SAQA Showcase

SAQAShowcase-Deidre Adams

I am proud to be one of six artists chosen for the SAQA Showcase exhibition, which opened August 3 at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The exhibition description on the web site reads,

The artists featured in this exhibition are members of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), an organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt through exhibitions, publications, and professional-development opportunities. The IQSCM is pleased to partner with SAQA in this collaborative exhibition project.

SAQA Showcase: The Studio Art Quilt Associates Invitational began with a large pool of SAQA members who submitted representative examples of their art quilts for consideration. From among this group the international Quilt Study Center & Museum and SAQA chose six artists whose works represent some of the best and most innovative approaches to studio art quilts. These artists were invited to select from their existing work or create new work for inclusion in the exhibition.

 

The other artists in the exhibition are:

SAQAShowcase - Susan Shie

Susan Shie (two works on back wall), one of the foremost artists working in the quilt medium today. Her unique style is instantly recognizable, with her all-over writing and stylized figures which are woven together in narratives that reflect themes of daily life, family, community, politics, and social issues.

SAQAShowcase-Jan Myers-Newbury

Jan Myers-Newbury, another venerable artist whose groundbreaking work with shibori techniques and dynamic color explorations has been wowing viewers and influencing artists for twenty years.

SAQAShowcase-Michael Cummings

Michael Cummings, who “draws inspiration from Africa and the art of African Americans, particularly the great quilters of the South” (from a New York Times article quoted in the bio on his web site), has work in numerous prestigious collections and publications.

SAQAShowcase-Gay Lasher

Fellow Colorado artist Gay Lasher, who works with computer manipulations of her own photographs, enlarging small areas of them beyond recognition to create abstractions of intense color and dynamic composition.

SAQAShowcase-Wen Redmond

Wen Redmond, another artist who uses her photography as a starting point for her textile work, which includes a variety of mixed media techniques. Wen says, “I enjoy pushing the boundaries to see ‘what if.’”

It is indeed an honor to be included with this group of outstanding artists. The exhibition is on view through Feb. 24, 2013.

(Thanks to the IQSCM for these photographs.)

September 19th, 2012|Exhibitions|4 Comments

Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids

 

gar·ish

[gair-ish, gar-]  adjective
1. crudely or tastelessly colorful, showy, or elaborate, as clothes or decoration.

 Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids, the new book by my friend Robert Jones, is a feast for the eyes. Even if you’re not an aficionado of the extended road trip, as I certainly am, you will find yourself experiencing a certain sense of déjà vu as you page through this book. The photographs tell a tale of an era that could be considered bygone, yet whose artifacts are still so present in so many forgotten little corners of North America that it seems its influence will never be erased completely.

Robert Jones -Mexican Taqueria
Mexican taqueria detail
Farm-to-Market Road 2790, Somerset, Texas, February 2007

As Jones tells us in the intro, this collection of Polaroid prints, taken with his trusty Colorpack III, “represents a quarter-century’s quest to find beautiful, vivid, man-made color.” His color sense influenced by the “revelation” of David Lynch’s use of surrealistically brilliant hues in Blue Velvet, Jones has driven “untold thousands of miles” to find outstanding examples of these intense colors. He says,

“Ironically, these hues are most deeply intensified when driving across endless lonely stretches of highway in the American Southwest and Mexico, where the people use buckets of brightly colored paints to break the drab monotony of the brown stubble and caliche that characterize that region’s landscape. The crisp, clean air in Canada has given me skies with the deepest blues, and the most luminous greens and reds.”

The Polaroid film serves to exaggerate and shift the color in a nostalgic, yet slightly unsettling way.

Robert Jones - Motel roomsMotel rooms
U.S. Route 130, Burlington County, New Jersey, May 2004

As to the artist’s intent, there is no attempt at a hidden message here; it is straightforward and without pretense. To understand what the photographs represent, a passage from “Coloring Outside the Lines,”  the essay by John DeFore included in the book, is enlightening:

“Where someone else might have culled through the hand-painted signs and statuary here in search of ironic juxtapositions, or framed them in ways that suggest a new layer of meaning is being created, Jones is happy simply to celebrate what he has found. This collection isn’t a straightforward, undiscriminating catalog of roadside oddities, but neither is it a monograph treating those objects as mere fodder for an artist hovering on a higher plane. Jones takes his pictures seriously, but he clearly respects what he’s photographing as much as he does the image he’s creating.”

Robert Jones - Hoppers and landscapeHoppers and landscape
U.S. Route 87, Union County, New Mexico, February 2002
Robert Jones - Stop sign and street cornerStop sign and street corner
Town plaza, Villa Union, Coahuila, April 2002

Are these photographs truly “garish”? I suppose that’s something best left up to the viewer to decide. Perhaps my judgment is compromised by my love of this subject matter, but I would say they are hauntingly beautiful, celebratory of the overlooked magnificence that can be found in forgotten little corners of the world, sometimes sparked into momentary transcendent splendor by a brief angle of sunlight, other times waiting patiently for decades for an appreciative glance, or for nothing at all. In this age of Instagram and Hipstamatic and instant-whatever-the-matic, in which anything and everything becomes fodder for an overload of superficially formulaic “artiness,” I find it comforting to think of Jones out there on the road, recording these images with this all-but-lost technology, a piece of paper with chemicals that in its own time revolutionized the art of photography.

Robert Jones-Evan Jones and hillbilly figureEvan Jones and hillbilly figure, miniature golf course
Seawall Boulevard, Galveston, Texas, February 2007

For more information and to see more photographs by Robert Jones, please visit his website. The book Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids is available on Amazon.com. It’s also available as an ebook for Kindle on Amazon and as a NOOK book at Barnes & Noble.

September 15th, 2012|Interesting Artists|Comments Off on Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids

2012 SAQA Benefit Auction

Deidre Adams - Entheos
Entheos, mixed media textile, 12 x 12 inches, ©2012

Tomorrow morning, Sept. 10,  is the beginning of the SAQA benefit auction, SAQA’s biggest fundraiser and most important income source after membership dues. Purchasing a 12×12-inch piece from the auction helps this non-profit organization to fulfill its mission of “promot

[ing] the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development, documentation, and publications,” a mission near and dear to the heart of anyone who makes art using the quilt medium. Above is my piece for the auction.

This is a reverse auction, meaning that at the opening (tomorrow at 2 pm eastern, 11 am pacific), each piece starts out at the highest price, $750. If it remains unsold for 24 hours, the price drops then and each subsequent day until it can be had for the incredible bargain price of $75. There are 3 groups to be sold, with bidding commencing tomorrow for group 1, then group 2 on Sept. 17, and finally, group 3 on Sept. 24.

Here are just a few more from the first group:

Carol Larson - Currents #18Currents #18 by Carol Larson
Linda Jean Strand - SunflowerSunflower by Linda Jean Strand
Loris Bogue - The CityThe City by Loris Bogue
Helena Scheffer - Syringa SpontaneaSyringa Spontanea by Helena Scheffer

 

See the other works in group 1 here and here. I hope you will consider bidding on one of these fine works and supporting SAQA and textile art.

September 9th, 2012|Art|Comments Off on 2012 SAQA Benefit Auction