Lisa Call

Structures #51    ©2006    60"x54"

 
I have work in 2 shows that open Saturday. The first is in a new gallery in San Diego devoted to Art Quilts – Quilt Visions. The show is their first juried exhibit for members – titled Fabric of the Imagination: Art by Quilt Visions Members. The above piece, Structures #51 will be in that exhibit.

In addition the Pittsburgh portion of The Blogger Show opens this weekend. My piece, Structures #48, will appear in that exhibit.

Thanks to everyone for the supportive comments about my work situation in the last post. I was going to comment on them but this week has gotten a little ridiculous. I was at work until midnight on wednesday evening (after working until 1 the previous monday). Yesterday the computer that stores all my work crashed. Taking with it all my work for the last 2 days. What a week.

I’m so glad it’s friday.

 
Detail of Structures #51

Show Details:

Fabric of The Imagination
Visions Art Quilt Gallery
2825 Dewey Road, Suite 100
San Diego, Ca 92106
Phone: 619-546-4872

Gallery Hours:
Tues.- Sun. 10-4
Closed Monday and all major holidays

 
The Blogger Show
Digging Pitt Gallery
4417 Butler St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15201
p 412.605.0450

Gallery Hours
TH 12 – 8, FR 12 – 7, SA 11 – 7, SU 11 – 7

James Kalm posted the above video about The Blogger Show Opening on YouTube today. At 3:13 minutes into the video about 1/2 of my piece, Structures # 79, appears for a second. Excellent – confirmation that my work is really hanging in a gallery in New York City.

A few days ago Chris Rywalt also wrote an interesting article about the hanging of the blogger show.

ACEO #2, Inspired by Structures #78    ©2007 Lisa Call    3.5" x 2.5"

 
Today I took my mom to the airport, my kids are at their dads for a week so it’s time to get things in order and get back to my studio. I stayed focused yesterday and got most of my day-job work done so I only have a few hours to put in, which I plan to put off until sunday evening. I paid bills and got my art finances up to date this morning so it’s time to head to my studio and get back to work.

I had hoped I would be getting on a plane today and heading out to NYC for the opening of The Blogger Show but my plan of waiting until the last minute weekend fares to snag a cheap flight didn’t work. There were no cheap flights to be had from Denver to anywhere near NY. So I will miss the event and will have to be content reading the reviews by the numerous bloggers participating.

 
The above photo is the second of the 3 Original Art Cards (ie ACEO) I made this summer. I first posted about Art Cards a month ago although it seems like just a few days. ACEO #2 was inspired by the small work I showed a few weeks back, Structures #78.

This art card is available or $20 (includes shipping). If you are interested in purchasing the piece you can leave a comment here or send me email. Update – the work has been sold and is no longer available.

 

Back Side of ACEO #2

 
ACEO stands for “art cards, editions and originals”. Originally known as ATC, Artist Trading Card, and are traded between artists. When sold to the public they are referred to as ACEOs. The primary rule for an ACEO or ATC is they be 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ – the size of a trading card. They are created in many different mediums and are collectible, trade able and affordable art for everyone.

Structures #78    ©2007    18" x 18"
 
Today I finished stitching the texture lines on Markings #10 (shown in my previous post). I still have to finish the edges and attached the hanging sleeve but I’m going to save that work for a while as it’s been a while since I designed new work and I want to make some more small pieces such as the one above.

My original goal for the year was to complete 10 new small pieces but in July that changed to 18. So far I’ve completed 10 so 8 more to go. An easy goal to accomplish, I hope, because at the end of November I’m going to need 6-8 small pieces for a holiday art show and sale at the Arvada Center, a local art center. I’m also hoping to send some small work to the new Visions Art Quilt Gallery in San Diego

 
Until this year I rarely made small work because I felt too restricted by the small spaces. I like big, the impact and the room for so many possibilities. This year I’ve learned to love to work small. Getting the proportions right is much harder in the small space so it really forces me to pay attention to what I’m doing.

Once I cut the fabric the only way to fix a mistake is to redo the section. But it’s not always so easy to know where to make the cuts because I lose at least 1/2" on each shape when I sew it to the adjacent pieces. It’s taken me years of practice and I still mess up and cut in the wrong place. So I’ve cut/sew and the recut/resewn some of these composition several times to get it as I want it.

Any time I get lazy and think "good enough" I always regret it so I’ve learned to love this process of redoing. But more importantly, I’ve learned to get good at knowing where to cut in the first place as the consequences can be fairly high for screwing up.

 
I originally made Structures #78 as my piece for The Blogger Show in New York. Then I realized I should have read the rules first as this was too big by 2". So I made Structures #79 and sent it instead. You can get a preview of this show on The Blogger Show Online Portfolio. Thanks to Marc Snyder for creating the website.

I had been hoping to ease back into life this week but then reality hit. Missing a week of work when I was already behind didn’t make for a relaxed return to the cubes the last few days. I really needed to work tonight to try to catch up but instead I had to package my work for the two blogger shows and print out my pages for the gallery book.

Normally this job would take 2-3 hours but since I decided to no longer use the word quilt as the noun to describe my work it took some time to reword my artist statement and bio. I did a quick job of this but I need to revisit both of these docs and update them as it’s been a few years and they feel a bit boring. My bio certainly puts me to sleep. I need to think of something interesting to say other than “Lisa was in some shows in some cool places”.

Then I decided to spend a couple of hours creating new thumbnail pages to include (my old ones were very out of date and had a different header than the rest of my materials). First I tried to do it in photoshop but I don’t really know how to use photoshop so that didn’t make for quick work so I switched to microsoft publisher. I used to edit a newsletter and vaguely recalled how to use publisher and after a few false starts I remembered enough to hack something together. Publisher does some funky things with the colors but it looks pretty good.

One of the advantages of making textiles is the ability to roll up the artwork and ship it off in a tube. In theory this saves the artist a lot of money in shipping costs but now days I don’t think it’s possible to ship anything cheaply.

It cost me $14 each way to ship a small 15" square 1.1 pound piece to New York in a very small tube. Not exactly a bargain. Although it is only $24 each way to ship a 48" x 64" piece to Pennsylvania. I suppose a painting of that size would be considerably more to ship so I shouldn’t complain. Although $80 in shipping for these 2 shows – ouch.

Everything is finally packed up and ready to send tomorrow and I should have headed to bed but decided I could just go to work tired tomorrow since all of my coworkers came to work tired and grumpy today after staying up late to watch the Rockies win the National League Championship last night. I guess this means the Rockies are off to the superbowl World Series. I didn’t even know they were playing last night – something I probably should not admit.

 
The above photo is another plant photo from my dad’s yard in Arizona this last spring.