Monthly Archives: November 2013

Material Girl

Material Girl: Surrounded with luxury, buried in debt, and still looing for the next shiny thing.  My latest piece is finally finished.  My final step was to add the crumpled papers along the bottom.  They are notices of overdraft, delayed payments, repossession, and foreclosure.  After searching the web for days, I was able to reproduce the series of documents on fabric and then use stiffener to give the appearance of paper.

This is, what I consider, my first deliberate foray into contemporary fine art.  It all started last spring when 2 of my husband’s paintings were included in Au Natural, the Nude in the 21st Century. This was an exhibit in Astoria, OR.  We went for the opening reception and had a fabulous time—love that town, and love those people.  I went as arm candy, but was inspired and challenged to come back next year in my own right.

It was from this that Material Girl was born.  The title actually came before the visual concept.  Knowing that I would be working with fabric, it was a no-brainer.  I also knew that I wanted to depart from the historical photos from which I had been working.  I wanted to create a piece that was contemporary in theme, as well as design.

Thirteen years ago, when I returned to the US from living overseas for a decade, I was struck by the massive amounts of stuff that we, as Americans, buy, own, and throw away every day.  I’ve learned to live with it, but it still disturbs me how, as a culture, we get so caught up in the latest fashion, or gadget. 

I’ve submitted Material Girl for the next Au Naturel exhibit and now I’m waiting for a response.

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The Boys are Back in Town

I have been living the nightmare of a quilt lost in shipping since July when I sent my “Turkish Bread Boys” to the UK for the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England. I was actually at the festival when I discovered that my quilt had never arrived.  With the help of a dear friend, sister quilter, and super sleuth, Wendy Bentley, it was discover that the quilt was in the hands of British Customs.  They had a question about intellectual property rights related to the artwork and had sent a request for additional information to the company that was to receive the quilt.  This company claims to know nothing about the request, and, therefore, never responded.  After holding the artwork for 2 months without reply, customs was to have sent it back to me.  That would have been September 15.

 Almost 7 weeks later, I have come home from work to find the Bread Boys sitting on my front porch.  There was great joy as I brought them inside and tore open their packaging to find them in great shape.

 LESSON LEARNED:  Don’t go cheap on shipping.  I used the US Postal Service because I needed my package to arrive quickly and I thought that getting signatures along the was would just slow things down too much.  Unlike an international shipping company, the USPS gives up any responsibility or accountability when they hand the package off to another entity.  When I inquired about my missing package, I actually got the false information that it had been delivered in the UK.  Ironically, not requiring signatures was a much slower process.

Along the way, I also discovered that there is a website for lost quilts, lostquilt.com.  I learned about this site in a recent article in Machine Quilting Unlimited Magazine.  The article, by Maria Elkins, is about labeling your quilt.  She presents some great tips on creating and labeling quilts for documentation and security purposes.  It’s worth a read. Luckily, my quilt was properly labeled with my name and contact information.  I’ve already learned that lesson

 

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