I like it when my art travels, when the quilts get vacations away from my house and all the cat hair, when they get to hang free, not be rolled up in a sheet with a bunch of other quilts in the dark. It’s probably nicer for them to get some air, see some new people, experience new places. So I enter shows (OK, that’s not why I enter shows. You’re right). I’ve had a hard time lately getting into juried shows, with a variety of theories as to why, so some friends suggested some that I enter, and I did, and I’ve been rejected from every single one again. The last rejection came in yesterday from Extreme Fibers, which I actually expected, because I think they are looking for extreme technique, and not extreme images, and I don’t do anything extreme with technique, unless you keep track of how many pieces are in my quilts. That’s somewhat extreme.
It’s OK…there are at least three or four shows to enter this month (although one of them, I couldn’t find a single piece of mine that would work for the theme…always an issue). I’m not giving up. Besides, the ones that are already out there and traveling are getting more venues, and that’s never a bad thing.
Wise Choice is in Earth Stories, which will now be at the Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens, OH, from April 24-September 13, 2015, and even more exciting in terms of my being able to see it, at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA, from November 6, 2015-February 28, 2016 (road trip!).
I haven’t seen this show yet, so that will be cool.
I have two quilts in People and Portraits, which will now be traveling to the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, NY, from October 1-December 20, 2015. Here’s Fully Medicated…
And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…
Meanwhile, I sit at home, filling out college financial aid applications, trying to figure out how to pay for the rest of the kids’ college, getting texts from one about how a girl fell onto his laptop and now the display is messed up (ouch) and from the other about how she didn’t really use all the data for which the phone company would like to charge me. Uh huh. Right.
Really, I should stop thinking about all that crap and get going on the next step of whatever art quilt I’m working on (5 at a time at the moment) and enter the next batch of shows, because the real life stuff is kicking my butt at the moment. Unfortunately, first I have to go to school and take 110 kids on a field trip…so survival first…then art.
Kathy Nida 