One day left before Diamond Day

 As every year for a dozen or so years now I have contributed a donation to the SAQA Benefit Auction.

With all the things going on in my life I did not have time to get going about putting out a post "Bid on Me!", as SAQA offers for all donators every year. Nor did I have time early on to publish my Dream Collection, as many other contributors have done and I used to do in other years.

Only today did I take initiative to do so. And found myself in trouble, because how to choose from more than 460 artworks...? At first I thought I might try to find a topic, as I have done before, but that didn't work out for me. Then I thought I might take all members from 20 Perspectives who have donated. But there are more than six of us who have donated, and Dream Collections are supposed to be only six pieces. Of course, this being a different format altogether I could have jumped that regulation, but then I decided to abide by those rules and took six pieces from friends of mine. (Note that, amongst 464 pieces, there are many more from people whom I know personally and admire their work, so the choice to limit myself to six was even harder with the 'friends' category than the 20 Perspectives category. I hope nobody complains about the choice, it is absolutle no indication of the degree of sympathy I feel for the people.)

Here is my 2024 Dream Collection "Works from Some Friends of Mine":

Anne Bellas, Souleil Couchant

Linda Colsh, Narrow Days

Judith Content, One Winter Walk

Dolores Miller, Venice Vessels

Claire Passmore, Neon Upccyle II

Shoshi Rhimer, Reflection

Of course, there is the temptation to include one's own piece in the Dream Collection, but as jurors are not usually allowed to enter a piece in the show they are jurying yet may show one piece of their own, I will add, as a repeat showing, my piece as well.

Uta Lenk, Small Study in Yellow and Blue, p.C.

Diamond Day is tomorrow - any piece may be bought at the initial starting bid of $1000, after that the 464 pieces go up for reverse price bidding in three sections. Do take a look - it is a wonderful way of acquiring a piece of original textile art and supporting SAQA at the same time.

Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, final report

Just a few more impressions from Ste. Marie-aux-Mines in Alsace.

Here is an installation with lots of Aurifil thread spools at the entry to the Espace Commercial, which I found interesting. What an idea!

Besides the Canadian exhibition «Tradition in Transition» I got to see the results of the contest, of course.

The Jury, after picking "best of show":
Linda Colsh, Libby Lehman, and I (from left)

However, because all the quilts are pictured in the catalogue, I did not take any photos besides the one of the winner of ‘best of show’, “Remembering” by Linda Kemshall.

"Remembering" by Linda Kemshall,
best of show Carrefour Européenne 2012

I also got to see Kumiko Frydl’s stunning show of little pieces, “Perfect piecing”, which left me full of admiration and awe. Kumiko’s quilts are usually not any larger than 40cm/16 inch on each side, yet display the full richness in details as would befit a fully sized King Size quilt. Absolutely fascinating. 

Kumiko Frydl, "Mission: Impossible?", 21 x 21 inch

Kumiko Frydl, "Pineapple Patch", Detail

Kumiko Frydl, "Pineapple Patch", 15 x 15 inch

Kumiko has published a book on her technique (in French), which, unfortunately was sold out by the time I got to see her exhibition.

I also went to the Place des Tisserands for a stop at SAQA's Wide Horizons III and at Libby Lehman’s exhibition. In Libby’s show I found it highly interesting to see the development she has made – there are thirty years between “Red Sky in the Morning” (1982) and “Ribbonplay” (2011).

Libby Lehman, "Red Sky at Morning", 1982

Libby Lehman, "Ribbon Play", 2011

My favorite in Wide Horizons was Margaret Ramsay’s “Weymouth Waves”. 

Margaret Ramsay, "Weymouth Waves", 2012

That’s a degree of ‘pictorial quilt’ that I can really connect to. This time the Wide Horizons is supposed to travel through Europe for the next year. It will be shown in Vicanza in October, and SAQA and Carrefour are still working on finding additional venues. If you get a chance to see it, you should definitely take it!

This is the last report of what quilts I got to see in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines. As I wanted to be present at my own exhibition as much as possible I did not venture into the other villages more than once – and ended before a church closed for mass.

Being there with an exhibition keeps one busy enough that seeing other people’s exhibitions is not on the top priority position for those days. But it was a wonderful and rewarding experience. Thank you very much to Gul LaPorte, who invited me in the first place, and to Sylvie Leroux for her professional management of the artists’s concerns and needs, and to Dinah for her kindness and expertise in managing the contest and the jury!

Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, report no. 2

After I had been busy Wednesday morning hanging my show, I was pleased with the final result and the appearance of „my“ side of the church.

The other side was occcupied by Regula Affolter from Switzerland and her „Interpretations of human bodies and blue brains“, an interesting series on brain patterns, head shapes and other radiological phenomena.

In the afternoon my next round in jury-commitments called: we still had to determine the first prize winner of the contest „Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow“. Together with president of the jury Libby Lehman and Linda Colsh I got to see the entire exhibition of the chosen pieces in advance at the Chapelle Saint Joseph. We quickly agreed that the quilt which had received the single highest number of points in the individual rounds of judging was actually worthy of receiving „Best of Show“.

"Remembering" by Linda Kemshall, recipient of "Best of Show"
at this year's contest at the Carrefour

I slept very badly in the night before Thursday – too excited... 

People were already standing in front of the gates of the Espace commerciale when I was heading towards the church just after nine o’clock, and the first visitors entered the church at ten past nine – official opening time of the exhibit was 9:30!

After that the entire day was a constant stream of visitors.

Friday was very busy as well, but slighly fewer visitors on Saturday and even less on Sunday.

I can’t say how often I had to verify that my lines are not appliquéd, and that yes, these lines can be sewn, and with a machine. It seems this was just very hard to believe for most people who were there. And several thousand pictures were taken, I can’t even guess how many they actually were.

It was wonderful to hear so much praise and receive so much admiration for what I had worked on for so long. And I was particularly pleased to meet Lucia Stacchetti of the „Quilt Triennale“, Cathy Izzo and Dale Riehl of the Art Quilt Gallery in New York City, and last but not least the American Art Quilt Collector Jack Walsh, all of whom took the time to stop by and take a look at my exhibition.

On Sunday things turned more quiet, and as I had time to actually sit down on my chair I spent some time looking at Play of Lines XXX and XXIV: Tangle hanging right next to each other. And I started doodling with the thought how either of these two could be improved.

Or parts of them could even be combined to form an entirely new set of lines.

Perhaps a new combination of lines?

So I returned home with several ideas already churning in my head. It’s just a problem of increasing the number of hours per day so I can get everything finished, given all the other things that have been put off for so long and are now waiting to be taken care of.

Impressions from serving as a jury member

In the end of July I had the honour of serving as one of three jury members for the competition in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines.

We received two photos of each quilt entered on a USB-stick: one full view, and a detail. In addition, the stick contained an excel-file in which we were to enter our points. We had to judge four different criteria – relevance to the them, composition, technique, and originality. These points were added together, thus each quilt could earn a total of no more than 20 points. The quilts were numbered, so we did not know any names of makers. Not even now do we know who made the quilts that were selected. Only in September will we know, when we get together to chose the best of show.

It was a very interesting and instructive experience! I myself had received a rejection of two of my quilts which I had entered for SAQA’s „Wide Horizons III“ just on the morning when I started my jurying. So I was very much and acutely aware of the fact how deeply disappointed one feels upon receiving a rejection. Especially since the competition’s topic, “Yesterday, today, tomorrow” was one that elicited some very personal quilts. Which in turn might result in even stronger feelings of disappointed upon rejection.

Overall, I was surprised by the low number of entries – a total of only 93 quilts had been signed up. And I was slightly disappointed with the quality of the quilts entered. Certainly, there were some which were really good, and I did give top marks of 20 to three of the quilts. (I thought I was being very strict – but the other two members of the jury did not give perfect scores to any of the quilts.) But the additions of the individual scores also showed clearly and easily which 32 quilts would be my personal selection.

This procedure was followed individually by the other two jurors as well – LibbyLehmann from the USA, and LindaColsh, an American living in Belgium. We then communicated by e-mail and would have also skyped if there had been severe differences in judgements, but we were able to solve everything by e-mail in the end. All three jurors’ scores were added, thus giving us a final score for each of the quilts. Our scores certainly differed  for some of the quilts, which I take to be a very good sign. That way there were fair chances for quilts of different styles to succeed. In the end, our judgement was uncontroversial, though. The only bit of discussion we had was when we had to decide on a substitute for one quilt, because we had chosen two by the same maker, which is not allowed, but even that was solved quickly.

So the whole process of jurying and communicating with the other jurors was a great experience of co-operation.

I was rather annoyed with the quality of some of the photos, however. Some of them were out of focus – which is not bound to make a positive impression on jury members who want to take a closer look at details or parts of the quilt. Many pictures had a low number pixels, i.e. photo size – again, that does not help when a jury member wants to zoom into the picture and look at something more closely. Some of them were cropped – do I see the entire quilt here, or what? Some of them were crooked. When I look at a photo for jurying I don’t want to have to hold my head slanted in order to get a good upright impression of what I am looking at.

Add to that the fact that several of the statements included referred only to the technique used, but did not give a clue about the relevance to the topic. And indeed there were some quilts which would have needed such an explanation as the relevance to the topic was not obvious on first sight. And there were some statements which included so many mistakes that it did not necessarily help in making the relevance to the topic any clearer.

From these experiences I want to point out several points which somehow seem obvious but definitely need to be adhered to in a much more particular way. When entering a quilt in a competition in which photos are the basis for first rounds of judgement, please

• Make sure that somebody takes the picture who really knows what s/he is doing. It might be a very worthy investment of taking the quilt to a photographer and having a professional picture taken. Make sure that the quilt is depicted straight, that nothing is cropped, and that ever part of the quilt is well lit.
• When taking the photo yourself, make sure that you have the settings on a 5 MB file. It will make it a lot easier on the jury to zoom in and look at specific details – which in turn will help the chances of your quilt!
• For a detail shot, chose an important section of the quilt, where the technique used can be seen, or which is vital for the composition. A detail of an uninteresting background section is not what the jury is looking for.
• Make sure that your statement is grammatically correct, in what ever language you are using. If you are not sure about your English, please have somebody look it over, or get somebody for the translation. Statements with too many mistakes in them do not help the chances of selection ...

I do wish everybody success when they are entering for a competition or show. However, a jury must always select only a small set of the quilts entered – rejections are bound to happen to any of us. Just don’t take them personal.