Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

Lately I've been following some discussions about the field: the art quilt in the fine art world, the shortcomings and advantages of entering juried quilt shows, the path of the artist to success. These discussions (which I suppose take place among artists of all sorts) are certainly stirring my brain dust.

Principally, I have been following the thoughtful discourse on the blog of Lisa Call, whose quilt work and writing both I admire, Rather than recap her remarks and that of those commenting on her posts, I invite you to look in on the conversation. Perhaps you will find them as delightully disturbing as I did.

First,  I need to  tell myself (and you if you stay with me) my story as an artist. Warning: this may be far more than you want to know about me, but in order for me to get to where I am trying to go with this "success" discussion, I really need to succinctly chart where I have come from.

My path into art quilts is a bit odd. I was always an arty kid -- hand me a crayon and I was one happy kid. My parents enrolled me in an innovative and creative art/theater program at Baylor University, after I had won and had to leave behind a scholarship to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts school.  A bit later, I earned an art degree (B.A.) from a liberal arts university in the late '60s -- about the time that even conservative universities were throwing out some of the traditional curricula and giving students a rather freehand in their education. For my senior project I sewed a room full of paper bag sculptures -- no one really got it. And, as a young woman, I was still (in 1970) living in a rather patriarchal world where it seemed pretty impossible to be a "real" artist. (I never learned anything about how I might make a living as an artist at university!)

Continuing within the construct of an arts-in-education research and teacher training foundation (the outgrowth of that childhood theater program) I made art banners/tapestries. I was inspired by Martha Mood, whose work stirs me, and Becky Crouch Patterson, whose wonderful  fabric wall art dances in my memory when I sit down to work. I also ran into Sister Mary Corita (Corita Kent) though work with several of her students who taught me the  joy of found imagery, to cut rather than draw, and to make a mean alphabet stamp. My personal art work was mostly within the context of community art projects, collaborations with children, using a variety of media for installations, exhibits, art works and experiences -- Happenings, books, banners, and performance events. Some of which took place in quite prestigious settings -- the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Blaffer Gallery at U of H, to name a few.

Ten years after that art education career had morphed into journalism, and then to work as a designer of interactive exhibitsmostly for children's museums -- I found myself wanting desperately to make art of my own. I added art cloth techniques and a devotion to making it via study with Jane Dunnewold. Then I took a weekend workshop with Sue Benner and WonderUnder was the answer to a question I hadn't even figured out to ask. Jumping into the world of art quilts with the mentoring of Jane, of Beth Kennedy, of Judi Goolsby, of Leslie Jenison and many others who worked and talked and shared ideas and techniques at Art Cloth Studios, I have in the past 8 years slowly  but steadily found my voice in cloth, in art. Through conversations and our Complex Cloth sales booth I discovered the Houston International Quilt Show, that there was such a thing as an art quilt, and that maybe that's what I was making. Along the way I had joined Fiber Artists of San Antonio, (intentionally not-a-guild group, but still with some guildish qualities, like juried exhibits).

You notice, there is scarce mention of quilting or quiltmaking in any of this. And hardly anything about sewing, except that I had to learn to do it in order to keep the WonderUndered edges in place. I didn't even know it was called raw edge applique. So now, 13 years after taking that first complex cloth class, I find myself a fulltime professional artist and teacher. And not quite sure how to define success, or at least not the NEXT success.

 I haven't entered any national art quilt juried shows -- but, yes, have had work in local and regional fiber arts exhibits. I've been part of several invitational shows or exhibits put together at the sort-of co-op gallery that I was part of for three years. Part of my reluctance to enter the big time national quilt juried exhibits is that I really don't have the precise sewing skills that seem to be highly valued in such venues. To tell you the truth, I don't really care about burying my threads or making a perfect mitered corner (I avoid the whole binding issue by just edge-stitching around the edges.)

So, this is where I've been. Next, where to go? It seems I've gotten here without much planning -- I just knew eight years ago that I did not ever want to have to take a fulltime job working for someone else. I've managed that. But now I need to chart the next ten. And as I turn 59 in a couple of weeks, my sense of time is certainly not what it was when I was 35 or 45.

I still feel awfully new around here. Only since I've been reading some good blogs by quilt artists, have I even begun to fathom the pathways and pitfalls to "success" in this in-between art world. I still bristle against the capitol A Art World that, to me, has often worked itself into such an elite language, that the work fails in approachability. I see a place in the world for this level of visual art work -- but for me, and I think to many people, its relationship to where we live daily is the much the same as that of string theory or particle physics. Perhaps it's important that someone is doing that work, but it doesn't touch me much, and I'm not really aiming at being in a contemporary art museum anytime soon. I have a parallel and equally passionate devotion to the teaching part of my life (a vocation I have followed since age 12). I'm not sure whether I make art to have validity as a teacher, or teach to have viability as an artist. So where am I headed? Stay tuned for Art and Quilts and Art  Quilts. part two. And maybe, if you are an artist, you might try this same  map charting exercise. What got you here?

Here's a short heads-up. My art quilts arrived safely in Elgin for the TX Originals exhibit. If you are anywhere near Elgin (A bit outside of Austin, TX) on Saturday, March 24, I hope you will stop in to see the show. Texas Original artists will display ceramics, fiber art, jewelry, wood, sculpture, furniture, treenware, quilts and metal art.

The exhibit will be celebrated with live music, food and beverages at a reception at Kingfisher Fine Art and Music, 116 Depot Street, Elgin, Texas.  E Flat Porch Band will play until 6.pm. but the other festivities will be from 4 to 8.  The exhibit remains on display until Saturday, April 14.

For more information about the Texas Originals program, the artists and the event, click the link on the right hand sidebar.

How do you work in a series? Or do you? Why or why not? And what makes it a series?

I see some individual works of art -- in many different media -- that intrigue and interest me, make me want a continuing conversation with that artist. But then, I look further, and I can't get a hold of what is going on. I can't find the path and I want more than one stepping stone for the journey. I strongly believe that commiting to one (or a few) clear paths is an important decision toward having one's work taken seriously out there in the broader art world.

And yet I know the challenge of working and reworking a theme or image or technique with the fear that someone will say, "Hasn't she done that already?"  or even worse, being bored with it myself or doubting my loyalty to a theme or direction that is played out.

My solution recently (say the last couple of years) has been to work in several series simultaneously -- each of which has its own direction, but has some distinction, some major differing factor, from other work. So far it works for me, though I'm not sure how it works for "marketing."   Some of what I do is about the medium itself: I still want to do some art cloth for art cloth's sake -- yardage that isn't about being cut up and used for anything, fabric that exists as form enough. Right now I am continuing to make my wooden frame shaped altares, each house shaped, but I still dip back and forth on subject matter. I have one series of smaller pieces that include photographic images of the Hill Country (the Borderlands series) and I still continue to explore the image of feminine sacred icons. And now, my mermaids are really taking flight (and falls).

 But what about you? How do you work in a series?

I'm following the advice of Alyson Stanfield's Art Biz newsletter and linking up to a number of "blog crawlers" so that this site has more visibility. Why do I care? I am an artist, and I am a self-employed business woman. I like the creative side of this work, and I even like learning more about the business side of things. The web is such an ever-evolving sphere out/in/over there. In the world without storefronts (or maybe it's a storefront on every laptop) it's fascinating to me to find the maps that make it work.