Towards an exhibition

 

text messages: Vilhelm Lundström,
made in response to a challenge for the group 12 by the Dozen,
2018, 40 x 40 cm

Today I took a (sort of) inventory of my quilts. I have an exhibition coming up in October, in our local museum. This is not an art museum, it has a standard exhibition that concentrates on local history of pottery as it was common here in the 18^th to early 20th centuries. The museum has won prizes and is famous amongst pottery circles, the early 20^th century e.g. was a time when migrant workers came here from northern Italy. Special exhibitions are shown regularly, though, and recently there have been exhibitions about the times of World War II, or the history of water in the city. The new director (who is the first director with an academic background and not doing this as a volunteer and has been here for a couple of years by now) is trying to diversify in terms of topics that will be dealt with. Currently they are showing a recollection of the 40 years of the city’s professional women’s volleyball team which has been playing in the first national league for several years.

Greening Rothko, 2016, 45 x 80 cm,
made as contribution to one of the challenges for
International Threads

 

I was offered to do this exhibition in the context of the attempt at diversification of topics, and as 2017 recipient of the Kulturpreis (Cultural Prize) of the city. Indeed, during my nursing course I had at some point thought I would not ever again try to do a solo show, I felt so drained artistically, and there wasn’t much time to spend on planning, designing, executing (enough) quilts that satisfied my personal standards regarding artistic merit. But the museum is not too big, so when the director and the city’s cultural manager approached me with this idea, I agreed to this adventure. I figured it might perhaps be another incentive to spark my creative impulses.

Mapping my inner world,
2018,58 x 105 cm

 

Hanging in the museum is going to be a bit tricky because the display cases are glass-fronted cases with some unusual shapes and widths. Although the city is having a few display walls made, I will mostly need to refer back to smaller sizes, and I really had no clue as to how many smaller quilts I have in stock. It was an interesting dive into my history of quilt making, and a rediscovery of some I had more or less forgotten. That happens when the website is unsufficiently maintained (and it has been disfunctional for a while now anyway, that’s another thing I need to get fixed before the exhibitions is actually on). Most (or at least many) of them have never been exhibited because they were made as group challenge quilts. Some of them I was surprised to see with a temporal distance and realize that they werent’t bad at all.

 

Challenge 3, 2014, 40 x 80 cm,
made for a challenge of International Threads

I concocted a list of what I have, measured some (or most) of them and was relieved that I should be able to fill the space of the museum with smaller quilts, but the actual matching of the widths with the plans of display cases still remains to be done. I also have to clarify with the cultural manager how many display walls there are indeed going to be so I would be able to hang a few larger or at least not really small quilts as well.

The piece which is currently traveling with the SAQA-exhibition “Forced to Flee” is bound to return home at some point in the fall, as the Festival of Quilts is supposed to be the last place where the exhibition will be shown, at least that is the current state of affairs. The picture currently shown at the top of the blog is a detail from that piece. That is one of the bigger quilts that I really would like to show. But, ironically, after FoQ the show will go back to the States before the individual quilts are being sent back to their owners, and that turnover may take longer than the opening date for my exhibition. We will see. The inventory session at least has given me the secure feeling that I will be able to hang enough quilts, even if it may not be an entirely coherent show.

ooops - Benefit Auction Time!

We had a very warm stretch in early April, which resulted in all the trees getting ready to bloom about three weeks early. Then frost came, a lot of the buds froze, and now we are actually having the kind of weather that is typically called ‘April weather’. In May, when it should be warmer, more springy - in any case, I must have somewhere lost track of time. Yesterday I remembered, hey- it’s May, wasn’t there usually something going on with Benefit Auction for SAQA? During the last years I would be busy at this time of year already, trying to scan the growing list of donated quilts on SAQA's website to have an overview about how many had been donated from Europe/MIddle East, so I could post them in the countdown on the blog just before the auction started. 

For several years I have myself donated a piece, they all sold, and I didn’t mean to let this row break. But until yesterday I had not given a single thought to that topic. Or laid a conscious hand onto the quilt. Missed the Early Bird deadline, for sure, it had passed me by completely.

So as I was ironing yesterday, trying out little things and color combinations, my eyes fell onto three smaller quilts that were lying in the shelf opposite my ironing board. Right size they would have been. But neither of them represents me in the stage I am in right now, nor do I find them convincing. (Yes, the inner critic is a very strong presence once a quilt is finished …) But time is short - the quilt must have been received by June 1^st, that means it must go into the post QUICKLY!

I have been working on something which should have been a quilt for an International Threads challenge, ‘hand stitched’. It was supposed to have been called ‘Waste No Thread’, and in it I was using up all cut-off threads of my recent pieces, longarm custom quilting, longarm my quilting, two pieces from the ‘text messages’ series that I finished recently (yes, I have been able to finish things, although there is a certain lack of ideas as to what to start on now). For the International Threads challenge it would still have taken a lot of work. For a 12" x 12", however... it was almost done!

So I set about using up the remaining pieces of thread I had assembled, almost finished that yesterday. The last pieces were added this morning as I was listening to the radio, and then I also managed to do the facing and tunnel right away. 

Now all it needs is a sign with the title - haven't decided on that one yet. Should it stay "Waste No Thread!", or should it be "Play of Lines XXXX: Crossing the Red Line"? I will sleep on that for a night.

Munich, twice

Sometimes it takes months before I get a chance to go to Munich. Last week I got to go twice.
On Tuesday, I went to take down the International Threads' exhibition at Quilt et Textilkunst Gallery. Barbara was working, so I had to do it alone - with a little help from Christine Köhne for the four larger quilts that were up over the stairway. But taking down an exhibition is always so much faster than putting it up. Yet taking down an exhibition without Barbara is a lot less fun than putting it up with her... In any case, I had the chance to get another shot of Shapes 26 where the reflecting effect is actually visible - when there are no real lights around.

And then I found myself outside the store and gallery again, with a complete exhibition packed into two moving boxes, and pushing it back to the station.

Of course, the train was late, and I got back an hour later than could have been.
And then on Thursday another trip to Munich. This time together with my German class of refugees: the entire class went to visit the Bavarian Parliament, the Landtag, where we had been invited by a local representative to follow the debate of a new law for integration. Not only did we get to listen to the first few hours of the debate (which in the end lasted until five thirty in the morning before the final vote), but we were also shown around the building and met with some other politicians.

I had never been to the Landtag before, so it was an interesting and new experience for me, too.

Earlier in the week I had sent out the November selection of the fabric club. However, I have not taken a photo of the color range yet, so all I can show here is the stack of packages before shipping.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post a photo of the color range.

The week after

Ever since last Tuesday/Wednesday I have been trying to avoid listening to the news. My husband fills me in every now and then about what he thinks is important, so I am not completely out of it, but... Of course I heard about the earthquake in New Zealand - Kaikoura is where, just south of it, on my first bike trip, I saw a couple of yellow-eyed penguins behind a protective little fence beside the road, where they were standing, as if they were watching the traffic go by. Wonder what it looks like there now... And Leonard Cohen gone ... Not a good week out there, was it?
The week for me was very busy because I still had to prepare for the opening of International Thread's exhibition on Friday. Finished three sleeves, then on Thursday Barbara Lange and I spent a fun and hard-worked afternoon hanging up the exhibition. And on Friday morning I was busy writing the list of titles as we had actually hung them, putting in prices, updating our information sheets, and in the afternoon we went back to Munich, for the opening in the evening.
Saturday I spent the morning catching up on housework, and the afternoon at the longarm, working on a quilt which will be called "Mapping the World of My Mind" and is part of the article I am writing for Patchwork Professional Magazine.

These threads have by now been sunk, today I have gone through a steep learning curve about metallic threads on the longarm (although I have not reached the final stage in that yet) and am getting to the point where I want to say 'this is how much I am going to show in this issue', as it will need some hand-stitching, too, and definitely there will not be enough time to do it before the deadline.
This evening I went to see the 'supermoon'. On the way I caught a bit of nightly 'skyline in Bavaria'.

But I had been negligent about charging my camera's battery, and after this very first impression of the moon rising

it went dead. The clouds were rolling in, so there wasn't really much to photograph anymore anyway, and I simply watched a bit without having to check whether this would be good to photograph or not. It's pretty unlikely I will be around for the next supermoon, which they say is going to appear in 2052. There might be a slight chance, but to be honest, I don't want to hang in for that long! Not unless things take a radical change for the better, and that doesn't seem very likely right now, does it?

On a day like this...

After Britain's Brexit vote earlier this year, which really threw me completely, I had already learned that it did not make a whole lot of sense to hope for the best, that reason would prevail where political issues are involved these days. And although I tried to keep a little bit of hope alive, all the ups and downs during the last few weeks had long since left me convinced that the outcome of the American elections would be as unpleasant as it indeed turned out to be. Perhaps I hadn't quite expected the totality of the result, but I had not really had much hope left that it could be avoided. So when my husband greeted me this morning with "he's got it", it was only a confirmation of the expected. America, what have you done? I know it was the choice between plague and cholera that you had to take, but did you really have to choose this one?

And on my way to teach indeed it seemed a bit as if the world was in tears as well.

A little bit further along, there even was a bit of beauty left to be found.

By the time I had finished my three hours of morning class even the sun had broken through.

Although it didn't last long... I received packages from Margaret Ramsay and Kathy Loomis with their quilts for the International Threads exhibition that is opening day after tomorrow, and which Barbara Lange and I are going to be hanging tomorrow.

In Kathy's parcel there also was a promise, as my family is one of the lucky and happy recipients of her famous annual Christmas ornaments, which were included in the package. But I haven't opened that little bag yet, keeping a bit of suspense for better days.

Christmas ornaments, yet to be opened.

And in the evening I also received a huge bouquet of flowers from the SAQA board, as a thank you for my years as Regional Rep. Which certainly helped to brighten up the day even a bit more.

So where will we be in a year from now? Who knows...