Save Our Stories Interview
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.
Posted by Lisa in: Musings
Susan Atwell said,
September 26, 2006 @ 8:00 pm
yeaaay!Great for you! Great bunch that Alliance!I had an opportunity to machine quilt a top from Georgia ,Russia for one of their members early this year.Very intriguing imagery and experience all around.Um like ya know…..and thanks for all the focused art links and content.
Lisa Call said,
September 26, 2006 @ 10:38 pm
Susan, what a fun opportunity for you. They are a good group - they are doing lots of good things for quilters. Thanks for sharing!
Lori Witzel said,
September 27, 2006 @ 4:02 am
Just gorgeous work…love coming back by to see your quilting.
shan said,
September 27, 2006 @ 6:53 am
Lisa,
I just read the interview. I enjoyed what you had to say about quilting and being a stay-at-home mom and all of your comments about the quilts you use on your bed and why. You talked about the quilt you made after your divorce hanging over your bed and how it was a piece about your own evolution through that process. It’s interesting to me that people percieve it as dark because it sounds like, in the end, it probably was a very positive piece for you. I find some my pieces that people percieve of as my darker ones become my favorites and don’t really seem all that dark to me–maybe because I work out the conceptual dark stuff during the art-making process.
Now I will head to my studio inspired. Thanks!
Martha Marshall said,
September 28, 2006 @ 5:37 am
Oh! The stories our quilts hold. Enjoyed your interview very much. It’s so very inspiring to look at your work from the viewpoint of a painter who secretly would love to be a quilter.
Lisa Call said,
September 28, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
Shan - thanks. I know not everyone can relate to my comments about parenting, or to the divorce quilt (which is Structures #10 if you look on my main website I think it is there). But it’s nice when someone can understand what I’m saying.
Martha, thank you. You are welcome to join us in fiber any day. Your paintings are wonderful.