“The Only Thing Soft about Your Work Is the Fabric…”

Best quote of the night, I think. The opening of my 2-person show at Grossmont College was last night. I was being introduced around as the artist who did the stuff on the walls and James Watts as the sculptor, and I pointed to him and said “hard” and to me and said “soft” and the college president, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh, said something along those lines…found it amusing, but probably true. One of the art history teachers mentioned that she’d brought her students in and they were talking about the bright colors and how nice everything looked, and then she made them read the titles. Oh. Wait. That’s about a tsunami.

Anyway. The opening happened. I really truly appreciate all the friends and family who showed up to support me (like a bra, one friend said)…making art is such a solitary thing most of the time. And even though I send a lot of my work out there, I’m not at most of the openings, so I often miss the kudos and commentary, so that was appreciated as well. It’s open through March 3, Mon-Thurs, 10-6PM, so stop by if you didn’t make it last night. I’m probably going to need to go back and photograph again…maybe.

Here’s me and James Watts, surrounded by his very cool sculptures, my quilts behind.

And part of my stitching group…we’ve been meeting once a month since I was pregnant with the girlchild, who is now 18.

I do have some installation shots…

Our work blends well together…lots of color and tiny pieces…

That’s going in my living room finally once it gets out of here.

My number 1 fans. They fight for that position…who’s more number 1? But they have always been there for me…and Susan, on the right, is the woman who taught me to quilt, so you can blame her for everything.

Another installation shot.

And again…

Anyway. Awesome opening, great show. It feels good to have a chunk of work out there from a pretty wide range of years and have it all hold together. It’s not my life’s work, because I’ve got a good 40 years to go, hopefully, but it is representative of 25 years of working in fabric. Not a small achievement.

With that, I’ll have to go back to the current quilt…it’s almost cut out. Maybe tonight? Hope so. Ready to be ironing.

I Am Installed…

OK. Deep breaths because the installation is done. It wasn’t even too painful. The pieces I really wanted to be in there are up…I had way too many quilts, but it was good, because it gave us choices. The boychild assisted in hanging stuff and was generally very helpful, even editing artist statements, which takes special skill.

And there’s Brandon, the gallery guy, helping as well. I’m not posting pictures of the full exhibit yet because I want you to come to the opening! My work plays well with James Watts’ sculptures…similar bright colors and even noses…

I brought an iron just in case…didn’t need it. You can see it in this artsy photo of a ladder.

We had hung most of the quilts by the time sculptures started arriving.

It was a little chaotic for a while until heads started being placed where they belonged.

We finished up the last wall. It’s a wide range of years for my work. A lot of the most recent stuff is traveling or can’t be shown because of rules for other shows or has to be shipped before this show closes, but I think it works well. The earliest piece is from 2003…the latest from 2014? I think?

What I notice is that I used to make much simpler quilts, but they still have presence in the room.

I was pretty emotional about this yesterday…I’m 48 years old and having my first 2-person show that I didn’t put together. I’ve been quilting for 25 years, making art quilts seriously for about 17 years. When I think about my students giving up on stuff after just 10 minutes or so, I guess I’m a little more persistent than that. I appreciate Prudence, the curator, for thinking of my work with James’…but it’s those weird little opportunities that make things happen. I don’t think I’m going to get a solo show somewhere standard, because so much of my work is challenging. Which is too bad. And no, I’m not giving up on that…I’m just waiting for the right opportunity I guess. My work’s out there. Someone needs to offer me the space.

Anyway, make me happy (if you can) and come to the opening. It’s Tuesday, February 2, from 5-7 PM at the Hyde Art Gallery, Grossmont College, San Diego, CA. It’s a college campus, so there’s no alcohol, but there are cookies! And lemonade! Or whatever they serve.

It is a relief to have that off my shoulders though. And then I came home and collapsed a little before I started putting the baby quilt together. She’s due in less than two weeks now. Had to put the dogs out to lay out the blocks and mess with them.

But I got them all together and borders on them.

Hopefully I can get it sandwiched this week when the dogs are gone and start quilting.

I also wanted to finish cutting these out.

This batch of Wonder Under is cranky…it’s separating from the backing. I thought they had solved that problem, but apparently not.

And the half page that was left took two hours. I guess the other page I did was all bigger pieces and these were tiny. I have a little more than half a page left…maybe an hour or two. Tonight? Perhaps. If I feel up to it.

I’m still fighting off this cold. It hasn’t quite taken hold, but it’s enough to slow me down a bit. Plus I’m tired from all the physical work and stress this weekend. Not very relaxing. I did finally get pictures of the newest quilt, but I’m going to hold off on posting them until the quilt names itself. Better be soon…it needs to be entered into a show.

Not a Diptych…

Long weekends should be relaxing. But they so rarely are. And now I’m sick. Oh well. Get through it. I spent a lot of time ironing yesterday and trying to organize for the show installation today. I’m a little wigged out at the moment, but it will all be better by the end of the day. Well, it will be installed anyway.

I even worked on the other quilt…basically blowing off grading completely yesterday. I did send out the team email, so I didn’t blow everything off.

My couchmate waiting for me…I will have to move the boxes of Wonder Under to sit next to her.

Then she snuggles with her head on my leg. Sweet. Slightly annoying. But she doesn’t usually complain if I move around. She’s not a good replacement for a human though. The next kid leaves Saturday…Calli has big shoes to fill.

I actually got more than half of it cut out in a really short period of time. I think that’s because so many of the pieces are the same color, so I lumped them together, and they only get cut out once at this stage. Once they’re ironed to fabric, it will take longer because I’ll have to cut them each separately.

So I might even (hopefully) finish cutting them out tonight. Although if we get done with the installation early enough and I don’t feel like shit (had to take a nap yesterday because I felt like shit), then I’m putting that damn baby quilt together. THEN cutting out Wonder Under. Then maybe torturing myself with grades.

Hopefully I can get to ironing Wonder Under to fabric tonight or tomorrow (shit, I don’t think I have a background…of course I have a background. I must have a background. Huh.). With 980 pieces, picking fabrics is at least 10 hours. So plan to be done Saturday, with trimming starting Sunday? I have a meeting Sunday. I can trim there. Grades are also due, but they’re only progress reports, so I don’t have to kill myself to get everything in. There’s one thing I want to finish and another I should do, but might not get to, so there we are.

I might get this quilt done in time. Just might.

So this morning, I rolled up all the quilts by semi-size (not really, but didn’t want them all in one roll). These are the medium-sized ones.

Up on the bookshelf are the small ones…with the large ones on the coffee table.

Finally installing. For this, by the way…

Yup. There it is. My first show that isn’t just one or two pieces with a bunch of other people. I’m sure there’s a better name than “two-person show”…like a diptych but not…a dipexhibit maybe. Except apparently the “p” belongs with the “tych”, so that’s diexhibit, which has the word “die” in it. Whatever. Taking my sore throat and my spacey head and my cranky boychild (I meant to remind him of the time last night, but I was a mopey mess) and my cold feet and going to hang a shitload of quilts. Wish me luck.

If I Feel Like It…

Rain makes it all slow down, the crazy. It’s too wet to go out, to brave the crowds, the traffic. Although I am going to the gym. And the grocery store. But my Christmas shopping appears to be done…just waiting on things to be delivered (yes, Amazon, I heard your truck banging around out there at 7:22 AM…yes, many people are awake at that hour, but I am on my 4th day of vacation and have yet to experience a full night’s rest where I wake up…well…rested. The animals are needy, the kids are semi-noisy or just late and I’m a light sleeper. Seems funny to look forward to Christmas Eve for the sleep potential…no one in the house but me and the two cats…if I put tuna out, maybe they will fall into sleep comas and I will have peace until I have to be at the ex’s house for present exchange. Of course, it’s probably going to be pretty hard to exchange gifts if I don’t start wrapping some of them, eh? It’s on my list for today, along with make more cookies (or dough, as it were), finish cutting stuff out, do some ironing. Might want to finish decorating the tree even. Or call it a day. It has ornaments on it. My rule of “you can’t leave the house until you hang 10 ornaments” is not working. They just ignore me.

I was cutting stuff out for a couple of hours last night…the empty space on the couch is mine. Calli kept shifting one way and another…

On the other side of me is a cat, sometimes two (one above, one below) and the other box of stuff to be cut out.

I’m almost done…

Maybe another hour? My hand definitely is sore today. But there’s progress. The box on the right is what’s left.

I have two other things I’m working on…this tiny thing…

And then a baby quilt that is just a pile of recently washed fabrics in my dryer. Maybe you’ll see those tomorrow. The raccoon fabric did not make it in the quilt. The color choices on that were challenging for me, but the nice lady in the quilt shop said I did well. I need a traditional quilter to look sometimes and make sure I didn’t wander too far out of the realm of normalcy.

Have I drawn yet? Nope. Still not mentally there. Drawings screaming at the enclosure of my brain, begging to be let out, to be started, finished, made into quilts. Demanding little buggers. Instead I read and clean and cook and run errands. Most schools don’t give three weeks for Winter Break, but I’ve found two weeks (like I have at Spring Break) is never enough. The first week is always recovery from the last weeks of school, and in the case of Winter Break, it’s the Christmas stuff kicking your butt as well, because you didn’t get enough done over the last three weeks. Then the week in between Christmas and New Year’s, that’s recovery as well, and the last week is when I actually get refreshed and caught up on errands and grading and house-cleaning for the next round of school.

But that week for me will be spent prepping quilts for the Grossmont exhibit coming up. It’s called Contemporary Crafts and it’s just me and James E. Watts, a very cool sculptor and painter.

Put the opening on your calendar…come by. Should be cool. No, I haven’t decided (besides the two that are on the card) what to show yet. That’s for the week after New Year’s! I need to plan out my overwhelming stressful activities. Let’s not think about when the quilt I’m working on needs to be done either, OK? Or everything else that’s going on in January? It’s still December…for another 10 days. I can do this. No, I didn’t grade very much yesterday. Shut up.

Starting with the gym today (I can actually grade on the bike and the elliptical if I feel like it). Maybe that should be my mantra for Winter Break…If I feel like it.