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Quilt Visions: No Boundaries opening reception at Oceanside Museum of Art

The 2010 Quilt Visions exhibition opened last weekend at the Oceanside Museum of Art in Oceanside, California. I was excited to be able to attend the Saturday opening reception and associated activities on Sunday, including a special breakfast for the artists as well as  a discussion panel later in the afternoon.

The reception was very well attended by both artists and museum patrons.

Opening Reception crowd

We were not allowed to take pictures other than with the artist’s express permission, but since so many of the artists were in attendance, I was able to get a good selection. Sue Willen’s beautiful quilt Ordered Cacophony V was honored with pride of place at the exhibition entry.

Sue Willen with Ordered Cacophony V

Sue Cavanaugh with Ori-Kume #14: Rio Grande at Taos

Joan Sowada with Flight Zone, winner of the Sponsor’s Award

Kathy Weaver with Strategic Alliance

Jane LaFazio with Zen Eucalyptus

Velda Newman with Zinnia, winner of the Quilts Japan prize

Margaret Anderson with Curvilinear

Katie Pasquini Masopust with Cadence

Deidre Adams with Façade VI

The panel discussion, organized and moderated by Judith Content, centered around the theme “Balancing Act: The Art of Being an Artist.” The panel participants were Gloria Hansen, Jane LaFazio, Katie Pasquini Masopust, and me. We each gave a short presentation on our work, and then we responded to questions, discussing how each of us balances our time for making art with all the other things: work, family, friends, and the business of promoting the art. I was especially interested to hear about how different each of our approaches is to the actual process of the artmaking. Gloria and Katie make drawings and sketches or use the computer to plan everything in advance and use a controlled step-by-step process to create the finished work, and Jane and I work more intuitively, making decisions and adjustments as we go. I was honored to be chosen as a panel participant.

Balancing Act panel participants (Deidre Adams, Gloria Hansen, Jane LaFazio, and Katie Pasquini Masopust) listen to Judith Content’s introduction

We were fortunate that a large number of the artists were able to attend the opening events. It was great to have the chance to see some artists I already know, as well as to meet so many new ones whose work I’ve admired for a long time.

Back row, left to right: Jette Clover, Kathy Weaver, Sue Cavanaugh, Sandra Poteet, Lura Schwarz Smith, Deidre Adams, Betty Busby, Kirby C. Smith, Debbie Bein, Velda Newman, Sharon Bell, Susan Willen, Gloria Hansen
Middle Row: Margaret Anderson, Benedicte Caneill, Joan Sowada, Katie Pasquini Masopust, Nancy Condon, Valya
Front Row: Judith Content, Jane LaFazio, Judith Plotner, Rachel Brumer

I’m very grateful to the many hard-working individuals of Quilt Visions, including Charlotte Bird, Patti Sevier, Beth Smith, and so many others, for making this exhibit possible and for doing so much to promote quiltmaking as an art form. I’d also like to thank the Oceanside Museum of Art for hosting the exhibition in this outstanding and beautiful venue.

On Monday, we drove down to San Diego to make a special visit to the Visions Art Museum, as far as I’m aware, the only museum of its kind – dedicated to staging “exhibitions of outstanding quilts in museum quality settings” and the promotion of “quilting of the highest aesthetic and artistic quality.” They had a wonderful exhibition called “The Art of the Stitch,” an invitational embroidery show including the work of B.J. Adams, Gwenn Beope, Karin Birch, Susan Brandeis, Caroline M. Dahl, Jane Kenyon, Sarah Rockinger, Carol Shinn, Jill Spurgin, Melanie Testa, Robb Watt, Deborah Weir, Joan Wolfer, and Rita Zerull.

There was also a great exhibition of work by San Diego members of Visions, including a beautiful piece by Charlotte Bird called Life Stream. I was drawn by the rich, cool reds, and with a closer view, I was rewarded by the lovely hand stitching and delicate, lacy organza applique. (Click the image to see a larger version.)

Life Stream by Charlotte Bird

Other artists in the show are Kathleen McCabe (also a fantastic piece, but alas, no photo available), Karen Cunagin, Barbara Friedman, Bob Leathers, Jill Le Croissette, Dan Olfe, and Lisa Tan.

The museum is housed in a unique facility which is part of a large complex of arts organizations, restaurants, and other businesses occupying what was once a formal naval training center. The architecture is also interesting in its own right. I highly recommend a visit to the Visions Museum if you get a chance to visit San Diego.

Adds Up, 77 x 54 inches, ©2005 Cynthia Corbin

The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado is dedicated to the preservation of the art and history or American quilt making. They maintain a permanent collection of quilts with historical significance and offer exhibitions and educational events in the support of their mission. The exhibitions include both historical as well as contemporary offerings. This past weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing the Speaking in Cloth: 6 Quilters, 6 Voices exhibition in person. I’ve had the book for awhile now, and I wrote about Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer’s work in a previous post. But it was a treat to see all the work in person, as photos usually don’t do justice to textile work, missing the nuances of texture and depth that are visible in the piece when you see it face-to-face.

Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer’s rich color and beautiful hand stitching create a lush environment of subtle light and shadow play on each rich surface. Ann Johnston uses her signature dye-painting techniques along with a diverse vocabulary of stitch patterns for her complex and dynamic compositions. Quinn Zander Corum includes beading and hand-stitching to invite the viewer to come in close for a better look. Her piece “The Back Forty,” consisting of 40 fully-developed small compositions, is a library of colors and techniques reminiscent of the traditional sampler quilt. Nancy Erickson invokes an ancient world where animals rule, realized with her personal iconography of cave paintings and her exhuberant brushwork. Trisha Hassler puts a unique spin on her mixed media work: she combines jagged, rusted steel with counterpoints of hand-dyed, quilted fabric pieces in a harmonious blending of hard and soft. Cynthia Corbin’s work is fascinating for its use of texture, both in the patterning of the fabrics as well as in the amazingly dense machine quilting which covers each piece. Her piece “Adds Up” is shown above, and here is a detail:

My only complaint about the show is that the exhibition space is unfortunately rather small, resulting in a very crowded show with pieces stacked one on top of the other. Some of the smaller works, which would have benefited from an eye-level viewing, were placed too high to see properly. But in any case, I highly recommend going to see this show. It’s up until January 31, 2009.

Also currently on view at the Museum is California Gold, an exhibit of quilts made in the 1870s and 1880s which include a warm yellow fabric of a color nicknamed “California Gold.” The exhibit honors the 150th anniversary of the Forty-Niners, pioneers who risked everything to travel west for the gold rush.

Turkey Tracks, 74 x 85 inches, c. 1885, collection of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

The signage for this piece reads “Woe betide the quiltmaker who decided to stitch this pattern for her son! Turkey Tracks, also known as ‘Wandering Foot,’ was thought to encourage people who slept under it to become endless wanderers … especially boys.”