Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

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.

Escape Velocity, 2009.

19" by 26.5" by 2.5' Textile on wooden frame

$400

Here's a preview of some of my new work that will be shown at FiberArt Space though June 15, with the artists' reception tonight starting at 5:30. The 8" by 8" by 1.5" pieces are a new format for me, inspired by a desire to make some smaller work that relate to larger pieces. These little satellites are $85 -- I hope they'll find good homes! If you are interested in any of the pieces in this preview (just a few of the 24 pieces I have on display), please contact the gallery.

Fiber Artspace
1414 S. Alamo St. # 103
San Antonio, TX 78210

210-633-6959

Located in the Blue Star Art Complex
In the Armon Art Suite of Galleries

They will be happy to arrange shipping. If you want to see more, email me and I'll try to have an album link up on my website by early next week.

Above top: Letting Go 2, Letting Go 1, each 8" by 8" by 1.5"

Above, lower: Dream Tree with Spines, 8" by 8" by 1.5"

(I think) Please describe these if you wish to purchase one of these, I realize now I didn't put the numbers on the photo titles!

Dream house with Spines, 2009 SOLD

8" by 8" by 1.5"

$85

Pomegranate, 2009 SOLD

8"by 8" by 1.5"

$85

This last piece has an unusual history and technique in its making: I love pomegranates and often feature them in my work. They have both real and symbolic beauty and are, to me, a symbol of the fertility of creativity. This was a photoshopped image of a pomegranate that I photographed in Monte Vista, an area near my old university (Trinity University in San Antonio) when I walked there last fall. The tree was a full bushy shrub with many fruit and it was just luscious. When I worked on the photo, I enhanced and saturated the colors to make the image move from real to magical. I printed the image on several materials, including this plastic packing material -- (perhaps its Tyvak, but I am not sure as it was a recycled bit found on the run). Then, last fall when teaching at the International Quilt Festival in Houston (where I'll be teaching and lecturing this fall, too) I had used all the fabric I brought for demonstrating a polychrome method of screenprinting with water-soluble crayons -- This scrap of an image fell out of the box of supplies (I'd actually taken it for a different demo) and the rest is history -- that's the swirly designs. 'Course, in making this piece, I added more fabric, screenprinted the squiggles and the wheel symbol and did some machine and hand stitching to finish the embellished image, floating there in its magical mystical presence!

If you'd like to know the checkered past for any of these other pieces, or any of the art on my website or blog elsewhere, please leave a question in the comments. Everything has a story.

P.S. Here's a complete list of my work that's in the exhibit. Any questions, send me an email with the contact box in the sidebar,.

a) Title: Escape Velocity
Size: 19” by 26.5” by 2.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price: $400

b) Title:Escape Velocity, 2
Size: 12” by 12” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price: $115

c) Title:Dream Tree with Spines
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

d) Title: Dream House with Spines
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

e) Title:Escape
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

f Title: Dream House with Spines, 2
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

g) Title: ”I’m Out of Here”
Size: 19” by 26.5” by 2.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price: $400

h) Title:Escape
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

i) Title:Dream House with Spines, 3
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

j) Title: Pomegranate: Fertile Earth
Size: 19” by 26.5” by 2.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price: $350

k) Title: Earth Niche, 1
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

l) Title:Earth Niche, 2
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

m) Title: Pomegranate 1
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

n) Title: Pomegranate 2
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

o) Title:Fig Leaf
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

p) Title: Rose Grotto
Size: 12” by 16” by 3.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$200

q) Title: El Cielo Dream, 2
Size: 19” by 17.5” by 2.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price: $350

r) Title: El Cielo Dream, 3
Size: 12” by 12” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$110

s) Title:Letting Go, 1
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

t) Title: Letting Go, 2
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

u) Title:Letting Go, 3
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

v) Title:Letting Go, 4
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile on wooden frame
Retail Price:$85

W) Title:Michael of a Thousand Eyes
Size: 8” by 8” by 1.5”
Media: Textile , art quilt
Retail Price $750

I've spent most of the past two weeks in a storm of productivity -- and I'm quite happy with all the work I've gotten done, if not a bit chagrined that it seems to take deadlines to get me into this heat of energy in the studio. The show is a three-person show at the newly relocated FiberArt Space and Suchil Coffman organized the theme and put all of us in action.

I've a whole slew of new work -- but it's also old. The theme called me to revisit some small paintings that I had made sometime, I think, in the 1980s. The pieces were made from dreams and some untangling personal work that I did in the 1980s, reclaiming some old stories and rewriting my own past and some painful memories with compassion.  I made new textile pieces from a couple of these paintings, and made some photo copier prints from them, then reshaped them into some new small 8" by 8" by 1.5" pieces.

I also made some small new pieces from photo prints made of details from earlier work -- hands that were part of larger pieces,  turning them into a small series called "Letting Go." And also made some small companion "satellite" works to accompany a larger altar piece now retitled and reworked, "Pomegranate: Fertile Earth."

I won't post the new work (other than these little teaser details) until the show opens, but once the reception is over, I'll put some of these new pieces here on the blog and on the website. If you can't make it to the exhibit, maybe you'll find a piece that needs to be in your collection here on the web. I will, of course, pay FiberArt Space their commission for any work sold as a result of this exhibition!