Last year, I was fortunate to be part of a group of students of Amy Metier who went to France for an art-immersion experience. I wrote quite a bit about my adventures and posted some photos from the trip:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The best thing about the trip was being there to paint. It’s one thing to travel and see the sights, but I never liked the idea of running all over to different cities and having only a short time in each one. I much prefer the way this trip was organized. We stayed in Paris for 4 days, and then Giverny the remaining 8 days, with day excursions to nearby towns. While in Giverny, we went out on location to Monet’s garden and the surrounding areas to paint. I’m convinced that this is the absolute best way to travel and get to know a place, and I hope to have another opportunity to do it again some day.

If you are in the Denver area, I would like to invite you to join me and the other artists for the opening reception of an exhibition of paintings and photographs by the participants of the trip:

Evenings with Monet

Opening Reception:
Friday, Sept. 3, 6-8 pm
Alliance Française
571 Galapago St., Denver
303.831.0304

Exhibition dates:
Sept. 3 – Oct. 30, 2010
Hours: Mon-Thurs: 9-7:30, Fri: 9-5, Sat. 9-noon

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.

One of the most important things we learn in studying design is that a balance between unity and variety can greatly enhance a composition. I find this applies to pretty much everything in my life – artwork process as well as daily routine. I’ve always been the kind of person who can’t stand doing the same thing the same way for extended periods of time, and a shakeup in routine is guaranteed to help me feel energized.

After concentrating exclusively on paintings for the last several months, it was good to have a reason to focus on textiles once again. A call for entry to Small Works, a juried exhibition for members of the Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming region of SAQA, was an opportunity for me to develop 3 small pieces, all 18 inches square. After focusing on much larger pieces for a couple of years, I found I really enjoyed working at this size. It involves a different set of challenges, the most pressing of which is trying to avoid associations with potholders and placemats.

I was pleased to receive notice that Composition XII (above) was accepted into the exhibition. Along with work by 12 other artists, it will be on view at the Aurora (Colo.) Municipal Court from July 16 – Dec. 17, 2010.

New gallery representation

Also along the lines of variety in life, I spent last week in Door County, Wisconsin, visiting family and exploring the local landmarks and art galleries. On Thursday, I gave an artist’s talk for the Trillium Quilt Guild. I had several of pieces of my textile artwork with me for the talk, and afterwards, while driving back to my aunt’s home, we stopped in a few galleries along the way. In one of them, my aunt discovered a long-lost friend of hers, now the owner of the gallery. To make a long story short, I now have a new gallery representing my work: The Paint Box Gallery in Ephraim, Wisconsin, where these 3 works are now available.

Composition X, 18 x 18 inches, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Composition XI, 18 x 18 inches, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Horizon XVII, 16 x 16 inches, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Anyone who’s been reading my blog for a while knows by now that discipline is not one of my strong suits. Just when it seems I’m on a roll, something happens and I stop blogging.

Now that school is over, you would think that I’d be spending 12 hours a day making art. It hasn’t happened that way. I’ve had a very steady stream of design projects to do, which is good, because there will be some huge bills coming up very soon. When I can’t stand being on the computer for a single second longer, I’ve gone into the studio for a while to do some mindless, repetitive tasks like stitching leftover scraps together, some busywork I do when I don’t have any specific artwork in process. It’s part of the process of creating the larger textile pieces; it primes the pump, so to speak.

Now that school is over, I also have a lot more time to think and to pay attention to what’s going on, to listen to the radio & podcasts of news, and that has me kind of stymied over what I should really be doing right now. How can I just continue on with my happy little life, making art in my studio without a care in the world, when there is so much going on right now that is deeply, profoundly screwed up;  when I along with all other Americans bear a responsibility for much of it?

This was supposed to be a blog about art, but it seems so self-absorbed to write about my piddling little painting issues when a volcano of oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, when animals are being choked or cooked alive by oil, when a unique and fragile ecosystem and livelihoods are being destroyed, but all people care about is the value of their pension funds. When around the world thousands of children die every day from a lack of clean water, while we waste untold millions of gallons of it keeping our lawns emerald green. When the American dream of a good job and security and a future for our children is disappearing before our very eyes. When all of our politicians are bought and paid for, corporations run our government and our media, and our so-called “free market” and “globalization” policies over many years have destroyed cultures and economies worldwide. But don’t worry America, just keep watching Fox News and be sure you know who’s winning on Idol; just keep taking your anti-depressants and buying your bottled water; none of this should matter to you as long as you can keep buying smartphones and big-screen TVs and gas for your car.

OK, I don’t know if I have that completely out of my system, but hopefully we will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Last week, I had the great privilege to spend several days visiting my friend Joan Schulze. Joan is an internationally recognized artist known primarily for her quilts, but she also works extensively with paper, making collages and artists books, and she is an accomplished poet. Her work has just been featured in a 40-year retrospective called Poetic License: The Art of Joan Schulze, on view at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles through May 9.

Joan Schulze with The Angel Equation, ©1994, 56 x 57 inches.
Silk, paper, cotton, and transparent overlays.
Photo by Deidre Adams.

Joan’s long and illustrious career in the arts began with embroidery in the early 1970s and quickly expanded to quilts. She has always been an innovator and was an early pioneer in using techniques that art quilters take for granted today. Over the course of the last 40 years, she has made over 1800 quilts and collages, exhibiting a phenomenal dedication and never-ending passion to her work that serves as a true inspiration to artists working in any medium. Her artwork and her poetry enjoy a symbiotic relationship, as each is nurtured by the other. As she says, “Writing poetry is as necessary as stitching cloth.”¹

Joan’s work is known around the world, and in addition to exhibiting and teaching in many countries, she has developed strong ties with artists and teachers in China through her affiliation with the Beijing International Tapestry Exhibitions and Tsinghua University. As she does not have an official academic title, the Chinese bestowed upon her their own title: “Famous Activist of Art.” They’ve since expanded it, but I think this one is succinct and says it best.

My first introduction to Joan’s work came through a marvelously beautiful book which arrived at the offices of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine one day while I was working there as a graphic artist. Titled The Art of Joan Schulze, it was an eye-opening experience for me, containing very large and detailed photographs of her work, along with essays and anecdotes by other artists, and a selection of Joan’s poems. At that time, I was beginning to understand how quilts could be art, but this book transcended anything I had encountered before.

In 2008, I was fortunate to be able to meet Joan in person when she and I and Teresa Barkley shared a hotel suite in Traverse City, Michigan, while we were all there for the opening of the 12 Voices exhibition. Joan and I found we enjoyed a lot of the same things: good food and wine, going to art galleries, taking pictures at the abandoned Traverse City State Hospital (a.k.a. the Northern Michigan Asylum), exploring the nearby roads and towns, shopping at second-hand stores, and admiring stones on the beach — whether on the shores of Lake Michigan or the Pacific coast, as on this recent trip. Knocking about with Joan is an educational experience, as she has a unique perspective and looks at everything in a careful, considered way, seeing what others miss.

I was so excited to have this opportunity to visit her in her own world. We did so much in just a few short days, it’s hard to know where to begin. It was complete art immersion, beginning with Joan’s beautiful house and her extensive art collection, then visits to museums and Joan’s studio in San Francisco, and topped off by a visit to her retrospective at the gallery. On Wednesday, Joan gave an artist’s talk for members of the SAQA Northern California-Nevada region. She talked about the stories and inspiration for each quilt in the exhibition, as well as reading correlated selections from her own poetry.

I won’t attempt to describe the exhibition, but if you’d like to know more, you can read a descriptive and thoughtful review by artist Liz Hager on the Venetian Red blog. Joan also speaks about her life in the arts in this article from the San Jose Mercury News. I also highly recommend a visit to her web site for many luscious images and more information.

Poetic License: The Art of Joan Schulze is accompanied by another beautiful book (to call it a catalog would understate its presence) with photographs of quilts in the exhibition plus many more, and essays by Deborah Corsini, Sarah E. Tucker, and Peter Frank. It’s available on Joan’s web site.

¹The Art of Joan Schulze, 28.

The managing director of Fedex wants to give me a special massage! With the help of the almighty Yahweh, no less. And he wants me to pass the massage to other victims like mine. Cool!

————————-

Attn please, you might see this massage in your junk or your spam doe to low connection in our company today, so please ignore that, it does not sent by the scammers.

This is a massage from FedEx Courier Company Benin Republic {Zone 2} Port novo the Country capital. This is to bring to your notice that ATM Card that bears this tracking numbers: {FDX-Bn-RP 9645283} on it protected box which contains the sum of USD $450,000 has been deposited to our security keeping department since last Monday 19th April 2010, but due to little minor crises that been occurred in our company, we couldn’t be able to inform you of this massage.

But with the help of the almighty Yahweh, the whole matters has been dissolved, we thanks him for that special work he has done in our company. So my dear, we are sincerely apologized for the delayed information. Please you should know that the solid protector VIP box has been made solidly to avoid criminals or scammers to act illegally act during the delivery of the VIP box.

(etc. etc. etc.)

Note that Billions of dollars has been mapped out for over 342,000 victims allover the world that will going to recieve this ATM Master cards that will take place any moment from now and stop on 22nd December 2010. plaese bear this in mine that any family or organization that receive this massage must have been dumped in any way or the other, if not you, it may be your relations. So do not be surprise if you receive this massage. Warning!!!! Do not expose your own tracking numbers in the publics; till you get the Card then you can cheer the Testimony with your Colleagues. Please help us pass this massage to other victims like yours .

Adaptation, 12 x 24 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel. ©2010 Deidre Adams

After a week of utter insanity, things are quiet now. I’m getting caught up on all that I’ve let slide, like answering emails and attending to other outstanding issues. A blog post seems in order for closure on the the thesis exhibition.

As mentioned, due to unforeseen difficulties, we had a big scramble finding and preparing a temporary space for the show. The one we ended up with was a beautiful space, but it isn’t intended for display of art and therefore had several issues. Some in the class objected strenuously to the rather lively blue and lime green walls. Personally, I think my work would have looked stunning on a lime green wall, but I’m flexible. Since the will of the majority seemed to be that we needed neutral white walls, a bunch of us spent most of Tuesday painting. On Wednesday, I hung my work. This took me pretty much all day, because I had to do it alone, and I was terrified of making a mistake and messing up my newly painted wall. So I did a lot of figuring and measuring and remeasuring before putting nail to wall.

On Thursday, I needed to prepare for an artist’s talk I was giving that evening. So much for my theory that planning the date a year in advance should make for a very comfortable schedule!

Finally, on Friday, only one problem remained: there was no lighting for the walls other than some very high-up fluorescent fixtures — a completely unacceptable situation. Fortunately, my husband was able to take the day off and help with this situation. After several trips back and forth to the Home Depot, we finally had something rigged up on the overhead beams with clamp fixtures and 120-watt halogen floods that was, if not ideal, at least much, much better.

Me with some of my work

The reception was exciting. We had tons of people and it was a big crush, and it was great to be a part of it. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of my great friends who came out in spite of the crappy weather to support me. You are all fantastic!

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!

Did I really have a vacation a couple of weeks ago? It seems that I did, but the last couple of weeks since my return have been so busy that it almost seems like another lifetime ago. I’ll post some photos from Hawaii shortly, but right now the most pressing thing in my life is getting my thesis show ready.

Our graduating class was supposed to have been the first to have our show in a brand-new space, one purchased by the school and completely renovated to beautiful perfection. Of course, there was always the worry that the construction wouldn’t be finished in time, but we all kept sending positive energy out into the world so that everything would proceed as planned. But yesterday, we were informed that of course the worst has happened. It’s not the renovation itself, but a long complicated story about needing more parking spaces because of the zoning, which requires destruction of other structures on the property, which have now turned out to have asbestos. This is a massive problem; it can’t be dealt with in time no matter how much we might will it, so for the moment we are building-less. A massive search effort is underway for an alternative space, and we are all in a kerfuffle wondering how this will come together by April 23, which is supposed to be the opening.

And I, ever the procrastinator, have been unable to get my postcard to the printer until now, even though it’s due to various parties in a mere 6 days. The reason for that is, as usual, complete and utter gridlock in the ability to come up with a title for my show. Originally called Resonant State, my thesis has undergone many revisions and thus my concept has morphed to the point where that was no longer appropriate. Among other possible working titles, I had at various times called it Patina and Force Majeure. Neither of those gave me the happy, contented feeling I expect when something fits well. Titling is a difficult, angst-ridden process for me. I write down many, many words as they occur to me, anything that might have a glimmer of a chance of being useful. This all stews inside my brain, and after an interminable amount of time, a new title emerges. So it is with this show, the title of which shall henceforth be Plane of Persistence. It works on several levels with not only my thesis, but also with my working methods. More about that when I post the thesis statement shortly.

Now the funny part. I’m getting the postcard printing for $25, but the cost for rush order and overnight delivery is going to be about 4 times that much. So there you have it – do as I say and not as I do, and plan ahead.

Much as I love winter, I’m really ready for it to be over right now. A large proportion of our north-facing back yard was buried under snow from November until just last week — very unusual for our location. Then yesterday, another storm with dreary gray skies and rain-snow mix all day. So I’m very excited to be leaving Denver today for a week in Hawaii. I’ve never been there, have always wanted to go, and this year, spring break seemed to be just the time to finally do it. We are much better at spur-of-the-moment decisions than long-term planning, and everything just fell into place at the last minute.

My only worry is that I’ve just heard several horror stories about people having things stolen out of their rental cars while there, so now I’m leaning towards not bringing my good camera. I know I’ll be sorry when I see all the great stuff there is to take photos of, but I’ll regret it even more if my camera goes away, so I guess that’s the answer to that little problem.