Lisa Call

As I said I will very slowly respond to some of the issues brought up in some of the comments on my post Respect (in no particular order).

Pat Dolan wrote an interesting comment with her thoughts on leaving the quilt world behind that are worth thinking about.

My thoughts on her comments…

So if we want to be considered seriously in the art world, we must stop referring to our work as “quilts”

This I absolutely disagree with. You’ll notice I call my work "Contemporary Quilts" on my website, blog, business cards, etc. I do not agree that using this word is bad.

I make quilts – and my work is technically impeccable – I have perfected my skills and I’m not going to do a sloppy job because it makes others uncomfortable that I can make a technically perfect quilt and still believe it is art.

In my opinion some of the bad "art quilts" out there are a result of the makers not having command of their materials (probably true for painting and other mediums as well). Yes it’s not just about technique but if it looks like you don’t know what you are doing then it’s really going to detract from the art in my opinion.

 
It is my belief that artists, if they want to mature as artists, must actively seek out good critiques by their fellow artists or art educators.

I agree to this to some extent I believe that critique is important for beginning artists to learn how to evaluate their own work.

I’m at a point in my art career where I do not seek out critiques by more than 1 or 2 people that I really respect. And then not very often. I believe in myself and in what I want to say in my work and I am a much harsher critic than anyone else on my work. Learning to look at my own work and figure out what works and what doesn’t is of much more value to me than hearing what someone else thinks. I receive enough positive feedback from people I respect to know I’m on the right track – it’s up to me to keep me there and to push myself further.

 
Laura Tyler, a painter, makes some very interesting comments about traditional quilts that gave me something to think about this weekend.

I’ve spent many hours in the last two years looking at historical, geometric quilt patterns and find them to be imbued with a tremendous amount of depth, mystery and meaning. I wish more contemporary quilters would look to traditional patterns for inspiration and don’t understand why some quilters find it necessary separate themselves from tradition by defining their work as art quilts.

Laura, I agree with you, traditional quilts are beautiful and they are certainly art. But traditional quilt patterns are patterns – someone else designed them – someone else gave them their meaning. So if I were to take those patterns as is and just make a traditional quilt I would view my activity not too different from doing a paint by numbers painting (although I’d ignore the numbers and paint it my own way – maybe even not stay in the lines). But it is still someone else’s design that I am completing. Is it art – sure – of that I have no doubt. But it’s not the type of art I want to make.

I want to create my own designs with my own meaning. This doesn’t mean I’ve completely thrown out what I know about traditional quilt patterns. The basics like the 9 patch are beautiful designs.

If you look at my quilts Markings#4 and Markings #11 – they are basically a 4-patch quilts with my own interpretation:

 
So here I sit – the "art quilt" world views my quilts as not "cutting edge" I don’t have any loose threads, no fancy techniques, no surface design, no high tech printing, I’m not pushing the envelope on what one can do with fiber. I’m just pushing myself to make the most interesting and best work I can within a very simple technique that has been around forever.

I suspect if I were to paint my designs I wouldn’t have the stigma of being a quilter, still a dirty word to many in the art world. Crafty girl that I am.

So I do my darn best to ignore all of them – both the art quilters who have more rules than the traditional "quilt police" they detest and those in the art world that have a problem with the craft thing. I do not feel limited by the rules these 2 groups continually bring up because there are plenty of both quilters and other artists that don’t have these problems and accept my work as art.

I have 2 solo shows scheduled for 2008 and my work is accepted just about every where I submit it. I choose not feel limited by my medium of choice.

 
Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful comments on my previous post about respect. I tried a few times to find time to comment as the conversation was going but both work and home didn’t cooperate. Many people made comments I want to respond to and so over the next few days I’ll be writing on similar topics in the blog.

The above photo was one of my photos trapped on my flash drive from my trip to Arizona. This is an aleo plant in my dad’s yard. It wasn’t too pleased with the freezing weather in January. I the larger image (click the photo) is more interesting. Looks like an alien.

The flash drive was damaged so I couldn’t just pull the files off with the newly purchased card reader so I tried several freeware tools for recovering lost data, none of them worked. I finally realized because the files were .NEF files (raw format files from a Nikon digital camera) that I needed to find a tool that understood .NEF files. I found this one and it was able to recover about 1/2 to 2/3 of the files. Lesson learned – never download files directly from the camera because when the battery dies unexpectedly during this operation bad things happen.

Now I have some images from the Mesa Contemporary Fine Craft show and I’ll be posting them this week also.

But this morning I’d rather go work in the studio. I’m about half finished quilting Structures #68 and hope to get it finished today.

 
Happy Birthday to my Dad!! (a day late but I blame that on technology also)

Cartoon my Hugh MacLeod.

 
I apparently have not learned my lesson and this evening I posted some comments on yet another group blog. Okay – everyone just shoot me. I hardly need another art and perception incident and I suspect my opinions are probably not going to be very popular. At least I’m in no way involved with the admin of the blog and never will be.

The topic is why quilts are not respected in the larger art world. The poster theorized it because quilters don’t make enough "statement" work. Sure the art world seems to lean towards content these days but there is plenty of other work being done that I don’t buy this as the real answer.

You can read the post here: Ragged Cloth Cafe

My comments are here:

• My theory
• What I don’t like about today’s "statement" artwork

My third comment that expanded on my theory got held for moderation but I thought I’d post it on my blog and see what you all think about my theory…..

 
To expand on my thoughts about there being too many venues to show the bad art. I know this isn’t exactly worded as an opinion but that is what it is – I’m not saying I’m right – but I do think it is worth thinking about.

I think in other art forms the top artists don’t waste their time on juried group shows but in the quilt world I don’t see that happening. Sure there are a few top top names that have walked away from them but these shows can still draw work from some of today’s top quilt artists. So they still have clout with art venues and are easy to book. But there are just too many of these shows to fill with really top quality work so they end up being very mixed shows – many reviews I’ve read point this out (as does my own experience).

I’d like to see the top artists leave many of the juried shows behind and move on. This would leave juried shows as the place for those just starting out – absolutely essential – I’m not saying all juried shows should go away. But I think the relative importance of such shows is the problem.

I hate to refer to the same guy but Edward Winkleman did a really great post on why he feels too many juried shows are a problem for an artist. You have to read the comments also to get all of his comments – but the key word is overexposure. Also look for a post on June 29th about what to put on a resume – priceless information coming from a gallery owner – Winkleman ’s Post.

Juried shows are a great place to start but after a while it’s time to take ones career further. I’m very guilty of sticking around those shows way too long – they are easy (I suspect most top quilters get into just about all of these they enter – I know I do – there isn’t much challenge). But it’s only a great way to pretend your career is going somewhere – but the reality is it is not. This is my 3rd year in quilt national and I can assure it is neither a start nor and end of a professional art career – it’s just yet another show and another line on the resume that the larger art world really doesn’t care about.

I’m not sure what the problem is with we quilters – why we don’t move past the juried shows quicker? Is it the traditional quilt world that gives these shows more importance than they deserve? I know the large quilting lists put a significant amount of importance on these shows – ones standing in the art quilt community seems to be closely tied to the list of juried shows one has gotten into.

Another caveat – I know many (the majority?) of "art quilters" are not looking to be professional artists and they would probably read what I wrote and say that getting into juried shows is their only goal. I think that’s great – we all need to do what is right for us – but I’m not talking about this group of quilters. I’m talking about the group of quilters that do want more from their art career. Those of use looking to make it as a professional artist.

Maybe the problem is there really aren’t that many quilters looking for more? We all say we want respect in the larger art world but if all we have as a goal is getting into Quilt National what do we need that respect for?

 
So what do you think?

Structures #68 ©2007 – In Progress – approximately 58"x45"

 
Monday nights are usually my guaranteed free night during the week when I can come home and work in my studio for the evening. The kids are with their dad at Taekwondo and my boyfriend is generally out of town. It’s the beginning of the week so I’m not too wiped out from a week of work and schlepping kids about so I’m able to put in a lot of work in the studio. Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out that way the last 4 months due to weird schedules, holidays and family stuff getting in the way.

But no more – Monday’s are mine again.

When I finished Structures #50 yesterday it meant I had only 1 older Structures piece to finish up and then I’d be completely caught up with 67 pieces finished in that series. My plan was to finish Structures #48 over the next week or so but I couldn’t resist.

I decided to start a new piece instead of finishing the old one and the result is above. You might recognize some ideas from #50 that I wanted to explore again.

I started the design last night but it didn’t go well so I got up before work this morning and moved a few thing around and it finally gelled for me. After work I was able to sew the quilt top together. I also sewed the back together and basted it. I’ve got the thread colors for the quilting selected and tomorrow I’ll start quilting it.

If all goes well this week this piece will be completely finished just 1 week after starting it. This is how I would like to do my work from now on. No more piles of unfinished quilt tops.

Problem is my favorite part of this art form is the design and piecing. While I love the quilting it also takes much longer so I get a bit impatient at times. For example the above quilt took 7 1/2 hours to design, cut, sew together and baste. I estimate it will take about 20 hours to quilt it. That’s a pretty typical ratio of 1:3 for design to quilting.

So I don’t actually expect for it to work out where I do 1 piece at a time with no backlog, but I hope to not get as far behind as I was 6 months ago when I had over 20 pieces to quilt.

I still have 8 Markings quilts and the lone Structures #48 to finish. But things are looking up.

 
I originally had planned to do some business work tonight but I’m counting blogging as that, which is really not okay because I’m a good 2 weeks behind on the business stuff. I really need to stop procrastinating and get too it. Maybe tomorrow night while the kids are doing homework.

Structures #50 ©2007    45"x44"
 
I finished quilting Structures #50 early this morning and just now finished binding (finishing the edges nice) and getting the sleeve and label attached.

The last few months I’ve been doing the sleeves (the hanging mechanism) and labels as I finish the quilts because I get frustrated when it’s time to ship work to a show and I discover my work isn’t really quite finished and I need an hour or 2 to put on the sleeve and label. It’s great to know all my work is ready to waltz out the door at any minute without having to stress the final details now.

I tried something a bit different with Structures #50 in the quilting – the entire thing is quilted in bright contrasting red, orange and pink thread. While I like the quilt it’s not one of my favorites so I figured it was a good chance to take a risk with the quilting. I do like how the vastly contrasting bright thread looks on the very earthy and neutral colors but I’m not super fond of the shapes. I think larger areas of each thread color might have worked better. But in general I’m quite pleased.

 
Detail of quilting:

 
 
Detail of quilting:

I originally designed this quilt with the gray running across the top. I decided to flip it sideways because I didn’t like the T shape the grey and light tan made together and it felt very unbalanced. I had to readjust a few of the yellow lines after I turned it to get it to work for me but in the end I’m pleased. I rarely think making big changes like this were a good idea and again I’m thinking it might have been better with the original orientation. I second guess myself way too much.

Here the quilt is both ways. What do you think?

 
As you may have guessed I got my USB hub working again (I unplugged and plugged it back in a few times – very high tech stuff). But now I have a new problem – as I was trying to download the 120+ images on my camera the battery went dead and it corrupted a file on the flash drive. My camera software refuses to do the download the images from this flash drive so I ordered a flash card reader so I can pull the files off myself. This isn’t entirely a bad thing – my camera is only USB 1.0 and slow at downloads, with the USB 2.0 card reader it’ll be a lot faster.

Even so computers are really rather frustrating. Anyway now it’ll be a while before I post pictures from the Mesa Contemporary Fine Craft show – it closed yesterday so at this point no rush.

I just got home from the Building Creative Business Expo in Denver. Millions of ideas floating around with hundreds of artists sharing their experiences – it was an amazing atmosphere.

While some of the workshops I selected weren’t quite what I had anticipated I still came away with pages of information and ideas. Gallery owners, art center directors, business people willing to share tips on how to startup and run a small business, museum PR folks and other artists all came together to help each other out. Incredible energy. I give a huge thank you to the city of Denver of organizing this event. The mayor even stopped by for a few minutes to welcome us.

 
This year I took my sketchbook and took notes in the sketchbook itself instead of my routine of grabbing a random notebook that eventually gets lost in the shuffle, which generally means I never look back at my ideas on how to take what I learned and use it for myself. Now I’ll have the info with me all the time and I can refer back to it.

I’ve decided my sketchbook, which I used to just use for drawing and sketching, is now going to be more multipurpose. I’ve been struggling with how to track how much time I spend on the business side of art and while I’ve meant to do this the past two months it hasn’t happened. I’m going to use this sketch book for that also. I hope this keeps me a bit more motivated on keeping up with the business side of things. I have to admit I’m not really hitting many of my business deadlines right now.

I do a similar thing with a sketchbook that never leaves my studio. I keep notes about each piece as I’m working on it, how I feel about the current work, what’s going on in my life that might be effecting my work, design ideas for the future, etc. I also track the amount of time I spend in my studio in this sketchbook and having it there in black and white each month really helps me focus on my goal of 20 hours a week. Time to give the business side of my art the same respect.

 
As an extra bonus I got to spend a bit of time talking with Cynthia Guajardo who I first me through her blog. She is a ceramist that works in quilting on occasion and I love her work. Especially the piece I recently purchased, her interpretation of Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night as a softpainting. Beautiful work.

Cynthia’s setting up a ceramic studio in her garage and I’m looking forward to watching the progress on her blog.

 
I’m still without the ability to download images from my camera so no pictures today (follow the links and look at Cynthia’s work!). Tomorrow I’m going to bite the bullet and tear my computer and computer desk apart again and see if I can figure out why things aren’t working. But right now I’m off to the studio – I’m hoping to finish Structures #50 tonight (hopefully photos tomorrow!)