Lisa Call

Today I finally feel back to normal after my acquaintance with the bug we brought home from vacation last week. I haven’t been in my studio since early august and today would have been a great day to get some art done but it’s fall, which means harvest time.

I planted 30 tomato plants this year. I’m not sure what I was thinking but that’s a lot of tomatoes. I froze 16 quarts of pureed tomatoes for making spaghetti sauce and chile and canned 9 pints of homemade salsa today. As you can see there are still more tomatoes on the counter and the plants are just warming up. I’ve probably got another 6 weeks to go. What the heck am I going to do with all of these?

I also have more cucumbers and squash than I know what to do with. I’ll make zuchinni bread with the zukes but does anyone have any idea what to do with those flying saucer looking squash in the bowl in the back of the picture (called patty pan I believe)? They seem to be multiplying rapidly.

To stem the tide of the cucumbers I yanked 2 of the plants out of the ground this weekend. Their fruit wasn’t the best, they had a 1 day shelf life and they were in the way. The squash better behave or they’re next.

My green beans had stopped producing before I left on vacation but now they are back again making more. So today I canned 2 pints of dilly beans (this isn’t actually the recipe I use but close). These are the best - spicy dill pickled green beans - yum!

I also made my second huge pot of vegetable soup this evening from my garden veggies and froze most of it for a nice treat this winter.

I also picked (and ate) and froze (and then ate in smoothies) 2-3 quarts of raspberries. The raspberries are just getting going so I’ll probably get 4-5 quarts a week until we have a hard frost. I’m looking forward to some raspberry pies and lots of smoothies this winter.

And with my free time I went to the farmer’s market and bought a box of western slope peaches (grown near Grand Junction Colorado). I cut up and froze a few (a gallon bag) for smoothies but it barely made a dent. They will only last a week so I need to make some jam and freeze a bunch more before they go bad.

Tomorrow I hope to return to the studio although I suspect I’ll be back to freezing and canning again next weekend. I feel like a squirrel hiding nuts.

I tried my hand at painting while we were lounging on the beach in Maine last week. I’ve never painted before (except maybe in art class in school when I was a kid) and so I bought some watercolors to take along and play with.

Here is my attempt at doing a landscape. It’s really rather boring although I like the big fields of colors.

Hermit Island ©2006    9"x12":

 
I have to admit it’s a pretty crappy composition. So I might crop it down like this.

I think it’s the quilter in me that feels that the correct thing to do is to paint something then crop out the good bits. Maybe attach something different on the top or sides.

It was interesting sitting there painting, I felt very restricted by the paper as there is no way to make it bigger if I want to add on more later. I suspect this means I should have planned ahead as to what might be a good composition to start with. Clever of me to figure this out huh.

I also was a bit impatient by how long it took to build up a nice big chunk of color. With quilting I create large pieces of color very quickly by dyeing tons of fabric in one day. Then I spend my time cutting and rearranging the color into a composition. With painting is seemed backwards. It felt very odd. I could definitely feel my self wanting to dunk the whole thing into a bath of color and be done with it.

 
But I stuck with it and decided landscapes didn’t interest me as a subject matter, I’m really more interested in shapes anyway. So I painted this and had way more fun:

Unnamed ©2006    9"x12":

 
That should probably look a bit familiar.

Structures #11 ©2002    72"x47":

I took my painting supplies to the beach other days but the ocean was calling me. Digging in the sand is just too much fun to pass up. So I built some large sand castles with my kids and then watched the tide come in and destroy them. It was usually an all day affair building the castle right up at the edge of high tide all day then waiting for the water to come and fill in all the moats in the evening. What great fun.

Here’s the one we built on the last day:

It’s hard to see but I built a bunch of tunnels connecting all the moats. It was pretty cool watching the water come in and fill up the trenches.

From this photo you can also see what the inspiration was for the landscape painting.

 
The animals were guarding the palace but the ocean always seems to win in the end.

 
At the end it was just Mr. Crabs hanging on the stick but he eventually fell and we could finally go get dinner.

We spent 5 of our 11 nights of vacation tent camping on Hermit Island in Maine. This island is technically a peninsula as it is attached to but it sounds more exotic to say we were camping on an island.

Our campsite was very secluded up on Joe’s Head, not right on a beach but right on the cliffs over looking it.

The original thought was that we might do some sight seeing from this base (maybe a trip up to Bar Harbor) but once we got there we only left to find food each evening. What a beautiful place.

Turns out I took 400+ photos over the 12 days. Gotta love digital.

It’ll take a while for me to sort them out. I normally take raw format images (mine are .NEF files as I have a nikon slr camera) but most of these are large jpgs as I didn’t want to buy a bunch of new flash cards before leaving. As usual as soon as I pull up the jpgs in photoshop I’m frustrated they aren’t raw format. It never pays to be cheap. Next time I’m investing a more gigabytes before I go.

Until this morning I was a member of a large email list of artquilters. The list generates a large amount of off topic chatter and rarely digresses into discussions I find interesting. Having been a member on and off since the lists inception in 1995 I’ve struggled the last few years to maintain my subscription due to the overwhelming waste of time the list has become. This morning I finally gave up and unsubscribed. I simply don’t have time to read thousands of emails a month in the hopes of finding the 5 or 6 gems that are posted.

Over the summer I did try to engage the list in some more serious discussions and I must say I was pleased with the outcome. The list has potential, if they could stop talking about television and other unrelated topics.

One of my lasts posts to the list a week before I left on vacation included this pondering in response to someone commenting on a positive review posted in the Studio Art Quilt Association (SAQA) Journal:

While I know it’s wonderful to get rave reviews doesn’t it seem like that is about all the quilt world has to say about itself?

Where are the critical reviews to challenge us and to make us think honestly about our craft and our art? Are we afraid to look under the hood for fear of hurting someone’s feelings? How do we as a collective whole get better if we don’t challenge ourselves with our shortfalls?

When I’ve attended quilt shows lately the artists have plenty of not so positive things to say about some of the work and the shows in general. Yet some how when all this translates into a written review in the SAQA journal it’s all sunshine and happiness. Why is that?

What would happen if someone were to seriously review all these group quilt shows? I’m sorry but there is a lot of bad work out there - and I think as there are more opportunities to show work I see more mediocre work being shown.

I read a blog, Thinking About Art, written by a DC artist. Among other things he goes out and reviews many of the DC area shows and many times he’s pretty hard on the art he sees. He seems to have quite a following.

What do you all think would happen if one of us went out and critically reviewed quilt shows on our blog? We know we think it - we discuss it in small private groups - but to actually go public with what doesn’t work about specific artists work! Would this person be ostracized for being “mean” or would this person be embraced and respected by the community?

The resulting conversation was quite lively and interesting with many folks confirming that quilters don’t like anything negative and anyone that would dare to make such comments in public would not be accepted.

But the end result of that conversation was that a handful of artists, who are passionate about our art and want to see it taken seriously and believe that critical writing about our artform is seriously lacking, decided it was time to do something about it.

The result is a new blog - ArtQuiltReviews.wordpress.com - dedicated to furthering the understanding of art quilts and their place within the general art community.

We are new and are just pulling things together but I think we are off to a great start and I’m excited about the possibilities of this endeavor. Please join us. I am working on getting a feedblitz subscription set up for the blog so look for that soon if you don’t use an rss reader.

We got back from our fabulous vacation Sunday evening. We had an incredible time and I took hundreds of pictures, tried my hand at painting and built some way cool sand castles along with the normal touristy, hiking, vacation-like activities.

Unfortunately somewhere along the way (near the end of the trip) we seemed to pick up a bug and I’m home sick from for the day. So details and photos will have to wait for another day.

Early Wednesday morning I’m packing up my kids and a bunch of camping equipment and heading to Boston, New Hampshire and Maine for a much anticipated vacation of lobster, history and art. While packing for a car camping trip that must first travel by air is a bit of a trick (did you know you can fit folding chairs in a suitcase?) I have reserved an entire suitcase for art.

Sketchbooks, drawing paper and pencils, photography, quilt projects I can sew by hand. And I went out and bought a bunch of supplies so I can give water color a try. Wow - paint sure isn’t cheap but I thought it sounded like a fun portable way to play around for a few days. Thanks much to Lesly for her well timed posts for selecting supplies. In theory I should actually read something about how to paint before I go but who has time. I’ll just wing it. Given that I don’t have much experience drawing, this could be pretty fun. I’ll share if they aren’t too embarrassing.

I won’t return until Aug 20 so don’t look for a new post for a while. I’m not taking my lap top. I’m sure I’ll miss mapquest the days we are in Boston but I have no desire to stay connected. It’s just me, the kids, a really big tent, a guidebook and no firm plans.

Structures #42 ©2006    81"x33":

 
Details Images of the Quilting:

I started this piece a few weeks before starting Structures #41 back in 2004. I just finished quilting it and getting the binding on this weekend.

Artists and quilters often get the “how long did it take you to make that” question and we all react to it differently. I don’t find the question offensive as it at least shows the person is somewhat interested in the work.

Now that I’m tracking this information again I know it took me 28 hours to quilt it. That’s 1.5 hours per square foot just to quilt it. The quilting lines are about 1/8″ apart and as you can see from the details I changed thread color often. Add in another 10-12 for design, piecing of the top, basting, binding, sleeve and label I estimate it took about 40 hours to make this quilt.

Photos taken in Philadelphia in March 2006.

In addition to fences and walls I find bridgework to be extremely fascinating. My newest Structures pieces with the long thin lines spanning long distances are brought to mind.

I have now made 60 quilts in the Structures series. (disclaimer - only 49 are completely finished, 11 of them need to be quilted and of those 3 need a bit more design work before quilting). But 60 seemed like a number worth mentioning.

I started the series in October 2000 at a Nancy Crow workshop at Ghost Ranch. Last fall I thought the series might be coming to an end as I started working in a different direction, but turns out it’s not, I keep thinking up new ideas and directions I want to take this work. So for now I will work on these quilts in conjunction with my new series Markings.

[Side note: I am not yet posting images from the new series, which currently numbers 13 pieces - although only 3 are completely finished. I have a blog post in the works explaining why I feel it is important for me to really come to terms with my new work before showing it.]

I’ve heard it said that working in a series is tantamount to doing the same thing over and over again with different colors. I disagree. While some people might view my work that way I do not.

My goal is to become the best artist I can become. I feel the way for me to do this is to concentrate on a narrow field of art and become an expert.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice.

If I do a few pieced quilts, then dabble in some painting and then a bit of embroidery I doubt I will ever become an expert at any one thing. I might get good, but after having made 60 pieces in 1 series I can assure you that it is only after years of practice that I have begun to master this technique (piecing abstract quilts) and I still think I have a lot to learn.

At times I am jealous of the time it takes to make a painting vs. a large quilt and think I could get in a lot more "practice" if I worked in a medium that wasn’t so time consuming. But I quickly forget these thoughts when I head to my studio. I love the process of working with fiber, I love the versatility, the tactile nature of the fiber.

Each piece in the series is an extension of previous work. I’m often answering the question what if?. What if I used the same type of elements but incorporated some smaller scale pieces also. Or reversed the values, or cut my lines more at 90 degree angles, or more lyrical. What if I cut my lines even narrower, or wider.

I’m always striving for perfect proportions, beautiful colors and brilliant compositions. I’m looking to further explore the walls and fences that so intrigue me, to break down and understand the internal walls I see as a barrier to knowing myself and my art (see my artist statement for more details).

It’s a daily process of struggle and discovery in my studio. For me, each and every piece is new and unique, presenting fresh problems to be solved and possibilities to be explored.

The works in the series are named in approximately the order I design and pieced the quilt tops so if viewed in order from #1-#60 you would get a feel for my progress through the series. The copyright date is the date the quilt was finished, sometimes 4 or 5 years after the piece is started.

With all that said I believe in the end the work has to stand on it’s own without comment (okay I cheated and wrote a lot of blah blah blah first). But without further explanation here is a selection of 19 pieces from my Structures series:

Structures #1 ©2005    38"x74":

Structures #2 ©2003    36"x37":

Structures #10 ©2004    52"x35":

Structures #11 ©2002    72"x47":

Structures #13 ©2005    44"x35":

Structures #17 ©2003    31"x77":

Structures #24 ©2003    29"x32":

Structures #28 ©2004    84"x57":

Structures #30 ©2004    48"x28":

Structures #31 ©2004    53"x34":

Structures #33 ©2006    46"x49":

Structures #35 ©2005    49"x32":

Structures #39 ©2006    43"x29":

Structures #40 ©2005    44"x44":

Structures #41 ©2005    44"x31":

Structures #45 ©2005    28"x28":

Structures #46 ©2005    61"x45":

Structures #53 ©2006    66"x41":

Structures #56 ©2006    48"x58":

Photos taken October 2002 during a week long backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon. I became obsessed with the rock cairns. The proportions and balance and colors were stunning.

I think I need to go back some time and take pictures of all of them and write a coffee table book The Rock Cairns of the Grand Canyon. I’m sure everyone would want one.