Jean Neblett Workshop
Time for another workshop review. You can see all of my reviews to date in the How - Education category.
I took the workshop “Painting with Fabric” from Jean Neblett in 1996. I have always loved Jean’s work and back in 1996 she was one of my favorite fiber artists. I looked for some links to her work but really couldn’t find much. This piece, Green Meditation, is from 1994. I’m not sure of the date of this piece El Rio Grande, which can be found on this Art Quilt Network page, but it is definetly more recent and I still love her work.
This 5 day workshop was my second art/quilt workshop. We did several exercises that Jean notes were to “open the creative flood gates”. Some were art school type exercises, for example we drew 100 pictures of the same object, I think 1 minute per drawing. We also did some more personal exercises where we investigated our thoughts and feelings, for example we did an exercise making masks.
I’ll have to admit that at the time I didn’t really “get” the purpose of these exercises. And in fact I didn’t really get much from the workshop. Truth is I just don’t work this way. Thinking of a word that is meaningful to me and then making a quilt to depict the feeling - that’s just not me. It’s not that my work isn’t very personal and doesn’t have very explicit emotional content, I just approach my work very differently.
Now it’s not that the workshop was bad, it’s just it didn’t work for my personality. I know a lot of people that loved the workshop and got quite a lot out of it.
I think back and I know that even today with significant amount of art experience I wouldn’t enjoy this workshop. My work is very personal but I approach it in a very different way than Jean does. Nothing wrong with this but it’s good to recognize what does and doesn’t work for me.
Here are a few pieces I made in the workshop. I doubt anyone would ever recognize this work as mine. At least I hope so. They are certainly not my best work. Or in the words of my son “those are scary”.
This first piece was the “pick a word and make a quilt” exercise. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant when I took this workshop. (Admittedly being that pregnant could have affected my experience.) My personal word was “joy” at the upcoming birth of my daughter. This little quilt still hangs in my daughter’s bedroom, so at least someone likes it.
Joy ©1996 17" x 17"
This piece is the result of drawing my safety pin key chain over and over again 100 times. I can’t say I enjoyed doing this exercise. And I can safely say I don’t like the resulting quilt. The safety pin key chain was given to me in high school by my best friend. A couple years ago the over zealous NTSB took it away from me at the airport (I almost elected to miss the flight instead of lose the keychain and in hind sight that would have been a better option given the fate of my trip) so this little quilt is nice to have as a memento of that gift. It’s quilted with little safety pin figures, which you can kind of see in the larger version (click on the image).
Unnamed ©1996 19" x 19"
Posted by Lisa in: Art Education
Mary Manahan said,
March 20, 2006 @ 4:59 am
The shape of the joy quilt says Lisa Call. I like the safety pin keychain quilt…it’s a version of the lines you do now.
When I was 9 mos. pregnant Jimmy Carter was being interviewed on TV, and he was telling the story about how he lost his peanut farm after the presidency…I cried and cried. Afraid to imagine what kind of quilt I would have made then.
Samantha said,
March 21, 2006 @ 9:31 pm
i’m loving your unnamed 1996 piece so much!