Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

Gap in posting is to be expected. When Linda goes on break from teaching, I tend to forget my (self)employed status for a while  (well, until I look at my bank account) and revel in summer in the Hill Country. And a lovely one it is so far: cool in the mornings and evenings, spectacular thunder and lightning storms, clear skies and billowy clouds and sun during the day. The tierra has finally gotten enough rain to green up and the tomatoes in the garden are ripening!

There's a new pooch, a new porch and I'm back in print in the magazine world after a long sabatical from that strand of the tapestry -- My first piece in the quilt world is in Quilting Arts in the June/July issue: a profile of Alaskan artist Ree Nancarrow. I love writing and profiles of artists are a perfect genre for me -- I get to talk to artists whom I admire and then shape a story to communicate what I find special about their work. Thanks to Pokey Bolten (and Leslie Riley who introduced us at last year's International Quilt Festival). So run out and buy a copy, send a letter to Pokey about how much you like my writing (I'm sure), and lets keep that path open!

As to the Pooch. Linda picked up a dumped black-and-tan coon hound (we didn't know at first and thought she was a bloodhound) on the highway and its been a roller coaster ride ever since. You know those free dogs -- she had a bad abcess from a fight with something; she was going into heat; she had to be spayed and her very long nails groomed; the long beautiful ears where filled with bacteria and she and Rodeo, the resident alpha animal gentle spirited border collie, have spent many a testy moment posturing about status in the pack. Not to mention that Bandera (she's named for the highway, county and county seat up the road) seems to think resident cat is a coon. Not so good, since resident cat is fearless and loves to provoke said coon hound. And that a coon hound is mostly nose. So she can't be trusted to stay home guarding the resident sheep (us) as can border collie Rodeo. But, as things will have it, we love her. Find her fascinating and goofy, and are now walking 3 miles a day to give her the run time she needs. We are all looking much trimmer.

The new porch is a big hit with family  and friend visitors, as well as the residents, two and four legged, and I can't wait to use it for opening morning sessions (if it stays cool enough) for the next workshop (completely sold out, thanks to a final registrant who found me and the workshops due to the published profile!). What a sentence.

Our neighbor Bill (That's his house, which he and his wife also built, in the background) built the extension to an existing deck, making a sleeping/dining porch about 25 by 15 with an open porch 8 feet out and poised over the cliff side overlooking the cedars and water oaks. The roof is clear near the house, letting light into the kitchen and DR and metal on the part further out from the house. Three screen doors complete the picture.

So, what are you doing this summer, so far? It's a great time to dye, to sunprint and to rust, so we're dusting off the rust bucket and the dyepots and getting (back) to work!

 P.S. Here's Rodeo, so he won't be too jealous about Bandera's star role in this post.

Everytime I think that surely the whole world is into art quilts I meet someone who looks puzzled and asks me "huh?" Quilts hung on the wall is sort of part of it, but many people also hang their "traditional" quilts on the wall. And, frankly, I'm not so sure that the borderline between traditional and art quilts is all that clear in the minds of many who even like to tinker in the trappings.

I certainly don't want to replay the whole art vs. craft discussion here, nor do I believe that we gain a lot by debating what exactly is art -- it's a lovely question that's been asked and answered for ages. (I personally like what Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1890 in Conundrum of the Workshop:

“When the flush of a new-born sun fell on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Til the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty. But is it Art?”

But I do think its worth stating and restating a few times on this blog, one the purportedly is about the studio life, practise and output of an artist who makes art quilts (aka contemporary textile paintings) and during this season of entry forms (esn't every season now?) it's nice to revisit what some of the "big kids on the block" have to say about it.

Here's Lisa Call's take on the topic, from her Squidoo lens (and she quotes and attributes several others):

What is a Contemporary Art Quilt
From Lisa Call’s http://www.squidoo.com/artquilts/

There is a lot of discussion in the art quilt world about what exactly an "art quilt" is and what we should call them. The simple term "quilt" is deemed unacceptable by a large portion of the general art quilting population because of the connotations of traditional quilt that it carries with it. So most people prefer to add some type of disclaimer to qualify the type of quilt they make.
One of the more common terms is "art quilt". I prefer "contemporary quilt". Some people say "fiber art" or "studio quilt" or "textile art" or "soft painting". But the question remains - exactly WHAT is a contemporary art quilt? Generally it refers to a quilt that was intended to be art and hang on the wall vs. placed on a bed. Although some art quilts might also be bed quilts.

What is Art?
As contemporary art quilts are "art" it's good to think about what art is when trying to define them. Of course defining art is difficult but the definition I prefer I read on Alyson Stanfield's Art Biz Blog

"What is art? . . . art is the deliberate creation of aesthetic sensations. Art is a work of a human being, not of nature. It is not accidental. It produces something that is perceived through the senses and results in a personal emotional experience. . . .

". . . it is the conscious, deliberate production of an event or object of beauty (or emotional import) by a human being, employing not only the skill of the craftsman, but in addition, an element of creativity--original, inventive, instinctive, genius. An art object is an aesthetic artifact, deliberately created.
Art actually lies in the act of creation, not in its result."

--G. Ellis Burcaw, Introduction to Museum Work, page 66

Definition of an Art Quilt
From the "Authorities"
This is Quilt National's definition:
The work must possess the basic structural characteristics of a quilt. It must be predominantly fabric or fabric-like material and must be composed of at least two full and distinct layers - a face layer and a backing layer. The face layer may be described by any or a combination of the following terms: pieced, appliqued, whole cloth, stitched/fused to a foundation. The face and backing layers must be held together by hand- or machine-made functional quilting stitches or other elements that pierce all layers and are distributed throughout the surface of the work. At least some of these stitches or elements should be visible on the back of the work. As an alternative, the work may be a modular construction (an assemblage of smaller quilts). Each individual module, however, must meet the above structural criteria.

This is Studio Art Quilt Associates's definition:
SAQA defines an art quilt as a contemporary artwork exploring and expressing aesthetic concerns common to the whole range of visual arts: painting, printmaking, photography, graphic design, assemblage and sculpture, which retains, through materials or technique, a clear relationship to the folk art quilt from which it descends.

The art part of the definition is the most debateable, and as Kipling wrote, a longtime call and response.

The majority of Westerners today, if a survey of more than 500 people conducted by Carolyn Boyd’s anthropology class at Texas A&M has any validity, think that

“art is created for the sole purpose of being aesthetically pleasing to people within society and with minimum purpose beyond that of intrinsic enjoyment.”

Boyd is studying the rock art paintings of the Pecos River and, she views those great works in a somewhat different light, one that does not make them ART at all, but something more utilitarian than what that survey indicates most Americans think about art.

Human beings are makers – we evolved these opposable thumbs and then just couldn’t help but start making tools, making clothing, making shelter, making food fancier, making stuff.

As we developed more skills and fancier tools --and perhaps the time to spare, we started pleasing our senses with the things we made --adding aesthetic considerations to their functionality with decoration, embellishment – and also just with making things that had inherent sensory-pleasing qualities of texture, color, shape and form. This concern, these considerations have changed, but endured even into the industrial and post industrial, electronic world. Craft and technical skills become valuable.

We make stuff – and try to make it pleasing --but we humans also make stories. As story makers, we are as concerned with the why and how come and what happened then and what happens next as we are with making our lives run more smoothly. A story, in this broad artspeak meaning, can be a narrative, a question, a confusion, a conversation between formal elements like line and color, a public outrage, a private history -- and it can be done well or poorly.

And to me that’s where the art comes in to the quilt.

The intersections of what we think of as different fields of study fascinates me. These videos I stumbled across today provide some tantilizing connective tissue between art and mathematics in the work and research of Eric Demaine. What I liked best was Eric's statement that mathematics is an art medium. And his, sometimes a bit rattled, SEED presentation (Scroll down to see the embedded video) proves that he is working from the spirit that drives all of us who make art.

First, here are the links to an animation of the Metamophosis of the Cube

The background of the animation of
Metamophosis of the Cube even has its own little artfull story:

Watching the animation, you'll probably notice the old page of cyrillic text in the background. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it gives something onto which the folding objects can cast shadows. Second, it is in some sense the basis for our work. The page is from a Russian book on Convex Polyhedra by the famous Russian geometer A. D. Aleksandrov. In particular, the theorem underneath the folding cube characterizes what “polyhedral metrics” can be folded into convex polyhedra.

Advice to artists: When Alyson B. Stanfield puts out a call for photographs, answer the call. If you're lucky and have the right work to share, you may find yourself featured in a magazine article, such as this one in June's issue of Art Calendar!

This is the second time an article by Alyson has used one of my photos to illustrate her advice, and, I assure you, the exposure is welcome. And of course, as a fan and occassional student in Art Biz Coach workshops, the advice is always worth reading. This article about public speaking for artists includes the following tip (buy the magazine to read more and to catch the rest of the details!) Alyson writes:

"Provide a call to action.

When you conclude, don't forget why you're there....Suggesting a next step to your audience provides both closure and a transition for continuingyour relationship with them."

Believe me, I learned several good new approaches to include in my next artist's talk from the article, and I suspect you will as well!