MAḎAYIN Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala by Barbara Schneider

 https://madayin.kluge-ruhe.org/

I just experienced the most interesting exhibit now at the Asia Society in New York. The article showed the most intriguing  aboriginal paintings and referred to the exhibit at the Kluge-Ruhe Museum in Virginia.

When I went to look at more on that website, they wrote that the exhibit was so extensive that they had built a separate website so that you could experience it in a new way.  It is fascinating and so full of information and the ability to look very closely at the art. Even though I can't go to the exhibit in New York I feel like I have had a wonderful experience of it through this new site.

I am also going to comment on serendipity.  I had recently listened to a book I read some time ago - Color by Victoria Findlay.  Listening to it was a very different experience than reading it. But because I had done this so recently I remembered quite well her section on bark cloth which also covered  a lot of the history of what is seen in this exhibit.

I don't know whether our antennas go up but it often feels like if I am discovering something in one area I am suddenly experiencing it in several others.  I am very much enjoying my download at the moment of wonderful Aboriginal art as an audible, visual and written experience.

Here are links to various things about the exhibit both at the Asia Society and at the Kluge-Ruhe.

PS. I found the catalog through Used Books as well.  

https://madayin.kluge-ruhe.org/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/arts/design/aboriginal-art-australia-review.html

https://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/madayin-eight-decades-aboriginal-australian-bark-painting-yirrkala

Quilt National 2025 Barbara Shcneider

 I was happy to learn that my piece Forest Floor: Tree Bark Fragments, var. 10 was accepted into Quilt National 2025. It is always an honor and ALWAYS unexpected.  I thought I might write a bit about the process of the development of the 3 pieces I entered this year and the trials and tribulations of doing dimensional work for something like this.

Tree Bark Fragments, var. 9

Forest Floor, Tree Bark fragments, var. 10 (the QN piece)

Forest Floor, Tree Bark Fragments. var. 11

I created 3 pieces for submission all starting with pieces of tree bark or branches that I have picked up on my walks through woods.  My first challenge is to figure out how to enlarge them as images  and maintaining what is intriguing about them, and then  how they might translate as large, sculptural or dimensional pieces.  The three I chose were of plane (or sycamore) bark, the second, birch bark and the third a piece of warped and twisted tree branch.  I take photos of them, enlarge and manipulate in Photoshop and then print through Spoonflower.  Often I have to divide images to make the requirement for printing work and then reassemble.

When I get the printed fabric, it often "translates" in a way that I did not expect.  It gets fuzzy, or the colors are wrong, or the size is too much or too litlte or any number of things.  But when it is right I can start to figure out how best to move it along.

In the case of the Quilt National piece, it involved 7 different plane tree fragments, each related but different, each about 12 inches wide and 3.5 to 4 feet long.  I try a number of approaches, testing backings, stitching, distressing.  On this piece I ended up backing with a colored felt and stitching with 2 threads at a time through needle in a free motion way to build texture and densities.  The stitching on the felt backing adds dimensions when the pieces are stiffened and shaped.  

The next step is to shape them and start to arrange them as one assemblage.

Next challenge - photographing them so that the shapes are emphasized with light and shadow.

Next challenge after that is getting all the photos ready to upload and doing all the submission work.

Then you wait and don't build your hopes up. :-)

When I got the acceptance notice that the var. 10 was accepted, I then had to work out a hanging diagram (as it was not going to work with a hanging rod pocket) and  figure out how to prep it to ship in a sturdy but economical way.  In the end I took photos of each step of the prep for shipping and wrote a document to Quilt National about how to unwrap, display and re-wrap for shipping.

I often forget in the enthusiasm at the start of a piece all the many, and often, not so much fun, steps that are required to actually get a piece to the finish line!

I hope some of you will get to go to Quilt National next summer and be inspired by the variety of the work that is there.  I hope to get there in 2025 and see my work with fresh eyes.

And maybe do some nice flat work for awhile :-)

 

 

Houston International Quilt Festival - Special Exhibition

  

Ten Years of Flinging Paint  - Sherri Lipman McCauley

Intentionally ambiguous might be a way of identifying McCauley’s body of work. This exhibition, Ten Years of Flinging Paint, will include artwork from 2014 to the present. The union of paints and dyes with fabric is her forte. Using paints, dyes, fabrics and threads, the goal is to heighten the recognition of art quilts as fine art.

See this exhibition at the Houston International Quilt Festival at the George R. Brown Convention Center, October 30-November 3, 2024. Catch Sherri’s demonstrations at Open Studios in the Embellish/Paint area on Thursday and Friday at 2pm.