Quilt National Interview

 I was honored to be included in Quilt National 2023. Approximately 80 quilts were chosen for the exhibit which is on display at the Dairy Barn in Athens, OH. The exhibit then travels in various groupings for a couple of years. I plan to go see it in August on a road trip with Mary Vaneecke. 

Meanwhile, I was asked to do a short video explaining my inspiration and process. It is about 5 minutes long. Below the link are a few pictures of the piece. There are several other artist videos on the YouTube site as well.

Here is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDqheAjsgg0&t=52s

Here is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDqheAjsgg0&t=52s

The Art of Seeing and Perception

Monoprint is a special technique that lends itself to the art of ‘seeing and perception.’ I take a monthly workshop led by Candis Cousins at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley, CA. We begin with a reading from the founder of the Center, Ann O’Hanlon, from her book “Seeing/Perception, Looking at the World Through an Artist’s Eye.” Then we have a short demonstration of the possibilities of monoprint in which we all participate. It’s a warm-up for the next step which is to go to our individual tables for 2 hours and begin to experiment in a spirit of curiosity and exploration. The process of making a monoprint is quick and engaging. Paint or ink is placed on a plexiglass or a gel plate. Paper is laid upon it and pulled up. A response is triggered. Do I like it? What more does it need? Texture, color, line? An action is required which might include waiting. My attention is riveted. Try another piece of paper. Try incising into the plate … or add a texture both onto the plate and then with the ink on a stencil, press that onto the paper. What happens? Add another layer. Wait, if I add 2 or 3 layers of ink onto the gel plate, let the last layer dry, what will that bring me when I place paper on it? I know all the ink will be pulled up onto the paper, but what will it yield? When is it done?

Now I’m following and listening myself and to the ‘voice’ of the line, gesture, shape, color. Might my next action be a mistake? Try it out! I’m interested in what happens to be there. This is the beauty of the monoprint process.

“When we can look upon A seemingly random work of our own With interest in what happens to be there Rather than what we wish to be there We will encounter the same fulfillment As that experienced On an unknown wilderness trail” Quote from Ann O’Hanlon Recently, I’ve been monoprinting on top of prints inherited from my father from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. They provide the substrate and an opportunity to respond first to each print, whether to its line, color, shape, rhythm, gesture, content, or mood. I begin with a layer of complexity and then add my own layers.

Last, we take 2 hours to look at everyone’s pieces. Our task is to look carefully, to find the quality of beauty, surprise, comfort/discomfort, essence in our work and to support the artfulness of each participant. These are the many reasons you’ll find me at the monoprint workshop here in Mill Valley the first Sunday of each month.

Our New Artist Interview Has Dropped

 Click here to read about Barbara Schneider's work in her own words.

The Art Cloth Network Collaborative Custom Repeat Pattern Workshop

 

The Art Cloth Network Collaborative Custom Repeat Pattern Workshop

Monday, April 24, 2023 at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

 

On Monday, April 24, 2023, the day after our in-person meeting in Philadelphia, seven members of Art Cloth Network got together for a workshop at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. In attendance were Mary Ann Nailos, Ileana Soto, Barbara Matthews, Adria Sherman, Judy Languille, Sherri Lipman McCauley and Regina Marzlin. Together we designed, prepared a screen for printing, set up the print table for repeats, then printed seven yards of fabric. The fabric was a cotton sateen with a 30” repeat using textile inks.

The facilities were wonderful, with very long print tables: 30” high, 68” and 72” wide and 20 yards long!

The first thing we learned was what types of marks and masks were opaque when transferred to the light sensitive screen. Various markers and black papers were
considered.

The first challenge was coming up a design. This was a lesson in team building. Each person came up with some marks or shapes that were then laid on top of the paper that is transparent in the printing process. The loose pieces of black paper were taped to the base with transparent tape.

After getting the arrangement we liked, a “jog” line was cut through the white spaces down the center of the design. The outside edges of the design were then put together so that the straight edges were now in the center, with gaps that needed to be filled in with more shapes and marks. The irregular edges that the jog line created on the sides ensures that the repeat would be less noticeable when the fabric is printed. Finally, everything was taped in place.

The design was placed on top of a prepared screen with a photo-sensitive emulsion and brought to a separate room housing the light table. The table was equipped with a vacuum that ensured the design was flat and would not move around during exposure to the light.

After exposure, the screen was brought to a large sink and the photo emulsion was removed from the areas opaque to the light by spraying with a hose.

The tables were equipped with rails with stops. The screens had L brackets that registered against each stop. Each stop was positioned precisely 30” apart in order to ensure the proper repeat.

Our next decision was color. We chose a medium blue as our main print color and also some other colors for accents. We used gold, a maroon red, some greens and lighter blues. These were dispensed from squeeze bottles, dripping them onto the screen before the main color was placed in the well at the top of the screen.

Printing was a two person job. The squeegee was pushed across to the center by the first person, then pulled the rest of the way by someone on the other side of the table. Every other stop was printed so that the no stray ink was picked up on the screen to mar the design. Every person had a hand in each print, either squirting the ink on the screen or taking turns pushing or pulling the squeegee.

Large fans dried the ink, then the rest of the repeats were completed.

At the end of the day each took home one yard of our originally designed fabric, with our names printed on the selvage! It was a great fun and a good learning experience. Who will be the first to cut up their precious fabric?

 

 

 

Our Latest Artist Interview has Dropped

Learn all about Deborah Weir and her work.  Click here to go to interview on our website.

Returning to Creative Life After a Long Hiatus

 Navigating thru some of life's rocky punches resulted in an unanticipated lengthy absence from the studio. A total break kind of absence, and again, unplanned. It has been a year since anything creative has been able to happen, and now, at last, I'm able to find some studio time with which I stick out a few toes, tentatively, in the studio, as I would do if I were testing out the temperature of a pool before a deep dive. I worry that I have forgotten how to be an artist! Will creative juices once again percolate, after so long not exercising this muscle? Fortunately for me I have a project begun a couple of years ago which I can easily pick up again. Easy because all the thinking has been done; and all I have to do is the labor to realize it.  And easy because the technique for this project I already know-Bojagi. There are miles of enclosed seams to create with also endless measuring and trimming to do. I feel fortunate to have a relentlessly repetitive project like this with which to ease my way back into a studio head.  It's very organizing.  And indeed, as I work and come across small anomalies in the process, suddenly an idea for something to investigate presents itself.  That kind of mental jumping is what I feared I might have lost!

Here I am rolling a mixture of glue and water onto cheesecloth in order to stiffen it.  This enables the cheesecloth to hold its cut shape and go thru the sewing machine minus the soft drape of the cloth.

Measuring out and cutting the cheesecloth.

Yay!  It grows!

The panel is coming close to being done. The next step will be to create the image that will go on the top of this backdrop. I have a few ideas how to proceed, and it is this succeeding step that will be more demanding on me to be creative. Some serious experimenting and generation of small samples will be next in order to figure out how to proceed. Wish me luck, but I am feeling more confident now! Re-entry from a place of familiarity after an absence is a way that has been most helpful to me.

Sustainability and Activism in Art, by Sue Sherman

I recently returned from a whirlwind few days in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for this year’s Quilt Canada, the main annual event of the Canadian Quilters Association/Association Canadienne de la Courtepointe (CQA/ACC).  During this time I was also blessed to finally catch up with Luana Rubin, a force of nature within the quilting world.  More about that later.

CQA/ACC is the first quilting organization that I know of to assign an Award of Excellence for Sustainability.  This was not just a ribbon and a smile, but a full-on $1000 cross-category award equal to the Awards of Excellence for piecing, appliqué, innovation, hand stitching, and the two machine stitching awards. CQA worked with well-known Canadian Quilter Bridget O’Flaherty, aka The Sustainable Quilter  to develop criteria.  The award was either for the use of recycled/low-impact construction methods or materials, or for artistic content with an environmental or social message.  Show entrants in all categories were asked to check upon registration whether their quilt should be considered for this new award.

When I signed up to write this blog post earlier in the year I was always planning to make it about the new CQA/ACC Sustainability Award, so how wonderful is it to say that one of my quilts won it this year!  

The quilt is called “Sanctuary?” and it’s an absurd look at a future where Antarctica has warmed up to the point we have to create an artificially cooled environment in order for penguins to build their rookery.  The scene shows a geodesic dome covering the penguin nests, with a coal-fired furnace next to it spewing black smoke into the atmosphere to power an air conditioning system. The effect is quite dark but, I hope, amusing at the same time.  And what’s not to like about a quilt that's six feet wide with over 100 penguins on it?

We should also recognize that this year’s Sustainability Award of Excellence was sponsored by the Etobicoke Quilters’ Guild (Etobicoke is a part of Toronto).  This is a big commitment for a quilt guild and says a lot about their commitment to using quilting as a voice for change.  Bravo!

The judges at this year’s Quilt Canada may have made a further statement about the place of activism in quilt art by awarding Best in Show to another one of my recent activist pieces, “Life in the Anthropocene”, which is described in the April 6 blog post ArtCloth Network: Life in the Anthropocene.

Back to Luana Rubin, she has been a great supporter of quilting and quilters for many years through her company eQuilter.com, an incredible source of quilting fabric and other necessities that has committed to giving 2% of every sale to charity.  As one of the owners of eQuilter, Luana has sponsored many quilting and art quilt events over the years, and she has spoken extensively to the art quilting community around the world about including an activist element in our art. 

All of this encouragement of art activism is having an impact.  I used to feel the need to apologize for including an opinion in my artwork, but not so much anymore.  And other art quilters have also told me they are feeling less timid about expressing their views in art, and that viewers are responding positively.  As events unfold in what climate scientists have identified as the last decade where it will be truly possible to save the world from the worst effects of climate change, my plan for the near future will be to slowly increase the volume of my artistic voice.

You can see more of my work at sueshermanquilts.com.