I was fortunate to attend an extraordinary art exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum in early September. This was hugely popular and my first attempt to get in failed after I queued for two and a half hours and it was sold out. On my second attempt, I went with a friend who had a membership for two at the museum and we were fast tracked to the ticket booth and given a time to attend later in the day. The exhibit, with works dating from 1965-2017, Infinity Mirrors, by Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist, was unlike anything I’d seen before. There were six small rooms to enter, just two people at a time, for 20-30 seconds. In these rooms were objects, for example yellow pumpkins with black spots, pink balls with black spots, colored lights, and a series of mirrors to make the objects or lights repeat themselves giving the illusion of infinitely. It was amazing and mind-boggling. The first picture shows my favorite, the Infinity Mirrored Room – Love Forever. There were two peep-holes to look into the room and the lights constantly changed colors. The center mirror shows my hands holding my cell phone to take the picture.
Dots Obsession – Love Transformed into Dots was multiple pink balls covered in black dots. The picture on the left shows the outside and the one on the right, is inside the largest ball with the mirrors and infinity effect.
Yayoi Kusama is indeed obsessed by dots. Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field, consists of white stuffed fabric tubers covered in red dots. The other picture shows me in The Obliteration Room, an interactive environment where everyone was given three colored dots to stick anywhere in this room that was originally totally white. Since I attended the exhibit close to its closing after it had been running for three months, it was hard to find a space that was still white and not covered in colored dots.
Here are a couple of shots of sculptures by this incredible artist. Notice the use of dots again!
The next pictures are snaps I took during a video of the artist talking about her work. I love what she says: “I take each day as a test for how much I can contribute to society and increase peace and love around the world” and “I’m always thinking about how I can make something that people will enjoy and be moved by.” I found this exhibit so inspiring and creative. The bold use of dots, bright colors and lights, and the illusion of space generated by the use of the mirrors were fantastic.
At the end my week of teaching and sight seeing in Johannesburg two years ago, Grace Nobili and her friend Lesley took me to the Rosebank African Craft Market which is open every Sunday and located on the top level of the parking garage of a mall. I am hoping to visit again just before I come home this year.
What a feast for the eyes! It was so colorful and inspiring. The beautiful beaded dolls and jewelry are typical of the Natal area.
These are made from hundreds of tiny seed-beads as are the gorgeous animals below. I bought a magnificent gemsbok (oryx) from this man who made all these creatures that are displayed. Some were as large as two feet tall.
There were many other colorful crafts. I loved the hand-embroidered squares of African life and animals. Here are several made into a fabulous quilt. There were plenty of vibrant paintings too.
It’s always inspiring to attend lectures by renowned quilters and I was delighted to go to the Quilters Anonymous meeting in Edmonds this week for Pamela Mostek‘s presentation. I have been a member of this large and vibrant group for almost 20 years, but since my teaching schedule has become busier, I’m no longer able to attend many of the meetings.
Pam began as an editorial and creative assistant to Debbie Mumm and then started creating her own patterns. She is the author of several quilting books published by Martingale & Co, designs fabric, makes unique art quilts and teaches all over the USA. She walked us through the evolution of her work and showed us many beautiful examples. In her first book, Just Can’t Cut It, she uses large prints, the ones we really don’t want to cut, in combination with simple piecing. The example below is made from Liberty of London’s fabric in wide sections divided by rows of triangles and strips. What a great way to use this gorgeous fabric and to maintain the integrity of design on it.
Then Pam fussy-cut 4″ and 2″ squares of large prints to feature flowers and combined these with piecing. These blend together beautifully on the example below and the light center makes the flowers pop out around the outside. As Pam continued to explore this idea she used the large prints around the border of her quilts and began fussy-cutting the actual flowers, broderie perse style and appliqueing them to make a nice transition between the floral border and the pieced center of the quilt.
The photos don’t do these justice, but they give you some idea of how the work develops. From here Pam added glittery metallic threads and crystals to embellish her pieces. The details on this bag decorated with a cabbage and the floral piece are marvelous. Pam also shared some of her recent abstract art quilts for us to enjoy.
Quilters Anonymous is a talented group and the Show and Tell part of the meeting was a treat too. I came away feeling uplifted and inspired. I’m excited to be teaching my Gateway to Mongolia class for them this Saturday (tomorrow!).
Who knows the origin of a design idea? Maybe this quilt, Urban Garden (aka R3tro), was brewing in my brain for some time, inspired by a combination of different thoughts – a pattern in some paving stones or a window or on a church vestment, the idea of making large scale blocks, the desire to make something that looks contemporary but that utilizes printed fabrics I already own and like rather than the “modern” tendency to solid colors. I was kicked into action by wanting to enter a quilt show with a deadline for submissions of 20th April. After a winter of revising my website, I was definitely in quilting deficit and have thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in this project. Here’s the very rough sketch I scrawled out as I ate my breakfast before heading out to sing joyfully on Easter morning – as you can see there was quite an evolution to the final version. In this case, I made it up as I went along. Often I design using computer software (more on this another time).
Here are the fabrics that I used in the quilt. I liked the black floral and pulled the colors from it. I had purchased a solid light buttery yellow, but decided it looked too washed out, so I went to my stash and found some yellow prints. There wasn’t enough of any of them, so I used four different ones which actually make the quilt more interesting. When it came to the borders, I wanted a stronger yellow so I bought the solid on the far left.
I made the center and the corner blocks first. The blocks are 21”. They went together pretty quickly. I’m quite particular about details and after I started piecing the four-patches, I noticed that the blue fabric with black dots has a direction aspect – the dots appear in vertical lines in one orientation and in horizontal lines when rotated. To maintain the overall symmetry I made sure the lines went the way I wanted. I also manipulated the direction of the leafy green fabric by cutting some pieces across the width of the fabric and others down the length.
It took me a couple of days to work out the pattern for the four side blocks. I wanted to complete the Trip Around the World-style pattern created by the large floral squares and to continue the lines of leafy fabric on the outer edges to establish links with the corner blocks. Then the leafy fabric was all gone so I introduced the green dots sandwiched by the orange. I put these sections perpendicular to the leafy green parts and the middle one is longer, helping to lead the eye out from the middle and to break up the nine-patch format of the other blocks. The smaller pieced section of orange and blue adjacent to the center block extends the central pattern in the quilt and helps to make the overall design more cohesive.
Now that the nine blocks were completed I decided they needed a narrow sashing to separate them slightly. The pictures show the blocks before and after. I thought a black and white stripe would work well, but I only had a small piece in my stash. I found the black fabric with white dashes and I like the way it turned out. Once again, I manipulated the direction of the fabric, so that in some places the dashes look like parallel lines and in others they appear as zigzags.
The borders were tricky and I ruminated for a couple of days – I aimed to extend the pattern out from the center without repeating too many of the parallel lines. By the time I had worked out what to do, I had a deadline of a day to have the quilt ready for my good friend Wanda Rains to do the long-arm quilting. I always tell my students not to rush borders. The borders can make or break the quilt and it is worthwhile putting in the time to do them accurately. However, I didn’t anticipate the piecing taking me as long as nine and a half hours, and at 10.30 p.m. I was mitering the corners on the final black border. Whew, it was done!
The next day, I was teaching a class all day at Quilted Strait in Port Gamble. I dropped the quilt off with Wanda in Kingston in the morning and returned after class in the late afternoon to collect it. Wanda had quilted a lovely overall leafy design which softens all those pieced straight lines and was just what the quilt needed. I scrambled over the weekend to attach the binding and finish the quilt for photography on Monday. I don’t usually churn out a big quilt in two weeks, but this one just gushed forth!