TWELVE BY TWELVE

What does an Australian Twelve do when she finds herself in Washington DC?  She contacts her closest Twelve, Kristin in Charlottesville-VA, and plans are made for an art excursion.  We started out at the National Portrait Gallery with an introductory/highlights tour with a docent who also happened to be an artist.  Amongst other things, we learned about Gilbert Stuart's habit of not finishing paintings (although he did manage a handsome portrait of the first President); admired the energy of Elaine de Kooning's portrait of Kennedy; heard the reason why the portrait of George W Bush is cut off at the ankles; and marvelled at the shimmery grid treatment of Bill Clinton by Chuck Close.  

Then it was time to refuel at the Capitol Brewing Company before viewing the "Workt by Hand" exhibition of quilts at the National Museum of Women in the Arts which conveniently opened a day or two earlier.  We emerged with a new appreciation of the potential of satin, taffeta and silk brocades!  

Thank you Kristin for making the long journey to meet up with me, especially at such a busy time of the year.  I hope they saved some holiday tamales for you back home.  My Twelve count for 2013 is officially five (Kirsty, Terry, Gerrie, Karen and Kristin) but we toast all of the Twelves.

The third round of the SAQA 2013 Benefit Auction begins on Monday! Four of the twelves are featured in this round. Check out these beautiful 12x12 art quilts!

Kristin's contribution is part of her Villages and Rooted series. It's even got a chair on it! Maybe I shouldn't have included her quilt here. Now you'll all want to big against me! Kristin is a master at combining so many wonderful elements and giving meaning and context to each of them.

Gerrie's quilt is so wonderfully organic and textural. It's luminous too. You can even get a sense of the sheen of the discharged silk in the photo. That's saying a lot! I can only imagine how gorgeous it will be in person. You can read more about Gerrie's quilt here. 

As I started this particular challenge, “Bittersweet” came to mind. As usual, I went to my working sketchbook and wrote down things that came to mind when I thought of sweet or bittersweet. This time I also went to one of my heftier sketchbooks and drew/painted studies of bittersweet, since I have been working more and more with drawing and painting as much as possible in order to expand my artistic range. I drew two varieties of the plant, and painted abstractions such as the triangles in the page above, and a stylized berry pattern on another page which also included a drawing of a pile of dark chocolate. I like the concept, and there are some interesting elements going on. But I was quite sure I don’t want to be so literal as to recreate my sketchbook drawing in fabric. Somewhere along the way, keeping up with the doings of our teenage German exchange student, something caught my eye. She had posted a cute picture of herself and her sister on Facebook. A friend responded with “sweet,” but in German, which is “suess.” He used the extended German alphabet, which contracts the double esses to an eszet (ß), which looks to Americans to be a funny B, and changes the ue to a u with an umlaut (ü) — which looked to me like a cute little happy face in the middle of the word! Süß! How sweet is that?! 

You never know where inspiration will come from. 

First, I was watching last week's episode of the TV show Fringe last night, and one of the characters was hanging out in his apartment watching the James Garner series Maverick. Ha! Then, towards the end of the show, another character was sitting in a car, thinking about loss and regrowth, and there was a lone dandelion popping through a crack in the pavement. Very full circle and connected.

This was a tough challenge for me. I never really got a good handle on how I wanted to approach it. After much thinking and procrastinating, I decided to choose someone who I thought was a maverick, and portray them through the branding that is the origin of the word. Because most of my other 2012 pieces relate to Army life in one way or another, that is where I chose to look for my maverick.

In my mind Dan Choi is most certainly a maverick. He chose to go against the passive flow of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy in the military and come out while he still served. He felt it was dishonorable to wear the brand of Army Officer and necessarily lie or omit about his sexual orientation. And on the other hand, once out and branded as gay, he was excluded from the profession which he loved. So, Don't Brand Dan, or any other service member. Allow them to be truthful to themselves and to serve their country honorably (and let's get working on DOMA -- oddly, I think it's the military which will lead the way in repealing that as well). The two things (being true to one's self and service to the military) need not be mutually exclusive.

I am grateful to Dan Choi for being such a maverick and for being instrumental in the repeal of the DADT policy. Unfortunately, I don't think my small quilt does him or the gay rights movement justice. I was not careful enough in my placement of the camo uniform fabric and so the branding iron is a bit hard to read. Overall the concept is pretty literal, and while technically well made, the artwork is flat visually and conceptually. I had time to redo it, but I just didn't know where to go with it. Proof that fabulous work does not always or naturally flow from our hands.

I have a confession to make. I am not motivated to work on our current challenge. I have several other projects which I am much more excited about and I'd much rather be working on.

However, I'm committed to my Twelve by Twelve compatriots so every now and then I make sure I give our theme a little attention. Last night I even drew a cartoon for it n(and by cartoon, I mean a drawing which I'll be working from as a sort of pattern, not a comic interpretation). 

My process is not unlike the one Helen so eloquently laid out a few posts back. I start with thoughts and words and associations drawn. Could I create a work that is maverick? That is "outside the box?" No, that would be pretty cocky for me to assume I could do. How about an homage to a maverick in the quilt world (since our medium is quilts after all)? I'm thinking in particular, people like Nancy Crow, Michael James, Gwen Marston, Joe Cunningham, and Susan Shie. I consider all these creators to be mavericks because of the ways their work veered away from quilting customs and paved the way for those of us who are following. But in my opinion, doing a portrait or a piece in the style of any of these people would be derivative, and that is in my mind neither free thinking or outside convention (definitions of maverick).

So, I'll have to approach a maverick in a different way. I'm looking to the original meaning and drawing  from the meaning of branding and herds. I'm also using my previous work as a jumping off point. I often find that part of my process is to wait until the muse hits, and while I don't want to put this off until the last minute, I'm not rushing to force it. I'm pleased with the groundwork I've laid, and can envision a satisfying solution. There's some room though along the way to wander off the path I've beaten.

My map is inspired by the many moves our family has made in the last 16 years. 

Each place has it's landmarks and it's charms. Thinking of each these places reminded me of illustrated (and often embroidered) souvenir tea towels and pillows representing the US states. They may not strictly be maps in the wayfinding sense, but they include sights and cities associated with a state, and in that way provide an inspirational map of what can be found in a particular place. Mine shows our movement from one place to the next. Embroidering something for one's home brings to mind those nesting sensibilities we all have when moving house, especially when it's an item for that most essential of places in each house -- the kitchen. I wrote a little more about the inspiration in a previous post here.

My embroidered towel is mounted on a quilted background reminscent of a potholder. From a practical standpoint it provides a bit of structure, from a conceptual standpoint it makes another reference to home and kitchen, and from a tongue in cheek standpoint it pokes a bit of fun at the fear many art quilters have that our smaller quilted works will be mistaken for fancy potholders.