Packs a Punch

Oh my. This week keeps changing but it packs a punch. It’s fine. I’m rolling with it, but could use more sleep (my own fault…well, not all of it). I’m currently negotiating with a teenaged boy cat who’s trying to bug my frail old lady and a middle-aged crankyass dog. And I haven’t had my tea yet (just two mouthfuls), so I don’t have enough of a caffeine buffer to deal. I often feel that way when I get to school…except up the ante to 136 middle-schoolers and all the adults (honestly, sometimes the adults are the hardest part). Yeah well. This week, it’s hard to know who is easier to work with…it’s up in the air. The dog/cat/cat interactions are probably my best bet.

I’m still watching all the censorship of art quilt stuff roll around out there in internet world, interspersed with the nuts crap that is our ‘government’. Deep breaths. I’m glad the two art quilts that were removed were both purchased. That’s more validation than anything. (hint: International Quilt Museum…my banned quilt is still available…I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…it still doesn’t have a penis in it. I have pieces that do, if that’s what you’re into. Just call me. Actually. Email me.)

I’d forgotten about the oil spill…and the flying saucer underground. This was a weird dream I had, wrought in fabric, penis free. It had a buyer at one point, but that fell through. Ah well. And I think it was before the debacle.

I’m still quilting here.

Part of why I’m so tired this morning is because I stayed up too late quilting last night and had to be up early today.

Why did I stay up too late? I was in the zone and not watching the clock. When I looked up, it was almost 11 PM. Whoops. OK. So I think I’ll get the outlining done tonight? Maybe? Then start the background. I think I can get all that done by the weekend and then start the binding. A week past the deadline. Oh well. I do know what I’m doing next, although the drawing doesn’t exist. It’s been in my head for a good long time. It’s also for a deadline. Then I need to make more stuff…some smaller pieces until the summer. I’m thinking of an artist residency for the summer, but I’d need to find one and be able to afford it. So then I’d also need time to find one and apply to it. OK. So realistically? Yeah. Not this week. I’ll try.

So I killed another one of these…

I bought 3 (4?) in 2022. So not bad, one a year. I had one left. Ordered 3 more to arrive today, I think. They break where the thingie is banging up and down on them. I’d break there too if I were them. Badly designed…but cheap.

I made it to clay on Monday…finally. Glazed the boychild’s thing. Hopefully it doesn’t stick to things. Then worked on the arms…broke off a leg trying to move the base (it’s heavy). Good times.

I’ve tried to fix cracks in the shelf between the top and bottom about 17 times. Doesn’t work. Sigh. It’s looking good though. Not sure how the head is gonna go. I suspect I need to fire the bottom before I lose it completely. It’s not dry though. Close. Close enough to be breaking. Ugh. Finish the arms…then figure out the head. Decide if I’m carving the back. I want to. But it’s too dry I think at the moment. I can fix that. But I need to spend a few hours there to do that. Maybe Monday? I have the day off. That would be good…(don’t think about work…don’t think about work).

I’m waiting y’all. Sword rushing at Musk? I’m in. Take out the minions. A few RePUGlicans while you’re at it. That big orange guy? A spell…don’t kill him…cast a spell and make him put it all back. Sigh. Such a joke.

OK. Today. Meeting this morning. Need to leave in 15 minutes. Teach skin cancer. Exciting stuff. Then grade some shit. Unless my coteacher can stay and work on the space unit. We did yesterday. It was good, but it’s frustrating to have to plan around another shit that is annoying that some other adults at school decided we have to do (there’s a lot of that going around). I also have one day I’m gone for myself and one day I have to be at the district office (ugh, not my choice), so I’m planning around those things (plan stuff my kids can do with a sub, right?). Then I have the oh-so-exciting annual mammogram at like 7:20 pm. They keep moving it later. Annoyingly later. I’m a little anxious about that…after last year’s ‘oh hey, we found something’ and all the shit that happened and then gladly ended with no bad cancer shit? It’s a little nerve-wracking having another one. Plus things still hurt. So I’m gonna pop some pain pills ahead of time. Deep breaths for that too. Then quilting! Losing myself in the up and down of the needle tracing all the crazy shit I ironed down. Good end, as long as I go to bed on time. Wish me luck with that. Art Brain is a crazy bitch. She doesn’t care what I have to be able to do the next day.

Bright Blue Skies

OK. Monday. I see you. You have bright blue skies, you’re not totally freezing (I know, it’s Southern California; we’re never that cold, right?). Today is a day of direct instruction (all on, all day), a 2-hour staff meeting mostly about stuff I already do in my classroom (woo), then hopefully some clay and some sewing. Oh yeah, probably have to grade shit. I spent about 4 or 5 hours yesterday doing that. I should do more. Ha. Always.

Well, in awesome news, SAQA pulled the entire exhibit out of the AQS shows. AND both pieces sold, one to a private collector and one to the International Quilt Museum. I’m glad SAQA finally stood up to the bullies. I wish they’d done it sooner. Hey, IQM, I’ve got work you can acquire! Ha. Hopefully this is a sign for the next four years, of groups and people standing up to the power hungry, the critical, the categorizers, those who can’t let everyone exist without pigeonholing and censoring them. Because there’s a lot of that going on. Sigh. I’m glad the artists got the support they should have.

I went up to Palos Verdes on Saturday with Polly Jacobs Giacchina to a show we’re both in, 9×9 Contemporary Quilts and Containers, curated by Carrie Burckle and Jo Lauria, at the Palos Verdes Art Center. We were blessed by the traffic goddess, so very little of that either direction. We were able to see the show before all the people got there, so we took photos. Both of us got onto the banners, which is awesome.

Apparently just because our art was the right size for them, which made me laugh.

I have 4 pieces in the show…

All right outside the bathroom and at the top of the stairwell. Good viewpoints all.

There were a lot of people at the opening, which was cool. I talked to most of the quilt artists (I only knew some of them), and a bunch of other people who liked my work, which is always a cool thing.

Polly with some of her art…

She sold one…before the show even officially opened! Cool that. It was a long drive, but ultimately good to see the show and get all the kudos. It’s up through the middle of April, if you find yourself in the area. I grew up in LA, and I don’t think I’d ever been to Palos Verdes before. So there’s that.

Quiltwise, I didn’t get much done this weekend. On Friday night, I packed up a quilt and drawing for delivery on Saturday for a show in LA opening in March. I delivered that and bought binding fabric for this quilt, because the store with more choices is only open on Saturdays during non-working hours (they close at 3, y’all). I’ve given up on getting it done and photographed by Friday, so there’s that deadline gone. Oh well. I took a picture of where I was in the outlining when I pulled it off the machine to match binding…

And then I finally got back to the quilting last night. I bought thread too, because I was going to run out. Luckily they had it locally, but I had also bought it online and it arrived Saturday. All good. Plenty of thread now.

Guess I need to check the thread stash at the reopened store near me. I never go there…they never had much I needed before. Maybe they do now?

Sleepy Bowie…

Better than rampaging Bowie.

Oh yeah, ceramics. All but one tiny animal is out of the glaze fire…

My daughter’s trinket dish did not fare well…it is stuck to that cookie. I might be able to get it off. The other tiny animal got clear glaze put on and put back on the glazed shelf for the next firing. The other bowl thing got glazed, but it’s really thick, so I wanted to let it sit a bit and make sure it’s dry. Hopefully I’m going in today to do some actually hands-on clay, so I’ll put it on the glazed shelf too. Then back to the big sculpture! That I started in November and am still working on. Forever.

OK. To school. My coteacher was out Friday and will be out this morning. I have to find the rest of the flashlights during prep and put her lab stations together. Assuming I can find enough flashlights for that. I’m teaching the EM spectrum, mostly how the different wavelengths affect materials, eventually DNA. Which the stupid curriculum does not CALL DNA…it calls it ‘genetic material.’ Sigh. Like make it even harder for kids to figure out. So annoying. Then vocab literacy stuff after school. Then hands-on clay. Then quilting. Oh yeah, I’ll grade. I said that in the first paragraph. I never stop doing that until like June 17. It’s annoying. Oh well. Someday I won’t have to grade anything at all and the world might stop because of it.

Around Which I Cannot Get My Head

It’s a Friday. January, the 3rd longest month of the year, is finally ending. I feel like I’m coming down with something (chugging vitamin C here). I cannot be sick any more. Forever. This year has been heinous for healthiness. My morning just started with some convoluted text of possibilities that I can’t get my head around (around which I cannot get my head). Although that’s been going around for a few weeks now. I am guessing that art censorship is going to be rampant for the next four years (and maybe some after). It already was an issue in some places, but AQS is at it again, censoring two quilts from the SAQA show Color in Context: Red. I really wish SAQA would disconnect from AQS, but I get that for most of the work, AQS is a good place for SAQA to get art quilts out there into different audiences. But seriously, can we get a better contract so they don’t randomly pull art? It’s so disheartening to be one of those artists. Here’s one of the pieces…by Laura Shaw, titled Your Mother. Your Daughter. Your Sister. Your Grandmother. You.

It’s a response to Roe v. Wade’s fall. You can see her statement and the shows it was pulled from here. The other artist is Yvonne Iten Scott. This is her work Origin.

You can see her statement on the SAQA link. My guess is AQS thought this was too much like a vulva. My goodness. SIGH. I personally joined SAQA years ago because my work didn’t fit in quilt shows (I’ve been told this so many times) and it’s hard to get gallery and museum shows on your own. I also joined some art groups, but some of the ‘fine’ arts think fiber art is a craft. So it’s difficult to find a place for yourself. I’m glad to see the SAQA board actually acknowledging the problem publicly this time, and I feel for these artists. It feels like shit to have your work pulled, often stupidly. I’m looking forward to seeing how SAQA handles this going forward. I have two quilts (both with nudity!) traveling with SAQA shows right now. Hopefully not to AQS shows because we know they have my name on a bullseye somewhere in their offices, just so they can throw darts at it. Double sigh.

In other news, my next censorable quilt is getting quilted. I’m going to run out of thread though…and there’s no way I’m hitting the deadline I think. I’m just going to throw up my hands and say oh well. It’s all I can do at the moment. I regret not working more on it over Winter Break, but that’s how it went. I got it sandwiched on Wednesday night (after pilates and 90 minutes of owl box installation…in the dark)…

Luckily the kitten was asleep, so I didn’t have to deal with him skidding into this.

Knee pads for the win…

Worked pretty well…she was pretty flat. I started quilting the same night…

And last night, fought the machine and thread loops.

So frustrating until I got it to behave. More of that tonight. I’m going to need binding fabric too. Hmmm.

That was it. I yelled too. Well, spoke firmly. One class was being stupid. Not surprising. There’s always one.

OK. Teach today…it’s a test plus finish all your shit. PLEASE finish it so I can stop bugging you about it. Then ceramics. I haven’t been able to get there all week, and there’s stuff out of the kiln. Then home and IDK what. I had date night dinner up, but IDK how much energy I have for that. Tomorrow the Man has a show and I’m driving to Palos Verdes for an art event…a venue that is NOT censoring things. My quilt is on one of the banners even. Awesome sauce. Hopefully not a horrendous drive for that. Long day though. Lots of art though. May it all be good.

Open-Minded Snowflake

You’ve probably heard (if you care) that the Threads of Resistance exhibit got pulled from two shows, one in Virginia and one in Michigan (wow, I don’t know anything about dealing with censorship in those two states…excuse the irony). The problems started in Texas, though, and continued in North Carolina. There’s no definitive answer as to why, but one assumes it has something to do with complaints and vendors and how the organizers make their money.

I’m back to that belief that we should allow differing opinions without demanding that organizers shut down exhibits because they are that offensive to someone. I would say that there’s something about our current political climate that makes people think they can demand that their viewpoint is more important than anyone else’s, but realistically, that’s not true. Censorship has been around longer than that. It’s disappointing that (a) the organizers did not stand by their commitment to the exhibit and (b) that people have to be so narrow-minded as to not allow other viewpoints to be around them. If I were in an exhibit of work by say Trump supporters or of anti-feminist work or anti-immigration pieces, I would view them and maybe converse with organizers or artists if they were available. I wouldn’t get angry. I would ask them why they feel that way or dig a little deeper (if allowed), and then what I wouldn’t do is go demand the organizers remove that exhibit or piece from the show. I am an open-minded snowflake, you see. Maybe more people should try that. But you know those people aren’t reading this blog.

Note to self: Don’t talk to people on Facebook unless you know them in person, and even then, it’s questionable. I just hate it when people make shit up, though. I often start typing something and just delete it. It’s better that way. So conversations have to be in person? Maybe. Maybe when they’re looking you in the face, they can’t call you ignorant 17 times. Sigh. Seriously. This is like my day job.

I can’t walk away from Facebook, unfortunately…I have at least one group where I manage their postings. So I’m on there. I just need to moderate my own responses even more than I already do. Or maybe not.

Threads of Resistance will continue to the shows in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York…no worries there. And both of my pieces have body parts (they both have penises! And uteri! And boobs!), so they are in what one woman called the “vulgar” room. You know, the old definition of “vulgar” was characteristic of or belonging to the masses…so I’m OK with that. Here’s the two pieces (weird that they both have trees in them, eh?)…Work in Progress and Absolutely Nothing…

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten almost nothing done today except researching portable air conditioners and trying to get the tree guy to call me back. Yesterday was better…although I need to get used to having that quarterly meeting in the middle of the day instead of in the afternoon. I can’t get anything done before it, and it was a stretch to get stuff done afterwards. During the school year might be more difficult.

Oh yeah, we had a peregrine falcon by the pool on Saturday. Very cool…not sure I’ve seen one of them locally, although they are native. Apparently. Great picture, right? We tried to get closer and of course, he flew off.

We went to the opening at Visions Art Museum down in Liberty Station…Kathy Weaver’s works were amazing. I have liked her work for many years and it was nice to see it up close. Then on to dinner at Soda & Swine, one of our favorites, even if we can’t ever remember which is spicier, the Hog or the Swine.

Then home, where I finished weaving this for the meeting the next day, although the woman I was supposed to be handing it over to wasn’t there, ironically. Strangely, I thought this and the two small quilts had to be done by yesterday, so I worked to get them done, and both of them are still sitting around my house. Oh well, I’ll mail this off…

I finished tracing Wonder Under Saturday night at around 9:30 PM, with a total of 22 hours (just under the 23 I finally estimated, but over the 20 hours I originally guessed). I had already started cutting out on Thursday. I think there were about 10 yards of Wonder Under total (some really big pieces)…

Saturday night, I finished the half yard from before and cut out another yard…so that was 4. I guess that means there were 11 yards, although one’s not full. Because there were 7 yards left on Saturday night…

Yesterday, puppy was really tired. He was so happy here…tummy scritches and a fan blowing his fur around. Bliss.

After dinner last night, I watched Harlots (for the costumes, of course) and cut more Wonder Under out.

OK, so shows like Harlot are entertaining, but then the feminist in me gets upset about the stereotypes and the portrayal of women and the lack of realism in general, and then I wonder what I can actually watch any more that is just kinda fun and interesting and not causing me to question my entire existence. I can’t watch movies any more without wondering why the women always need help, get kidnapped, wear totally inappropriate clothing for the task at hand, or just outright get killed. Something about being old and female, I guess. By the way, if you ever watch The Rover, the whole movie is pointless until the last 5 minutes, and you don’t know it’s pointless until the last 5 minutes.

I kept watching Harlots (with the great costumes) with the hot and furry boy curled up next to me.

I only have 4 yards left to cut out…so at some point on Sunday, I must have gotten 3 or 4 yards cut out. The box is full…I’ll have to upgrade to a larger one.

So I started writing this post in the morning, a good 5 or 6 hours ago, and then got heavily side-tracked by a need for cooler air. We researched air conditioners, we’re currently testing a portable unit in my office (it’s a bit large), we looked at a wall unit that was heavily ensconced in years of dust in my parents’ barn. We bought another fan. We might take back the portable unit if it doesn’t do what I need it to do. Sigh. And maybe plan for sometime in the next year or so to put a wall unit in here. Part of the remodel? The remodel I can’t afford? Yeah.

Well the tree guys are coming tomorrow morning really early, to beat the heat, so that’s a whole ‘nother issue. I can’t leave the house while they’re here…the dogs are gonna be frantic. I have to be up early. I want to be working on something. If I finish cutting out all the Wonder Under tonight (possible), then I don’t have a background fabric yet…unless something lying around here would work. Maybe. But I can sort Wonder Under and maybe get started on fabric…but only if I decide permanently what to do about this giant beast of an A/C unit in my office. Double sigh. Because I had to move a bunch of stuff around so I could get the window vent in, and I need to decide if that’s a permanent thing, or if we’re gonna leave it jimmy-rigged like this for the next two months and then take it out when it cools off again. Aargh. Decisions. It’s too hot to make them. I can decide to publish this thing though. That I can do.

The Phallus Debacle

Today’s title from the girlchild, who was objecting to my using the word penis over and over again. So this is what she’s calling the penis kerfuffle. And there, I used it twice. Sorry kid.

Just a quick summary, for those who don’t want to go back four or five posts…this quilt, I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket, was pulled from AQS QuiltWeek in Grand Rapids, MI, due to a viewer complaint about a penis that isn’t actually in the quilt.

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It’s supposed to be shipped back to me, and there’s a possibility of it being shown at a quilt store, SPOOL, in Chattanooga, TN, during AQS QuiltWeek if I can coordinate shipping.

My second quilt in People and Portraits, a SAQA exhibition traveling with AQS QuiltWeek, is Fully Medicated. SAQA asked AQS for a guarantee that they wouldn’t pull it if someone complained about it, and AQS is still thinking about that. I’m hoping a bunch of emails and comments from the rest of the world help remind them that they are in the public eye and persuade them to keep it hung.

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Still no penis. But plenty of other stuff, sure. Maybe pill bottles set you off. Hard to say. I personally have issues with red and yellow used together.

I completely appreciate all those who are being supportive of keeping art out there in the public eye, even if it offends a few…or many. I heard that SAQA was showing my quilt on an iPad and telling viewers it was banned. That makes me laugh heartily, and I appreciate that too. It’s been a roller coaster of a week, what with both kids leaving for college (one is here until tomorrow…the other sent 17 homesick texts this morning at 4 AM), starting school myself, trying to deal with all the stress of change at school, and temperatures of over 100 degrees. I have a migraine this morning (not a good thing) and I’m moody as hell. Blame the censorship, blame the kids leaving, blame my stupid hormones.

I am still making. I am just looking at what I’m doing, though, and thinking “What if this never gets shown anywhere?” Because that’s what goes through your mind when you butt heads with the world like this. I’m going to keep making the art, because I don’t know how to stop…but what if I never get into another show because of it? And I know that’s not going to be the case, but that little voice in your head is worried.

So thanks to all of you…

Sigh. So last night, I did manage to sort the Wonder Under for the next quilt…I start with a box for each 100 pieces…

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And then I stood there with the fan on me directly (because it was still 90 in the house)…and I sorted.

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For about an hour? Not so bad. The last one took more like 2 1/2. There’s a lot of big pieces in this quilt. I really did try to simplify. I just suck at it.

Tonight, I’m hoping to come in here and clean up from the last quilt and all the shit I’ve been doing in between (fixing pants…organizing crap) and start picking fabrics for this one. I figure it’ll take about 15 hours to pick…so hopefully by the weekend some time? Maybe? Then trimming those…by the end of next week? Maybe start ironing next weekend? I’m really trying to get this one done on time…so it’ll be a stretch.

I have to be at school today to prep, even though I’m mostly done. I’d rather be here working. But then, that’s a daily thing.

There Was No Penis.

So. To clarify. There isn’t an actual penis in this quilt. Surely there are other things people could freak out about, but not a penis. So my quilt was pulled from AQS Grand Rapids because of something That Is Not Actually THERE. Yup. That’s something to be significantly irritated about. No number of cover-ups would help, because it’s just not fucking there.

I’d like to thank my readers for bringing up two penile possibilities though. First, here’s the full quilt again, for those who had a blessedly relaxing Saturday without staring at blogs or Facebook (good on you!).

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This quilt is I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket, completed in September 2010, touring with the People and Portraits exhibit since October 2013. The title comes from a radio ad I was listening to while pondering the meaning of this quilt, which came almost entirely out of a running nightmare I had for over a week, where I was losing things in the water and people were standing around not helping, and I was diving down and trying to find the things I lost, which ranged from my phone to babies, actual babies, and I’d wake up panicked and breathing fast. Here’s the official statement (which I found very difficult to write…almost as difficult to explain the piece)…

Two sisters in a strange land.
A lost life jacket.
A nasty oil spill.
No explanation needed.

My dream inhabited by strangers.

So first of all, the two people in the water are sisters. I have been told the one on the right reads as a male. OK. I don’t really mind when people interpret my work. I put it out there and sometimes there’s a clear message and sometimes there’s not. It’s a surreal collection of crap that inhabited my head. This is one of those. It’s not the first one and it won’t be the last. Take from it what you will.

I started with a bunch of smaller drawings of pieces of the nightmare…done mostly while waiting for dinner at a restaurant. The woman giving birth (except no umbilical cord in this one…think this was more about the losing a baby into the water)…

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The sister on the left in a larger drawing…

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Which in the redraw, became this (the one from which I made the quilt)…

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See any penises? No. You don’t.

This was the whole original drawing…I hated the figures on the right…but it was a start.

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This was one of the pre-drawings as well…I still like this one.

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Oh wait…there’s a shadow…under a hand. Keep that in your head…

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Here was the full sketchbook drawing for the quilt…then I enlarged it and added to the side and bottom. I don’t honestly know why…but I can check my weekly art journal for that time period.

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All it says is that I enlarged it and added stuff to bottom and right side, finished drawing in late June 2010, 1300+ pieces in it. I liked having a big piece to work on over the summer back then (well, I still do, but I’m more likely to work on big pieces all year round now). So yeah. Started drawing in May…dreaming in May…drawing done in June, quilt done in September.

So some people thought the umbilical cord on the woman/baby in the background might have been seen as a (really long, bendy) penis (that just happened to be attached to a baby’s bellybutton and in a woman’s vagina).

Kathy Nida umbilical crop

Nope. Just gonna tell her the truth. That’s not a penis. It’s a baby. Yes, some babies have penises, but they’re not long and curly and in a mother’s vagina. Seriously. Some people have criticized sex education in Michigan. OK. But I think the show folks could help the penis-imaginer with her understanding.

This is the figure some have called male (I guess because no obvious girly curves?). And someone mentioned the shadow under the hands as possibly being interpreted as a penis…

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So below on the left, under the hands, you can see the shadowy bit…on the right, I outlined the entire shadow to show that is certainly not even penis-shaped. Again, something show organizers could have pointed out and/or realized.

Kathy Nida woman shadow crop Kathy Nida woman shadow line crop

Seriously though, if I’m going to put a penis in a quilt, it’s gonna be pretty obvious…like in Work in Progress…

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Look. It’s a penis. Clearly. I even put a red arrow pointing at it so you would not miss it.

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Some people like to accuse me of wanting attention or making art for shock value. I really don’t. I just draw. And then I make quilts out of some of them. I don’t think about what all y’all are gonna think when you see it. The making is not about you. And no, I don’t do pretty landscapes. I do stuff that’s a reaction to what’s in my head, what I dreamed about, what’s out in the world. I’m not scared or shocked by nudity and it often confuses me when other people are.

And then some people tell me to ignore the naysayers, the critics, the censors, the quilt police…but here’s the problem with ignoring it. It Doesn’t Stop. It Doesn’t Go Away. I want to live in a world where I don’t have to worry about what’s in my art because someone might be offended or censor me. Because I’m truly tired of that. I did worry a bit when they told me this exhibit was doing the AQS circuit, because that’s quilt shows. And I don’t really enter quilt shows any more because of this shit. Often when I enter a show, I don’t even know where the piece will travel. And sometimes, because I’m oldish (not really old yet, but older than I was when I started making art), I do consider just holing up, being even more of a hermit and introvert than I already have become, and ignoring everyone. But it’s not in my nature to ignore stupidity and ignorance and censorship. It’s in my nature to be the person that stands up and yells about it. Because I want it to stop for everyone. My kids. Younger artists. All of us. I don’t want to be 90 years old and still getting frustrated over this shit. I want the world to be a more accepting and tolerant place than it is right now, and it doesn’t feel that way AT ALL.

So that’s where I’m at. Surely I won’t stop making and exhibiting quilts. I even have a grand idea for a penis quilt now. You’ll laugh. Seriously. But in reality, I have a whole ‘nother quilt in process right now, school starts tomorrow, and I’m still pissed off and frustrated, but it won’t stop me. I just want AQS to realize that it was a stupid thing they did and they need to either stand up for the special exhibits in their shows or get out of the art-quilt world. I can’t change the mind of that woman who imagined a penis. I just wish the show organizers had handled it in a mature and reasonable way. They didn’t.

And here’s the thing…this is the quilt that was hanging next to it…Fully Medicated…

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And that is a seriously large vulva…

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With a snake peeking out above it. And that didn’t put her panties in a wad.

Walk by it people. If you don’t like it, if it makes your heart flutter in a bad way, if you feel a need to call Fox News, just walk the fuck on by. It’s what I do when I see your bad compositions and copies of things that are overdone already and crappy color choices. I walk the fuck on by.

Still pissed. But it’s OK. It’s not going to stop me.

You Won’t Find a Penis at AQS Grand Rapids…

Oh my. Oh dear. Censorship again folks…except this time, I’m being censored for something that’s not even there.

The SAQA exhibition folks were good enough to let me know that a viewer at AQS Grand Rapids, Michigan, had complained about a penis in one of my quilts at the show and AQS was planning on pulling the quilt. (It’s already shown in Phoenix, AZ; Daytona Beach, FL; Lancaster, PA; and Paducah, KY, as part of the AQS QuiltWeek circuit).

So some person objected to my quilt and couldn’t just walk by, moving on to the next quilt (which is what I do when another Sunbonnet Sue shows its ugly head…I don’t call Fox News…I don’t pitch a fit and refuse to ever come back to another show.)…they had to demand it get pulled from the show.

OK. Um. But there’s no penis in that quilt. Seriously. There isn’t. There’s boobs and uteri and even a woman giving birth, but there’s no penis. None. I swear. I really don’t do a lot of penises and they’re bloody obvious when I do.

The quilt is I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket (did she think the life jacket was a condom? Because it wasn’t. It really was a life jacket. And there isn’t a life jacket in the quilt either, just to confuse things even more.) and it’s part of SAQA’s People and Portraits exhibit, which has been traveling for years and through more cities than I can count. And she didn’t object to the 5-inch vulva in the quilt next to it, Fully Medicated.

Oh don’t worry…I’ll give you a nice big picture so you can do a Where’s Waldo and find Waldo’s penis for me. Because it’s not in there.

Kathy Nida 72

It’s one thing to be censored because of nudity. I don’t agree with that either, but at least it’s not uncommon. It’s another thing to be censored for something that’s not even there. So Michigan, I’m sorry, but if you go to the show and you wanted to see my quilt, you should tell management…since that’s how I got pulled. Someone complained to management and said they’d never come back to an AQS show. And we don’t know if I’ll be allowed to have this piece in QuiltWeek at Chattanooga or Des Moines, so that’s still up in the air. So if you’re planning on going to those shows, you might want to let them know you’re expecting to see my quilt. I’m not going to tell you not to go if they don’t show it. Just tell them you’re not happy about it.

I’m disappointed in AQS’ response. Maybe you are too. Here’s a link to the people in charge of AQS in general…I don’t know who made the decision at the show, but these are the people on high. I’m waiting until they make a decision on the next two shows before I write them. Someone said something to me about this being a quilt show, so I can’t expect art sensibilities…well if that’s the case, AQS needs to stop having art quilt exhibits at their shows or have a clear policy on subject matter (I checked their current show entry forms and there is nothing about that). Plus show me where on my quilt is the thing that the woman imagined was there. Because they took her word over mine. And there is no penis in the damn quilt.

It’s frustrating. I don’t fit in the quilt world because I do art. I don’t fit in the art world because I do quilts. Thanks to Martha Sielman (the author of the book People and Portraits) and SAQA for trying to stand up for my work. Shame on AQS for caving to imaginary issues.

My work was recently in an article about censorship, written by Tanya Brown, in Textile Fibre Forum Issue 122. I’m not the only one being censored.

Protected: Holding Oneself Accountable