Just noticed that it’s been almost a month since the last post, so I thought I should do a quick update. Here’s a painting in spring/summer colors to introduce a tangentially-related topic.

I have a big birthday coming up this year, and I decided what I wanted was a new house. Since that was completely out of the question, the next best thing would be to finish up some long-dormant home improvement projects and also to paint. Several years ago, I painted the family room and the dining room with some rather bright colors inspired by Mexico and a particular restaurant color scheme. This was a triumph of wills for me, as my husband would much rather see colors that have “resale value.” Once it’s done, though, he no longer notices.

We also have a “living” room – that seldom-used room that designers of modern suburban houses always seem to think we need, although I’d much rather have a bigger family room and do away with that complete waste of space. The room spans the two stories of the house, so I wanted to make it look less cavernous by dividing it vertically with different colors of paint. I did several very large patches with test colors but didn’t like any of them, and there they stayed as utter paralysis set in, probably for about 5 or 6 years, I don’t even know for sure. I stopped noticing, but I’m sure all my friends thought I was about the laziest person on the planet.

So I don’t know if it was the advent of spring, the start of a new phase of life, or just the fact that I was maybe a little tired of explaining to people just what the heck was going on with that crazy wall, but I finally got a fire lit under me to change it. And I couldn’t do just that room, I had to keep going and attack every white wall in the house. (I just do not like white walls, even though they do make it easy to coordinate artwork.) So for pretty much every day for the last three weeks, I’ve been house painting. Not as much fun as art, but satisfying in its own way.

My work is featured in this month’s issue of Patchwork Professional, a beautiful publication from Germany. The small image left center is mine, a detail of Reflections (full image below). I wonder if my high-school German will be adequate to the task of reading the articles? Hmm, probably not.

The gorgeous quilt on the right is Seaside Town by Alicia Merrett, part of her Mapping and Recording series in which she interprets landscape from a bird’s eye view. Alicia says, “I explore colour from a variety of sources – the urban and natural environment, mapping, literature, music, the world around us – and reflect it in the textiles that are my passion.” Visit her web site for more luscious color and line work.

Reflections, 38 x 92 (diptych), ©2008 Deidre Adams (click image for larger view)

A couple of my favorites:

Red Coleus, 12 x 12 inches, ©Susan Brubaker Knapp

Survivor: Ginkgo Biloba II, 12 x 12 inches, ©Nancy Cook

My piece is in the second group; bidding for these two pages starts Sept. 27.

Elysium, 12 x 12 inches, ©Deidre Adams

Other items of note:

…

Yesterday, I received a very nice mention by Pokey Bolton on the Quilting Daily Blog for Quilting Arts TV.

…

I was featured in the “Vignettes” (short articles) section of the Fall 2010 issue of Studios by Cloth•Paper•Scissors magazine. This magazine is available on newsstands or via the Interweave Store.

…

…

…

…

I have several pieces published in 1000 Artisan Textiles, by Sandra Salamony and Gina M. Brown, published by Quarry Books.

(This is slightly old news, but better late than never, right?)

Left to right: Victoria Gertenbach, Susan Brubaker Knapp, Candy Glendening, Jeannie Palmer Moore, Jamie Fingal, and me in the aptly-named “green room.” (Photo by Jeannie Cook-Delpit, director of national events for Bernina.)

Since I had so much time there, I used the opportunity to take lots of pictures in Cleveland and Akron. I’ll be posting some of them in the next few days.

All of this happened right in the middle of trying to get a lot of work finished for the Evenings with Monet show, which we hung yesterday, the day after I got back. With 4 of us working on it, I think we managed to hang well over 50 pieces in the space of about 90 minutes. Then it was off to a nearby restaurant for a well-deserved margarita.

Eunice pauses from her work to pose for a picture.

Wow, it’s August already. The summer is flying by, and I’ve been lax in blogging once again. Well, no sense dwelling on failure, the only thing to do is try to make up for it and go forward.

One thing that was notable for me this summer was my invitation to be a visiting artist at The Gathering Place, a “refuge for rebuilding lives” located in Denver. Their mission statement is “to support women and their children who are experiencing homelessness or poverty by providing a safe daytime refuge and resources for self-sufficiency.”‘

Prior to the artist’s visit, I was invited to take a tour of the facility. I cannot tell you how impressed I am by the scope and methodology of this enterprise. Besides just the very basic things like food, shelter, and clothing, they provide so many things we take for granted: showers, hair cuts, laundry, phones and voice mail, computer/internet access, child care, and just a place to BE. They strive to maintain a community of acceptance, requiring “that everyone at The Gathering Place remains non-judgmental toward each other’s unique circumstances, and demands that everyone show each other mutual respect.” The Gathering Place operates primarily through private funding and donations.

Besides the basic necessities, The Gathering Place also provides a host of additional activities and opportunities: Yoga classes, art classes, computer and writing skills, even GED preparation. One of the art activities is The Card Project, where women can create original handmade notecards which are sold for $2 each through the Gathering Place and through various other distribution channels. The women receive 75% of the proceeds when their cards are sold.

During the month of July, the card project is on hiatus and in its place, various local artists are invited to come in and share their work and “artistic vision and journey as an artist” with the group. I was honored to be asked to participate. In preparing for what I was going to present, I knew that nobody was going to want to listen to me yammering on about myself for any great length, so I decided that it might be fun to create a project for the women to work on.

I have a body of work involving lots and lots of hand-stitching over collaged fabrics and bits of stuff – I’ve never shown it nor posted about it mainly because I don’t know if it’s going anywhere, but I work on it while watching TV or in some kind of a waiting situation. It’s a kind of free-association doodling; I enjoy it immensely and it’s great therapy for me. Anyway, I got the idea that this might be a good jumping off point for a project, so I put together a bunch of little kits with a felt base and collaged elements, with a few stitches started in with different colors of embroidery thread. I also brought a big mishmash of scraps of all kinds of things and more thread.

I thought I was going to need to do some demo about how it should be done, but to my surprise, everyone just took a kit and jumped right in without waiting for me to direct them. Most of the people I know outside of my sewing friends would rather have their teeth drilled than fix a button or a hem or stitch anything at all, so I wasn’t expecting this. But these women were right at home with the whole idea and just took to it like they’d been doing it forever. Not content to just leave it with what I’d started, they happily dove into the scraps and fearlessly made their own compositions.

Top, left to right: Eunice, Ricki, Gloria, and Tracey
Bottom, left to right: Janet, Madaline, and Madaline’s work

My only regret is that the time we spent together was too short. I didn’t get the chance to get to know anyone as much as I would have liked. I hope to have the opportunity to see the finished projects at some point.

My intention to post about this in a more timely fashion didn’t materialize due to other stuff getting in the way (as usual), but yesterday I received a reminder about it — a beautiful thank-you card from the group. This card was done by Eunice, who loves quilts.

Colorado Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll and me in front of All the Answers I

There’s so much going on this week, it’s hard to know where to start! Last week, the highlight of the local Denver art scene, at least as far as I’m concerned, was a reception at the Colorado State Capitol for artists whose work was chosen for display in the offices of the state legislature. Terrance Carroll, the speaker of the house, is highly supportive of Metropolitan State College of Denver in general, and of the art department in particular. I was proud to have 2 pieces chosen for display in his office.

Next on the list is an update on the situation with our thesis show. A temporary space has been secured for the show, and everything is going forth as originally planned in the new location. I will be working like crazy to have my work finished in time for delivery there tomorrow by noon. If you’re in Denver, please join me for the reception this Friday:

Friday, April 23, 6-9 pm
Center for Visual Art
3001 Larimer St, Denver, 80205 (temporary location)

The exhibit will also be open Sat. 12-5 pm, and Weds-Friday, April 28-30, 11 am – 6 pm.

The second thesis show will be in the same location May 7-13, with a reception on Friday, May 7, 6-9 pm.

And finally, I will be giving a talk on “Quilting in a State of Change” at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, this Thursday, April 22, at 6:30 pm. The address is 1213 Washington Avenue in Golden. More information is available here (scroll down for the current event). Hope you can join me for that as well!

Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine includes a regular feature called “Art Studio.” I’m the featured artist for the November 2009 issue. I enjoyed writing the copy for it, since the subject is one with which I’m intimately familiar — and I can always use the practice talking about my work. The magazine did a fantastic job with the layout, as you can see. This is a beautiful publication, with articles of interest to both traditional and art quilters. Single copies and subscriptions are available at their web site, http://www.mqumag.com/home/.

I’m woefully behind in posting this news, but better late than never, right? This wonderful new book by Spike Gillespie profiles 20 art quilters, detailing their stories and working methods, with beautiful photography and layout. I’m honored to have been chosen to be a part of it. It was also really cool to find out that 2 of my pieces were featured on the cover, along with work by Lisa Call and Margot Lovinger.

Spike traveled around the country to meet the artists in person, and she came to Denver, along with photographer Ori Sofer, to interview me and Lisa for our respective articles. They were lots of fun, with interesting personal stories of their own. Ori took a lot of great pictures of me and my studio, and generously gave me copies of them. The photo I’m using on my About page and for my Facebook profile is one that he took. I like it because it pretty much looks like me but still looks decent, if you know what I mean!

The best part of this book is that it’s not just pages of the artists’ work, but also includes photos from their studios and little blurbs of advice from each one. I had to squirm a little when I saw mine in print, because Spike didn’t clean up my somewhat uncivilized language, but quoted me verbatim. Ahem!

But I couldn’t be more thrilled about being in this book. Here are a couple of spreads from my section:

Quilting Art is available through Amazon or directly through the publisher, Voyageur Press.

This is a photo of my grandfather. It came from an old square-format negative that was hanging around at my parents’ house for years, stuck in an envelope full of other such miscellaneous pieces of film that had long ago lost association with any known prints. My mother had always wanted to “do something with them someday.” At some point I acquired the ability to have negatives scanned, so she gave over the responsibility for this envelope to me. Some time later I did scan a lot of them, but a concrete idea of what to do with them never materialized. They were all taken long before I was born, and so I don’t know all of the people in them, but I do recognize my grandparents in some.

I always have a hard time figuring out what to do for my father on Father’s Day, partly because he lives in a different state and partly because, well, let’s just say we haven’t had the most traditional of father-daughter relationships. After my mother died a few years ago, we started talking on a somewhat more regular basis than at any prior time in my life. A couple of weeks ago, when I got an e-mail from iprintfromhome with an offer for a free 11 x 14 print, I got the idea that he might appreciate seeing this photo in print again. I needed to make the square into a rectangle, so I cropped the original and added some cloudy background stuff to impart a little drama and mystery. In the end, I liked my letter-size test print that I had made myself on my Epson R1800 better than the large one, so I put it into an 8×10 window mat to fit the 11 x 14 frame I had bought for it. Then I packed up the whole thing into a double box with lots of bubble wrap and sent it off, crossing my fingers that the glass doesn’t get broken in shipment. Hope he likes it!

Kerr Grabowski, May 2009. Photo by Deidre Adams.

Today’s SDA conference agenda included a variety of lectures and demos related to textile arts. The most inspiring for me today was a demo by Kerr Grabowski, in which she shared her techniques for working with things normally associated with art on paper — like charcoal, graphite, pastels, and water-soluble media — and making them permanent on fabric. Kerr is known for her beautiful garments and her innovative explorations in screenprinting techniques.

Samples Kerr made using her new process:

I had taken Kerr’s workshop on deconstructed screen printing years ago, and I remember how much fun it was and what great marks could be made on fabric using this process. I still have some really beautiful fabrics that I made in that workshop. Kerr is a generous, sharing person (she even provides a video of the DSP process right on her home page), and her enthusiasm for the process is infectious. She started her demo by saying that she wished her audience to try some of these processes and to let her know what we discover; she wants to start a dialog of artists working together. I left the demo wishing I could go home right then and start playing with some of these techniques.

Later I attended a lecture by Dr. Maria Elena Buszek titled “Minding the Margins: Craft, Criticism and Contemporary Art.” It had to do with the divide between craft and art, but I have to be honest — she talked so fast and furiously I couldn’t keep up with her and I’m not sure even now what her point was, except maybe that so-called “craft” artists should try harder to place themselves in the wider art milieu and expose ourselves to criticism in that realm. She has a Ph.D. in art history, so her view must necessarily be somewhat academic. As textile artists, we can all decide for ourselves whether any of this matters to our pursuit of happiness or fame and fortune or whatever it is we seek in the long run. Evidently she is ruffling some feathers, but I confess to not knowing a lot about this topic. She did give several references for reading which I have put on my to-do list.

The day was capped off by “Textile Fusion: An Interactive Fashion Performance.”

The logistics of the thing weren’t well planned, and nobody seemed to know where they should stand or where the action was going to be headed. It was all very conceptual, with live music that at first seemed pleasantly appropriate but which soon turned relentless and repetitive. Plus, the whole fashion thing in general is very much beyond me, and wearable art is no exception. However, the planners had the good sense to hold the show in the Bloch Building at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. This was my second visit to the museum, and as I had not had time to get to this part of it earlier, I found a ready opportunity to escape this scene and immerse myself in the quiet solitude of cavernous halls full of good old-fashioned modern art for a refreshing change of pace.

The collection holds a good variety of Abstract Expressionists:

Jackson Pollock (left) and Willem DeKooning (right)

They also have a wide variety of all your modern, postmodern, minimalist, and pop favorites, including Rothko, Kline, Diebenkorn, Warhol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Judd, LeWitt, Martin, Murry, Riley, and several Thiebauds. One of the more interesting is a huge painting by Kerry James Marshall done on banner canvas, called Memento #5, celebrating the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

One of the most interesting exhibits in the museum is an exhibition of photographs by Homer Page, a mostly unknkown photographer who created this body of work in 1949-50 in fulfillment of a Guggenheim fellowship. They are street scenes of New York City, often including images of advertisements in ironic juxtaposition with ordinary people. According to the museum’s promo page, this work “represents a ‘missing link’ between the warm, humanistic, and socially motivated documentary photographs of the 1930s and early 1940s in the works of Dorothea Lange, and the tougher, grittier and more existential work of the later 1950s as seen in the images of Robert Frank.” I would love to have more time to go back and look at these again. May just have to order the book instead.