after the reception, Susan planned a Fiber Day at the gallery. Four local vendors came in to demonstrate new materials and machines. The big hit was the Embellisher, which does needle felting. Susan also gave a demonstration of how she makes her own work.

All in all, I had a wonderful time and was so impressed with Susan's organizational abilities. She is a great curator and I hope she has the strength and energy to do something like this again someday. I was truly honored to be a part of it.

Breaking my end-of-year curse

For the past several years, a strange pattern has developed in my art career. From January to about August, a lot of things seem to go right for me. I get accepted into juried exhibits, invited to be in invitationals, offered solo shows and so on. Then from the end of the summer until the end of December, it all dries up. I can't seem to find anybody to take my work, even though I've been burning incense and dancing the Exhibit Dance around roaring bonfires like all artists are supposed to do. I don't know why this pattern has been happening, but I think the curse has finally been broken.

Today, I received a phone call from the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. One of my works was accepted into their International Juried Show, which is probably the top all-media exhibit in the U.S. today. The juror, Adelina Vlas, who is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, chose 80 works from 1600 entries and Unmatched was one of them. Now I expect the two sides of my brain will begin fighting as to whether I should attend the opening or not. I have to admit that it's very tempting.

New England in the Fall

Last week, my husband and I travelled to New England for a 20th anniversary trip. We flew into the White Plains airport in NY and stayed overnight with Jeri Riggs. Jeri is a dear friend who I met through art, even though she lives just a few blocks from my childhood home in Dobbs Ferry. Here's a picture of us together and Jeri is wearing the hand dyed cotton scarf that she won in my blog contest. This scarf was displayed on the "corkboard" during my recent solo exhibit. She was one of three winners, but the only one who had her prize hand-delivered.

While we were in Dobbs Ferry, we had lunch at Sam's Italian Restaurant and ordered a specialty pizza. It was the best pizza I've ever eaten and even better than what I remembered from eating there as a child. If you are in the area, go try it yourself!

The next day, Tuesday, we travelled north along the Hudson River Valley and had a wine tasting at the Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville, the oldest winery in America. We stayed overnight at the Minnewaska Lodge at the base of the Shawangunk Mountains and had a spectacular view of the Shawangunk Ridge. Here's a picture of my husband, Steve, on the back porch for our room. As with all our accomodations on this trip, we walked in around 3 pm and asked if there were any rooms available. Most of the time, we were given a discount, often for an extra special room.

Wednesday, we stopped at the Culinary Institute of America, famous for training top chefs. We had a wonderful lunch at one of their restaurants and the mushroom soup will haunt my dreams for a long time to come. We drove over into Connecticut that afternoon, stopped at another winery for a tasting, then stayed overnight at the Tollgate Hill Inn, which dates back to the mid-1700s. This is the view of the inn from our porch.

Thursday, we drove through CT and stopped at the University of Connecticut bookstore. I had attended UConn for 3 semesters of graduate school, but the campus had totally changed since I was there and it was almost disorienting. We ended up on the shore near Mystic Seaport and found a wonderful place to stay at the Inn at Stonington. We ate dinner at a gourmet Mexican restaurant up the street, enjoyed the posh room and the quiet surroundings. Here are pictures of the lobster boats at the dock and the sunset from the back door of the inn.

Friday, we did the tourist thing and toured Mystic Seaport. They were preparing to restore one of the large sailing ships and we had the opportunity to see them dismantling parts of it so they can take it out of the water. A ride on a steam train in Essex completed the day.Our stay that night was at the Griswold Inn, the oldest inn in the country. The room did not have many of the usual hotel amentities, but we had met a wonderful family from England and had a great discussion with them. We even sat with them at breakfast the next morning and they will remain one of the highlights of the trip.

We returned home on Saturday evening and I would be remiss if I didn't include at least one picture of the glorious Fall foliage, which was at its peak during our trip. As an artist who loves color, I couldn't get enough of it. What a fantastic experience!

International Sculpture Center Conference

On Saturday, I returned from the International Sculpture Center conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have been a member of the ISC for several years, but this was the first sculpture conference I attended. It's part of my general move from the art quilt community into the greater art world.

The conference was held on the grounds of the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park and they couldn't have chosen a better location. If you are ever in the area, I suggest you visit the gardens, which has sculpture from some of the best artists in the world. Many of the sculptures are very large scale.

I arrived on Wednesday and that evening, I went to a pre-conference party at the home of a longtime arts advocate in the area. The house was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and had a wonderful lake view. The place was so crowded that I was often stuck in a hallway when trying to move around. It wasn't really a problem because it actually gave me the opportunity to talk to some wonderful artists and get to know them as we were stuck there together.

On Thursday morning, there was a preconference panel discussion at the hotel where I was staying. The topic was creating a city dedicated to public art. One sculpture they talked about in particular was a large Alexander Calder sculpture located about two blocks away. At very moment, there was a crowd of about a quarter of a million people surrounding that sculpture listening to a speech by Barack Obama. When I left the hotel to go to the sculpture gardens for the start of the conference, I was caught in the traffic leaving the speech. It was a little strange to see security personnel on the sidewalk just a few feet away from me who were obviously wearing about 60 pounds worth of large weaponry.

The general topic for the conference was public art, which really didn't pertain to me. However, I still learned a lot. The keynote address was given by Jaume Plensa, who creates wonderful sculptures like the Crown Fountain at Millenium Park in Chicago. I was really inspired by the meaning he infuses into his work.

Optional events included the opportunity to participate in an Art Slam. Up to six artists could present their work within the space of an hour. A number of other people turned up to listen to the presentations, too. Here's a picture of me giving my talk. The editor of Sculpture magazine was in the audience and I was glad in many ways that I was showing work that was so different than the others.

The last night of the conference was the monthly gallery hop in Grand Rapids. Here I am with Pam RuBert at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art. It is a great gallery and I plan to submit my portfolio in the near future, hoping to be considered for a show in one of their spaces. The most impressive exhibit was the Big Art Party, a once a year event held in an unused building in Grand Rapids. The Grand Rapids Art Museum had recently moved into a new building, so the party was held in their old location. All the marble and wood rooms (and there were a lot of them) were filled with some really impressive contemporary artwork. The music was pumping and the place was crowded. I wish we had an event like that in Wichita.

Overall, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

What's happenin'

This is a general update on some things that have been happening behind the scenes with my art career. If you're not interested in hearing about this kind of stuff, feel free to stop reading now. Really, I don't mind a bit. However, I have to warn you that I've placed some spyware inside your computer and I'll know what you've done.

About a week ago, I wrote to the gallery director at a college 35 miles from my house and asked if she was accepting portfolios. Apparently she went out to my website and liked what she saw, because when I returned from taking down my solo show the next morning, I received an email from her asking if I was able to fill her gallery space myself or needed a second person to exhibit along with me. I ate lunch, then drove there to take another look at the gallery and ended up talking with the director. The result was an offer for another solo show, to begin at the end of September, 2009 and continuing through October. Do you know that "letdown" feeling that can happen after finishing a big project? I didn't get to wallow in it after taking down the Newman University show. Gee, I'm almost disappointed. I said almost.

My favorite gallery, Untitled[ArtSpace] in Oklahoma City, asked if I would curate a quilt exhibition for them. They even allowed me to put together my "dream" exhibit, which will be an invitational show of 20 artists whose work I most admire. A percentage of the artists also work in 3D like myself, which will help fill up the center of the 10,000 square foot gallery. There will be a catalog and workshops associated with this exhibit and the gallery is interested in travelling it after it finishes its run there. The dates for this exhibit will be July 10 to August 29, 2009. I'm going to be pretty busy around the end of June!

Tomorrow (Wednesday), I am leaving for the International Sculpture Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'll let you know how it went when I return. This is a leap into the unknown for me, but I've never been much of one to shy away from risky things. It's also time I made more contacts outside of the art quilt community and in the larger art world. I didn't make it into the Quilt National exhibit again this year and it may be just as well. I think it's time I acknowledged that my artwork doesn't fit there anymore, but I was hoping to get that particular notch on my belt before I moved on.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures with this post. I have some pictures of Picniced now that it's finished, but I already packed the camera and I forgot to download them first. I'm afraid you'll just have to wait. Big oops. Forgive me?

Painting pickles and stitching tomato slices

I spent the last week processing a bunch of pears that a nice lady allowed me pick from her orchard. All in all, I probably canned about 100 jars of various jams, jellies, sauces, juice and preserves. If that wasn't enough, I also made 50 servings of chili from my homegrown tomatoes and green peppers. My feet are tired. My brain is fried. My tastebuds are happy.

All this food preparation is spilling over into my artwork, too. If you've been reading my blog for a while, then you may remember a piece called Portable Picnic. A collaborative project, it was originally shown at Untitled[ArtSpace] in Oklahoma City in January. Unfortunately, the other two artists in my group wanted their work back after the show was over. Go figure. I was left with a nice ground cover, cushions, tablerunners and napkins but the dishware, silverware and vase were gone. Never being one to let a little thing like that stop me, I decided to finish the picnic scene myself and exhibit it as a "new" artwork, called Picniced.

I finished the food this week and here's what it looks like. If you can't tell from the picture, I'm serving a bag of potato chips, a BLT sandwich and a dill pickle. The sandwich and chips bag are made entirely of fiber materials, but the pickle was created from a lightweight clay and painted with acrylic paints. The best part of this project is that I got to eat the food models as I went along.

Only one serving of food is shown here, but there are actually two, one for each of the two seats at the picnic. There used to be three servings, but I think my husband had them for lunch yesterday. I told them they had fiber in them and he must have misunderstood.

This is one of the actual plates I'll be using. The next step is to sand, stain and finish the wood so it looks a little darker and classier. I still haven't decided what to do about the drinks yet. If I create some fake soda cans. I'd better buy several real ones at the store for models so I have something to drink while I work.

I won't replace the original silverware since all I'm serving is finger food. Have you ever tried to eat potato chips with a knife and fork?

Going solo

I had a wonderful time at the opening reception for my solo exhibit on Friday evening. Many people turned up with whom I wanted talk longer, but I didn't have the opportunity. Two hours goes pretty fast when you are having fun!

If you think we're friends but you didn't turn up, we may have to renegiotiate our relationship. The art may not have drawn you, but how could you resist free food and wine?

By coincidence, the gallery director is named Mary Werner. A man and wife with the last name of Werner were also there because he works at the university. To my surprise, another Jill M. Werner turned up with her husband and friends. She lives here in Wichita and we knew each other existed, but had never met. I had sent her an announcement postcard as a lark and she apparently couldn't resist meeting the other Jill M. Werner in town. The first three letters of our middle names are even the same. At one point, there were seven Werners standing in a circle talking and, with the exception of the married pairs, none of us were related. That kind of thing never happened to me when I was simply Jill Rumoshosky.

Splashed, which can be seen on the pedestal near the left wall, was most people's favorite piece. Another favorite was Posted, which can be seen on the right. It looks so much like a real cork board that many people were walking past it, thinking that it was a real cork board used by the university's art department. However, if they studied the items on the board, they soon realized that something was a little "off" and it was actually part of the exhibit. I added more bulletin board items after this picture was taken, so I'll take another before I do the gallery talk tomorrow and write a blog post about it.

Many thanks to the folks at Newman University for making this exhibition such a success!

 

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.

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.

Re-resurfacing

In my last post, I said that I had reached a point of overload and was withdrawing from several art-related obligations. I evaluated what I could reasonably handle and let go of the part that wasn't allowing me to move on.

First, I resigned from a fiber art group I had just joined. I had only been a member for several days but hey, that's longer than some of Britney Spears' marriages.

Second, I resigned as regional co-representative for Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). After six months or so on the job, I realized that I couldn't give it the time and care the position deserved. Unfortunately, it left my co-representative in the lurch, which is something I truly regret. She's struggling with her own time commitments.

Third, I've decided to enter far fewer juried art quilt shows in the future. My main goal at this point is to step further into the mainstream art world, where my work is a better fit. I want to spend my limited time locating solo exhibits and galleries. As hard as it is to discontinue some of my ties to the art quilt community, I feel it's time to leave a lot of it behind. In many ways, this is how I felt when I left traditional quilting. If I was enjoying success, why take the leap into the unknown? Because it's right for me to do so.

At the same time that I was doing this art-related housecleaning, my husband was finishing his remodeling of one of the bedrooms. Being no dummy, I immediately took the opportunity to move a lot of my finished work from the basement up to the bedroom closet. It seemed ridiculous that I have been taking my art out of the furnace room and shipping it off to museums. My work deserved better treatment than that.

Of course, moving stuff around the house is never that easy. You can't just move one thing, you have to move everything. I was finding a lot of detritus I knew existed, but had purposely hidden from view. What am I supposed to do with three boxes of player piano rolls and a box full of record albums? As it turned out, I kept the rolls, but got rid of the LPs. By the time I was done a week later, I had completed a serious reorganization of three major rooms and two large closets. I also moved a bunch of furniture around to accomodate the table for my new sewing machine.

With all of this happening at one time, I was able to step back and reevaluate what I was doing on many levels. While I was packing and labeling things for storage, I also took down a lot of the artwork from my studio walls. The majority of those pieces were framed collages that do not reflect my current style of art and do not make me proud. Since I had no emotional attachment to them, they are now gone. I'd rather look at blank spots on my walls until I have better things to fill them.

If you hadn't guessed, there is a general moving, shaking and purging going on in my career and my life, but this is a positive thing for me. As part of my move into the general art world, I've registered for a sculpture conference, to be held in Michigan next October. I'm looking forward to meeting a new crowd of people.

I promise my next blog post will be funnier and have more pictures. These serious and text-heavy posts are beginning to bore me. I need a major jolt of color to get my motor running again!

Resurfacing

I know it's been a while since I posted. I've done a lot of thinking about where I'm headed with my art. This started recently when a fiber art group invited me to join them. After about a week, I realized that I wasn't actually creating my artwork anymore. The group was the final straw that took up the last of my "arting" time. I made the decision that I would withdraw from most of the activities that were keeping me from the work I really should be doing, so I sent my "thank you, but I'm not staying" email to the group a few days ago. I also plan to withdraw from a couple of other commitments that are either taking too much of my time or making me feel guilty because I'm not doing them. They are all related to art quilting, which also goes along with my plan to move more into the general art world.

I must be rebelling against my responsibilities, because I've spent the past few days sewing the seams on my latest artwork. I've been sewing the color run together and I know what I'm going to do with it, but I'm not telling yet.

Last week, I bought a new sewing machine, which is something I thought I'd never do because I have such a good one already. However, after struggling to quilt several of my last projects, I realized my Bernina 1260 wasn't sufficient for all my needs. I intend to keep the Bernina for sewing seams and use the Janome 6600 for machine quilting. Of course, this means I need to rearrange my studio to accomodate another sewing table. If everything goes normally for me, there'll be a cascade effect throughout the entire house and nothing will remain untouched by the time I'm done. The Organizator strikes again.

-------------------------------------------------------

In loving memory of Preston Wesley Werner
May 8, 1990 - November 7, 2005
Happy 18th birthday, bud!

Old quilts never die, they just get passed around

Last week, when I attended the Kansas Art Commission artist fellowships reception, I met Roger Shimomura, the world-reknowned painter who received the Master Fellowship in Fine Arts. He told me that he was going to send me an old quilt that he purchased at an auction 25 years ago in Lawrence, KS when he was teaching at the University of Kansas. The quilt had been in a box ever since and I think he wanted to find it a good home. I haven't done anything with traditional quilts in about ten years, but I knew more people in the field than he did, so I told him to send it along and I'd figure out what to do with it.

I received the quilt today and discovered it was made from wool fabric and hand pieced. Lines of herringbone embroidery stitches highlight the stitching lines and the outside edge. The blocks are 10" square. However, you can also see that the quilt is in poor condition and the insides are showing. Blue ticking fabric is peeping through the biggest holes, so I suspect that the quiltmaker used an old coverlet inside as batting. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this quilt dates back to the 1800s.

Since I am not an expert on old wool quilts, I called Sara Reimer Farley, a well-known quilt historian who lives here in Wichita. She will be coming over on Thursday to see it in person. If she wants the quilt, she can take it home with her. A quilt like this is a little piece of history and belongs in the right hands.

Fellowship awards ceremony

You are getting two long posts today because yesterday, I traveled to Topeka to receive my Mid-Career Artists Fellowship (Fine Art) from the Kansas Arts Commission. They held a wonderful reception for the recipients and I want to tell you about some of the interesting people who I talked to. There were many others and I hope that I don't hurt their feelings by not including them, but I have to stop the list somewhere before everyone falls asleep, like in a college class right after lunch.

- One of my State Senators, Les Donovan, was there with his wife, Cissy, to hand me my award. I was honored that they took the time to be there for me, as I was the only fellowship winner from the Wichita area. I was so impressed by their graciousness and intelligence.

- Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, who received the Masters Fellowship in Fine Craft, is a tremendously talented weaver who teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. Many people know her from the Surface Design Association. Talking to her came at a good time for me, because of a question I had regarding SDA and the fiber art exhibits associated with their biennial conference. She was the perfect person to ask and I had an opportunity to get to know her at the same time. That was almost worth the trip all by itself.

- Melissa Gregory, who works in the office of Governor Kathleen Sebelius. I have a quilt hanging on the wall in the governor's office right now and Melissa knew exactly which one it was. Coincidentally, she "long distance" commutes from Wichita and her Wichita house is one that my husband and I had looked at when we were buying a home almost 20 years ago. We distinctly remember that house and have even talked about it a few times since.

- Barbara Nelson, who co-owns the Strecker-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan (Kansas), probably the most respected contemporary art gallery in the state. Her husband and gallery co-owner, Jay, was on the selection panel for the awards. Barbara and I first met in 2001, when she was kind enough to host a meeting of Kansas Art Quilters. I was president of KAQ at the time. I'd love to get to know Barbara better, as I remember her gallery/home as being jaw-droppingly amazing, which says a lot about the insides of a person.

- John Divine, a commissioner on the KAC board. He chaired the selection panel for the visual arts awards this year, which is the first time I'd seen him in about 25 years. We used to work for the same branch office for IBM, but he was based in a city 90 minutes drive from me and I only saw him occasionally during that time. In fact, I was surprised he remembered me at all, but I guess Jill Rumoshosky isn't a name you hear every day.

- Roger Shimomura, who received the Masters Fellowship in Fine Art, is a world renowned painter. In 2000, when I received a Mini-Fellowship from the KAC, I attended the selection meeting and one of the panel members made a comment that changed the course of my art tremendously. It took me years to figure out what that comment meant, but I eventually did. When I told Roger about this, he did not recall whether he had served on that panel because he's served on so many over the years, but thought the comment was something he would be likely to say. Whether he has any memory of that moment in time, I do remember it and that's what counts. You never know the impact that your life has on other people, do you?

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.

2008 - What's next (as far as I know it)

Did I bore you with the long list of exhibits from 2007? This one is going to be a lot shorter because I don't want people unsubscribing from my blog en masse. Thank goodness, the end of the year only comes around once a year.

I already mentioned several current exhibits that will continue into 2008.
- Connected is on exhibit at the Wichita Art Museum until January 6th.
- Knitted will be the Visions Art Quilt Gallery in San Diego through January 13th.
- Post Rock Country, Kansas will be displayed in the Kansas governor's office until the end of April.

Starting January 11th, I will have work at Untitled [ArtSpace] in Oklahoma City. It's a collaborative project named Portable Picnic. You can read about this project here and here.

I am particularly looking forward to a very special exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, opening June 20th and continuing through August 31st. Knitted and Transformed will be there and images of Knitted were used for preshow publicity. The curators told me that only a few of the artists in the exhibit had more than one piece chosen and, considering the big names involved, I feel very honored.

In August-September, I will have a solo show of my Definitions series at the Steckline Gallery, a beautiful little gallery at Newman University here in Wichita. The gallery director's name happens to be Mary Werner, but there is no familial relation, so you shouldn't assume I got this gig because of nepotism. I may hang a disclaimer on the wall during the show because I'm sure a lot of people will wonder. Perhaps I should name the whole exhibit "No Relation" and dispel any doubts.

Have a great New Year!

2007 - Looking back (and forth) at my exhibition record

Here's where you could have seen my art this year. Some of it is still there. Please go see it!

Extruded was in Stretching the Threads, Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, Florida) back in April. Mary McBride, the curator, is a talented fiber artist herself and always puts on one heckuva fiber show. According to the art reviews in the paper, this was the best one yet and I was honored to be represented. Here is an installation picture. Mary said that people walked around on the driveway outside the window to see how the back of this was made.

Tangled started the year still on display in Quilt Visions, a very prestigious art quilt exhibit at the Oceanside Museum of Art (Oceanside, California). Feel free to buy the catalog here. This work was also  in Ana 35, an all-media show of contemporary art at the Holter Museum of Art (Helena, Montana) from June through August. I wish I had installation pictures of this show, as it is a good one, but this was one of those times when I sent out the quilt and got it back, without any printed information, pictures or website presence about the exhibit itself.

Knitted was first shown at a four-person exhibit at The Fiber Studio (Wichita, Kansas) in May and June. It is currently on exhibit as part of Fabric of the Imagination at the Visions Art Quilt Gallery (San Diego, California) through January 13th, so you still have a chance to see it. After I shipped it to San Diego, they had the terrible wildfires in the area and I was really scared it might go up in smoke, but the gallery was safe and so was Knitted.

Connected was displayed at a number of exhibits this year. As part of a SAQA exhibit called Transformations, it was shown at the International Quilt Festival (Chicago, Illinois) and the Grants Pass Museum of Art (Grants Pass, Oregon). It was also chosen as the cover art for the catalog. Later, it.was invited to be shown at the Wichita Art Museum (Wichita, Kansas). The official title of the exhibit is Quilts from the Prairie Quilt Guild, but I have trouble putting anything on my resume that says "quilt guild", so I've chosen to utterly ignore it. It's still at the museum until January 6th.

Prepackaged was shown in Fiber Directions, Wichita Center for the Arts (Wichita, Kansas). You can see installation photos here. I was a little surprised to be accepted, as this is the fourth time in a row they have used Jason Pollen as a juror. He's a great guy, but very focused on surface design, but the success of my work doesn't rely on surface design techniques at all, so I was glad to finally enter something he liked. Of course, it wasn't the one I thought he would pick. I thought he's choose Knitted, if anything.

Discombobulated was shown at the Visions Art Quilt Gallery (San Diego, California) as part of the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection. Del Thomas is one of my favorite people in the art quilt world because of the tremendous personal support she gives the artists whose work she owns. She still allows me to enter and exhibit Discombobulated even though she's owned it for five years. I will always be grateful for her friendship.

Emotional Entanglement was in Covers Blown! at the Alice C. Sabatini Gallery (Topeka, Kansas). This was yet another great Kansas Art Quilters show curated by Linda Frost. I was very pleased that they hung it freestanding instead of against the wall. You can see an installation picture here.

Popped is travelling with a Kansas Art Quilters exhibit, Altered Views. This year, it was exhibited at the LPL Gallery and the Unity Gallery, both in Lawrence, Kansas and at the Irene B. French Gallery in Merriam, Kansas. This was my attempt at a pop up quilt, but I forgot that it wasn't really recognizable as a pop up once it was open and on display. Live and learn. I'd like to do a pop up again sometime, but I'd have to think about displaying the final result a little more.

Post Rock Country, Kansas is currently on display in the office of Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Topeka, Kansas). This is another great exhibit through Kansas Art Quilters and Linda Frost.

In June, I was privileged to be in a 4-person show at the Fiber Studio in Wichita, Kansas. I displayed four large works there, Forest Floor, Knitted, Erupted and Pinpointed. Thanks to Marilyn Grisham, the gallery owner, for including me.

Governor's Exhibit

I received these pictures today from Linda Frost, the Exhibition Chair for Kansas Art Quilters. My quilt, Post Rock Country, Kansas, was chosen to be featured on the first visible wall in the Kansas governor's outer office. It will be on display there until the end of April.

Post Rock Country, Kansas

In previous posts, I admitted to having a sordid, yet colorful past as a traditional quilter. Life seems to go in cycles and for some reason, that past has been coming back to haunt me recently. Not only did I just complete a project that harkens back to my "picture quilt" days, but I'm also teaching with and exhibiting some of older quilts. Perhaps I needed to see where I've been in order to appreciate where I'm going.

This is a quilt called Post Rock Country, Kansas, finished in 2000 after about a year's worth of work. Unfortunately, this was back before I had a professional photographer, so the picture isn't very good. However, it is large and quite three dimensional. The spiral at the top is actually a separate quilt, which you can see it in the detail picture. I have to admit that I changed some things about this quilt two years later, after this picture was taken. Most notably, I added a farm out in the field, changed and improved the tall grasses at the bottom and added quilte a bit of shading, especially to the fence posts and field.

The barbed wire started as six different weights of white cotton yarn. I painted the yarn black, then tied knots in it, changing to smaller yarn as the fence went off into the distance.The eagle was threadpainted (entirely stitched by machine) and it was such a large image that it took me eight days to finish. The larger butterflies and other details were created the same way.

I entered this quilt into two large shows that year (Paducah and Houston) and it wasn't accepted into either one. After that, I thought this quilt would stay on my living room wall for the rest of its life, but twas not to be.

First, this artwork was juried into Encrustations, a 2002 North Carolina exhibit for embellished quilts and that show was chosen to be a special exhibit at the Houston show later that year. Ha! Take that, you shortsighted Houston jurors from 2000, it was shown there anyway! I am dancing on your heads.

In 2005, this quilt was juried into an annual exhibit in Ohio. The theme was "Rural Roots and Mysteries" and it won Best of Show. I wasn't creating this kind of artwork anymore, but I was still very pleased that this work was getting recognition. The eagle had landed.

Ready for the big news? Several days ago, the exhibitions chair for Kansas Art Quilters  received a request from the Kansas governor's office asking for ten quilts to display on their walls. Post Rock Country, Kansas is one of the quilts that was chosen for that honor. It will be on display there from December 5th through the end of April, 2008. The funny thing is that I always felt this quilt should be displayed in the governor's office and it's almost surreal to know that it will truly be there. Key the Twilight Zone music, please.

Getting a little chili out there?

I know this is an artist's blog, but artists don't need to starve. Here's a recipe I developed for a really delicious and healthy bison chili that costs about $1.50 per serving, including everything. I make it in large quantities, then freeze it into one or two person servings. On a cold evening, this is a great meal.

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Artist's Bison Chili
from Jill Rumoshosky Werner

4 lbs. ground bison, browned
2 large or 3 medium sized onions, coarsely chopped
2 12-oz. cans tomato paste
4 large green peppers, cleaned and coarsely cut into pieces
3 15-oz. cans red kidney beans, drained
4 16-oz. cans peeled whole tomatoes
3/4 cup chili powder (yes, that much!)
2 tsp. dried, minced garlic
2 Tbs. cumin (ground cominos)
3 10-oz. cans diced tomatoes and green chilis
Shredded cheddar cheese, Fritos chips and chopped onion for garnish

Throw it all into a large pot, cook till the onions are cooked through, stirring frequently. Cool, ladle into containers and freeze. Microwave it when you're ready to serve. Serve with the cheese, chips and onion.

Notes:
- You probably don't need to add salt, as there is salt in the canned tomatos and that seems sufficient.
- The diced tomatoes with green chilis come in varying degrees of heat. I usually make mine at least half "mild".
- This a a very solid meal and it doesn't take much to fill you up. Don't overdo the portion size. A heaping ladle per serving is enough.
- I used homegrown, canned tomatoes instead of the canned variety in my last batch and it was the tastiest yet. I threw in a couple of small cans of green chilis, too
- You can use dark or light chili powder. I've even mixed them half and half.
- Keep some chopped onion and a bag of shredded cheese in the refrigerator, plus a bag of Fritos in the cupboard, so you can enjoy this any time you want.
- This is a very forgiving recipe. You can adjust the amount of each ingredient according to your taste.
- Get someone else to chop the onions for you and open all the cans. Apologize to them later.

Kansas Art Quilters

I drove over 5 hours round trip on Saturday to attend the annual Kansas Art Quilters (KAQ) meeting. Nineteen people showed up, which is not bad attendance for a group in our situation. For those of you who do not know, Kansas is right in the middle of the United States and covers a very large area, about four times the size of Slovakia. Driving from city to city can involve many hours of driving time, so not all members are able to attend. Despite its name, the group is actually a national one, with 65 members from 14 states. At one time, we even had a member from Norway.

A large part of our national success has been due to the efforts of Linda Frost, the outgoing chair of the Exhibitions Committee, who did an amazing job of finding us excellent exhibit venues for a number of years. Here's a picture from one of our recent opening receptions at the Sabatini Gallery in Topeka.

At the end of 2000, I attended a Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. SAQA is the international organization for artists who work with quilts as their medium. During a break, I found myself talking to three other Kansans, including Charlotte Herr, Phil D. Jones and Linda Frost. At one point, I made a comment that I'd always thought the quilt artists in Kansas should get together and have an exhibit. Light bulbs went off over our heads and we decided to form a group. The next day, we met at lunchtime and made plans.

Each of us knew another art quilter or two, so we started passing the word along that we were going to have our first meeting in January, 2001. Phil said we'd probably end up with 10-12 people sitting around a living room. I collected names and contacted people who might be interested, based on tips given to me. To our great surprise, we had 40 people turn up at the first meeting.

KAQ has grown and changed a lot over the years. I was the first president and now I'm the communications coordinator, maintaining the website. What hasn't changed is the talent in the group. Linda and I are the two founding members still left, but many, many other people have also stepped up to make KAQ work. Thanks to everyone who has done so, including the outgoing board members.

Jamming

Years ago, my niece walked my in-laws' house and the first thing she asked was, "Grandma, do you have any of Jill's jellies?".

I've been quiet lately because I've been indulging one of my other passions, making jams and fruit butters. Most of the time, I use low-sugar recipes so that you taste the fruit, not the sugar. I think half of my friends and family hang around because they're hoping for freebies (and they usually get them).

The tree next to our driveway produces so many crabapples each year that we suck them up using the shop vacuum. I do a preliminary processing of the fruit, then can up the puree into quart jars. I still had a lot of puree stored from previous years, so this time I converted the last 32 quarts that I had in storage into crabapple butter. What you see in the picture is most of the result of three days of work, totaling 11 jars of homegrown tomatoes (in the lower left) and 147 jars of crabapple butter. In the past few days, I've also made batches of plum jam, peach jam, pomegranate jelly and white grape/peach jelly. If we don't give too many away, I'm hoping that will last us a while.

Tomorrow, I will put everything away and go back to arting. I promise.