Away from Clay - When One Door Closes by Mary Ann Nailos

     In addition to ACN, I am part of another art group called Stretching Art. The group puts out a call for entry once a year. Last year’s theme was “When One Door Closes”. I was a potter for about 20 years and most of my pots were hand built, mostly constructed from slabs. I rented studio space in my friend Richard Hess’ studio. In 2013 he informed me that he was moving to Illinois, so I either had to find another place to do clay, or find a new artistic practice.

     Doing clay at my house was not an option. I decided to go back to my first love – textiles. I started taking classes in traditional quilt making, then surface design, that then lead me to Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth Mastery class. 

    There are similarities between slab built pots and quilt making. These pots were made with a template on a flat piece of clay. Quilters cut shapes out of fabric and make quilt blocks. Different firing techniques and glazes differentiate the pots. Quilters use different fabrics and Art Quilters use different surface designs to create their quilts.

I printed textures onto black and colored fabric using Thermofax screens that I designed. Then I cut the pieces from the colored fabrics using the Notan method, fusing them to black fabric. After that I added stamping from various stamps that I made.

This is the finished piece below that I named Away from Clay. As the door to pottery making closed, the door to Art Quilting opened.