Lisa Call

Markings #18 - in progress

This is one of the quilts I made during my workshop with Nancy Crow this month. I made this piece over the weekend between the 2 weeks of class.

It’s fairly large - I’m thinking at least 5 feet square and probably closer to 6 feet.

I’m not really sure what I think about it yet. I love the colors but the long horizontal line a third up from the bottom seems much too straight and boring to me in this photo. I looks like it needs to be recut with more care taken in making it more expressive. Actually there seem to be a lot of those boring cuts in here.

I made 3 Markings quilt during the workship and this one and one other both have very perpendicular lines, something I hadn’t done in the other pieces. Maybe they seem a bit too rigid to me. So I’ll have to put this up on my studio wall and think about what to do with it.

Although I am pleased I managed to use white and I actually like it so that was a major achievement.

 
All of the pieces from the workshop are like this - not really quite finished - they need a more thoughtful look and a bit of tweaking (one needs a sledge hammer). I found creating in a group environment more stressful during this workshop than I ever have before. Things just didn’t quite click for me like they usually do. I had a few days where things really were flowing well but then I hit a brick wall on one piece and fortunately there was only 1 day left of class as my brain was swimming.

I don’t usually put my unfinished work up on my website as I really prefer for it to be done before I show it to the world. So it seems a bit weird to be putting up this piece before I’ve completely resolved it. But well what the heck.

 
 

"The Barn"
 
 

I got back from my Master Composition workshop with Nancy Crow on Saturday. I had a wonderful time but I’m still exhausted, both physically and mentally.

I ended up making 7 rather large quilts (just the tops - they still need to be quilted) during the workshop so it was very productive and successful. And I got to work with some very dedicated and talented artists. The energy in the room was amazing. The experience won’t soon be forgotten.

 
 

My workspace
 
 
I shared a workspace with Marina Kamenskaya who I first met in 2004 at another workshop at the barn. It was a perfect experience getting to work next to Marina as our work habits, seriousness, dedication to our art and our sense of humor were well matched. I learned about the history and meaning of the Russian phrase "figure it out for three", so it was a cultural education in addition. Thanks for the wine Marina!

I have a lot more to say about the workshop but not right now. My brain is still processing it all and it’s time to get to my studio for the first time since I returned home.

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"

As promised, here is my first workshop review. I thought I’d start at the beginning.

While I had taken a handful of traditional quilting classes, my first art workshop was with Elizabeth Busch in 1995. The class, Taking Risks and Breaking the Rules, was sponsored by Front Range Contemporary Quilters and was a 2 day workshop.

The class was a series of design exercises with paper and drawing materials. I remember having to buy a few new supplies for the class as I didn’t have oil crayons or some of the other items that were required.

It’s been such a long time since I’ve taken the class it’s hard to remember much about it. I do recall that I was a bit intimidated as I was such a rank beginner, but I had fun and recall it inspired me to want to take many more classes as I felt there was a lot out there to learn.

I never used any of my collages as a jumping off point for a specific quilt. Although I did learn a lot about basic art concepts such as line, shape and proportion and that would be helpful for any subsequent work.

I have no doubt I would have heaps of praise to give Elizabeth if I were to take a class with her today as she is a brilliant artist and I can see from looking at the handouts and description of the exercises her class was well structured and organized and she clearly put some thought into the class.

I think it’s difficult for an untrained quilter to walk into their very first art oriented class. How to get the most out of the critique or even why the design exercises are useful isn’t really all that clear. But everyone has to start somewhere and become familiar with the format and language for these types of classes. The more advanced classmates can be intimidating but I’ve also found that are generally very friendly and helpful and willing to share knowledge with the newer class members.

Here is some of my work from the class. It doesn’t look anything like what I do today and I have no doubt if I were to repeat this class now my collages would most likely be more closely related to my current body of work. But I was starting at ground zero and the only contemporary quilts I had made were Housework and Spring Cleaning.

These 3 collages were made on 3″ x5″ index cards.

 
This collage is 10″ x 6:

While doing some cleaning and organizing of my quilt business files I gathered together all the information about classes I’ve taken over the years. I am a self taught artist in that I have never taken any formal art classes although I have attended several art quilt workshops over the years.

I created a new blog category to my posts on this topic and to start off here is a list of the classes I’ve taken over the years. I’m not sure if it’s complete but it’s close. Note that the years/class titles for some of the classes might be wrong as I didn’t keep all my notes.

• 1995 Taking Risks and Breaking Rules with Elizabeth Bush.
• 1996 Painting with Fabric with Jean Neblitt.
• 1997 Creative Precision String Piecing with Caryl Bryer Fallert.
• 1997 Drawing with Thread with Caryl Bryer Fallert.
• 1997 Small Works with David Walker.
• 1998 Color Theory with Ricky Tims.
• 1998 Painting and Composition with Natasha Kempers-Cullen.
• 1999 Dye Painting with Hollis Chatelain.
• 1999 Design Workshop (I can’t remember the name of this class) with Pauline Burbidge.
• 1999 Improvisational Piecing with Nancy Crow.
• 1999 Sets and Variables with Nancy Crow.
• 2000 Fabric Collage (I can’t remember the name of this class) with Jane Birch Cochran.
• 2000 Sets and Variables with Nancy Crow.
• 2000 Dye Painting with Ann Johnston.
• 2001 Raw Revenge with Sue Wademan.
• 2001 Sets and Variables with Nancy Crow.
• 2003 Master Class (similar to independent study) with Sue Benner.
• 2004 Working in a Series with Nancy Crow.
• 2005 Independent Study with Nancy Crow.

The classes between 1995 and 2000 were all in Colorado (except the Nancy Crow) and mostly sponsored by Front Range Contemporary Quilters. Colorado brings in a lot of well known teachers through this organization and also with the more traditional statewide guild, Colorado Quilt Council.

I traveled to attended the workshops from 2001 through 2005 as I was looking for more advanced classes than I can find locally.

 
My thought is to highlight each of these classes at some point in my blog, with a review and some photos of the work I did during the class. I also want to talk about how these classes effected my work and direction as an artist so stay tuned for these over the next few months (or year).