Lisa Call

We had beautiful weather in Denver today. Eights, sunny. It doesn’t get much better than this.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post one of the design principles of my kids’ school is Service and Compassion. So today we took advantage of the glorious weather and joined a small group of my coworkers gleaning a zucchini field to get in a some of my son’s service hours for the year. The kids have to do 50 hours a year in high school.

When I signed up for this event I envisioned a day of hard labor but I was thinking in terms of bending over picking the produce. It wasn’t until we got to the field and started picking the squash that I realized that most of our hard work would be getting the monster produce to the trucks at the end of some very long field rows (and I swear they got longer each trip).

Gleaning is done after the farmer has removed the marketable produce from the field. So what was left were the beasts that had grown too large or were too small or weird shaped or discolored. Mostly they were just huge.

We brought one home to photograph (I’m bummed I forgot my camera). The monster above weighs in at 10 pounds (tiny compared to this 59 pounder we found on a google search). We couldn’t fit many in each bin before it was too heavy to carry to the truck.

We were all having a hard time lifting our pizza to our mouths afterwards we were all so worn out from the heavy lifting and carrying. I’m going to be sore tomorrow – field work is no easy task. It definitely gives one an appreciation for those that are willing to pick the food we eat every day.

I’m planning on roasting the squash and hoping the flesh isn’t too bitter to make a soup with. My daughter wants lots of zucchini bread but I think this one is a bit past it’s prime for that.

 
Tomorrow I hope to get back to my studio. Last week was such a productive week but I haven’t done a stitch of sewing since Tuesday night and I need to find my motivation again. Some weeks things just aren’t right for creative work and I’ve learned not to push it. When I’m ready I know I’ll return, but right now I need some time to focus on other things. Today zucchini, tomorrow ?

The last 2 days my kids have been out of school because it is goal setting conference time (like parent teacher conferences but student led). I’m fortunate to have a job that allows me to work at home on such days, so I worked, and they ran around. We’re having our normal gorgeous fall weather for Denver so the kids took to the street with sidewalk chalk.

These are my 14 year old son’s creations:

I suspect this might mean he’s not so excited about living in suburbia. It also meant he was kept occupied today cutting stencils and chalking the road. I think it’s wonderful suburban art and I love that he is questioning his surroundings.

My kids attend an expeditionary learning school. It’s a fabulous (public) school that teaches to the whole person instead of just focusing on academics.
Design principles express the philosophy of education and core values of Expeditionary Learning. Drawn from the work of Outward Bound’s founder Kurt Hahn, and other educational leaders, they shape school culture and provide a foundation for the moral purpose of schools.

The 10 principles are (see above link for more details):

• The Primacy of Self-Discovery
• The Having of Wonderful Ideas
• The Responsibility for Learning
• Empathy and Caring
• Success and Failure
• Collaboration and Competition
• Diversity and Inclusion
• The Natural World
• Solitude and Reflection
• Service and Compassion

It’s an amazing school and I’m actually quite jealous of the opportunities they have. The in-classroom education is stimulating and interesting. They go on almost weekly field trips: museums, hikes, libraries, etc. In addition they have a few major trips each year, from camping to backpacking to rafting to amazing out of state (and country) trips.

One of my favorite things about this school is that the kids are challenged to question their world instead of just accepting spoon fed textbook content.

 
And I’m sure at one time I had a point to this post but the electricity went out so we went to Target and spent money like the good suburbanites that we are. It was a grand adventure because our Target is closing in a few days so a bigger and better Super Target can open instead. Right next door to our huge Walmart.

Conform…

Previously I wrote about Rooted In Tradition: Art Quilts from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. [Check out the old post for details about this traveling exhibit of the museum collection.]

Sue Reno recently viewed the show and sent me shots from the installation at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (show closes October 15).

Structures #5 ©2002 40″ x 68″:

Eclipse by Sandra Woock, Structures #5 by Lisa Call
Back room: Outdoor Joys by Radka Donnell and Kimonos in My Komono House by Yvonne Prcella:

 
Interestingly, Sandra Woock is also part of my small artist support group, Material Evolution, that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The curator of this show thought it a good idea to put our work next to each other. And her work was also placed on the same page as my work (2 pieces per page) in the Surface Design Journal that I mentioned a few posts back. I guess we look good together. Her more fluid organic designs juxtaposed to my more structured geometric pieces.

 
The next stop for the Rooted in Tradition show after it leaves Utah is at the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas from November 5, 2006 through March 18, 2007.

Last month I got an email from Lux Center for the Arts in Lincoln Nebraska asking if I’d like to display my work at the art center. They found my work from a newspaper article about my talented fellow Material Evolution members Carol Krueger and Christine Ambrose **. The article included a link to the Material Evolution website and from there the art center found my website and invited me to participate in their Winter Invitation show.

I’ve been getting together paperwork and selecting artwork to send to the show, which runs from November 3 through December 30, 2006 in the Main Gallery. At this point I believe I will have 8 pieces in the show ranging from a few of my small 12″ pieces up to one of my large 6′ to 8′ pieces. Structures #45, shown below, will be one of the pieces. I’m excited about this opportunity and am thrilled to see the time I’ve put into my website and the Material Evolution website is paying off.

This what the Lux Center website says about the show:

Handcrafted gifts for holiday shopping… an old tradition with a new form. Find unique, museum-quality original artwork in photography, printmaking, ceramics, glass, metal and jewelry, wood and fiber for that special person. Ongoing during the months of November and December, the main gallery showroom will be brimming with contemporary fine art and craft of the highest quality by local, regional and national artists.

 
Structures #45 ©2005 28″ x 28″:

 
** The newspaper article was about Carol and Christine’s appearance on the TV show Uncommon Threads on DIY. As long time readers might recall, we flew out to lovely Burbank, California in July of 2005 to be taped for 3 episodes of this show. So far 2 of the shows have aired. The show I’m in, Dyeing to Quilt – Episode DUCT148, is still not on the shedule. I’ll let you know if it ever appears. They are up to #144 in early November so maybe soon.

When it does run I plan to supplement the material I covered on the show (how I dye fabric) with some photos and tips on my blog. They were a little paranoid about me spilling dye in the TV studio so there isn’t a lot of demo action in the show it’s self.

Last April while attending the opening of Art Quilts at the Sedgwick on the Square, I was interviewed by the Save Our Stories project from the Alliance For American Quilts.

The Quilters’ S.O.S. (Save Our Stories) is an oral history project to record the stories of United States’ quilters. The Project design is based on brief (45-minute) interviews launched from conversation concerning a “touchstone” object, a quilt chosen by the person interviewed as a focus for the interview.

My interview started with a discussion of the piece I had in the show, Structures #41, and continued on from there.

Today my interview was posted on their website (the long delay between interview and posting being entirely my fault).

Structures #41 ©2004 44″ x 31″

Detail:

 
Reading a verbal interview transcribed verbatim is a rather humbling experience. When speaking I start a sentence, rethink what I’m saying and then start over. Hopefully I make sense in person but it didn’t make for a very intelligent, easy to read interview. So I tried to fix all of those parts and remove the extra words. I was happy to see the interviewer did this several times also.

I was also happy to note I didn’t say “um” more than once or twice but I do tend to say “you know” and “like” (like a valley girl, ick) a bit too much. Rather embarrassing.

 
This is a wonderful and very worthwhile project and the crew at the Alliance are very easy to work with (even when you are rather lame and take months to edit your interview – oops – I was busy focusing on the art this summer and let some things slide that I shouldn’t have).

If you have an opportunity to participate in the project I highly recommend it.

Last week I finally reached (and exceeded) my goal of working in my studio 20 hours a week since the first time since my vacation in mid August. It felt great to finally get things going again.

I finished quilting a large red piece (Structures #57 – photo to come later – I still need to finish it off with a binding, sleeve and label), so my walls were bare having completed all the quilts I had on my design walls at the beginning of the summer.

So I basted 6 quilt tops I designed earlier – 3 Markings quilts and 3 Structures quilts. Two of them finally being some pieces I posted a while back.

Structures #54 ©2006 – top only – still to be quilted:

and Structures #52 ©2006 – top only – still to be quilted:

 
I hope to complete these 6 pieces by the end of October. That would bring me up to 54 pieces completed in the Structures series and 7 pieces completed in the Markings series.

But still 6 unfinished pieces in Structures and 7 in Markings and a handful of other quilts. So right now I’m still hovering at 20 pieces that have been designed and pieced but not yet quilted.

 
I wish I could say this means I am totally focusing on the quilting as that is rather a ridiculous number of pieces of unfinished work laying about. But I had an inspiration this weekend and I designed and pieced the 14th quilt top for the Markings series. I’m quite pleased with it and I think once I get a few more of these pieces finished I’ll post a few on my blog. I’m slowly starting to warm up to this new series.

After working on just Structures quilts for 5-6 years the new series has been hard to reconcile. Do I like it, do I not? Is it any good? What am I trying to say? Have I succeeded? Is there enough there to really do a large series?

I still don’t really have answers to some of these questions, which is why I still haven’t posted pictures. When I can answer the questions I’ll be ready to show the work.

As you might have guessed I’m catching up on some bits of news I haven’t had time to post over the last few months. I’m keeping my blogging posts short as I’m really focussing on studio time this week.

Back in February I was a guest on one of Alyson Stanfield’s Telemarketing classes. The topic was blogging. I answered questions and talked about the how and why of artists blogging. You can read more about it on Alyson’s website.

While I was in Maine last month Hilary Fletcher, the project directory for Quilt National, passed away. Hilary was a wonderful person who I had the honor of working with in 2001 and 2003, when my pieces were included in the show. She will be greatly missed.

In 2006 an the Hilary Morrow Fletcher Endowment fund was established to recognize the achievements of Hilary and to perpetuate Quilt National, a labor of love for her for the previous quarter century.

 
The Surface Design Association’s Gallery Issue "Breaking New Ground" is now available. The issue includes members’ works juried by Suzanne Baizerman, Joan Schulze, and Jo Ann C. Stabb.

[order online here]

My piece, Structures #53, is included in the issue.

Structures #53 ©2006    66"x41":

 
Unfortunately, due to my mistake, the color reproduction isn’t right in the catalog. I attached the wrong color profile to my digital image in my rush to meet a tight deadline. Next time I’ll double check what they need before I make assumptions.

First, thanks to all of you for the supportive comments about my grandmother. She will be missed but I have some good memories.

It’s been a pretty unsettling month between my 2 week vacation, getting sick the day we got home, going to my grandmothers funeral 2 weeks later and then last week I got sick again (caught a nasty cold while at the funeral). So I have little to report on the art front. I only managed 7 hours in the studio last week. This week is going better, only 2 days into the week and I’m already at 5 1/2 hours.

I set aside the summer to really focus on my artwork and I accomplished quite a bit. But starting next week (I’m fudging the official start of fall coming this thursday) I’m going to get back to work on the business side of my art in addition to keeping up with 20 hours a week in my studio. I’m going to work on my business goals this weekend and will post my thoughts on that topic later next week.

In the meantime, these photos were taken just outside my front door early one morning last week.

Colorado Sunrise: