Re-Visioning: Fiber Innovations

Regina Benson is curating Re-Visioning: Fiber Innovations for this fall at the Lakewood Arts and Cultural Center in Lakewood, CO. Jason Pollen, Nancy Koenigsberg, Regina Benson and I will be the artists in this invitational exhibition.



I have been working hard to have new and larger work available for the exhibition, and the photo here, Mockingbird's Larder, is of one of those pieces.



The exhibition runs from September 9 - November 6, 2011

Opening reception and artist talks: September 9, 5-7 PM.


Hope you will be able to see this show.



Nancy

Don Scores His First Solo Show

Don hung his first solo exhibition on Saturday and sold a piece from the show at the opening on Sunday. Great start for his first solo. Great beginning to a nice weekend.


This is the left front wall. The mask second from the right was bought by art collectors who made sure to get to the exhibition at first opening to make their selection. It is The Keeper of the Ancient Stories. It was one of my favorites, it will be missed.

All of Don's creations have their own story that relates who they are and their function in the tribe. They speak to him and tell him their story as he creates them.








The work here is on the right front wall.

You can see better photos of his work on his website at
http://donfaires.com




Here are the back walls.








Here are several close ups. The circular one is the Spirit Guide. The pair of photos are actually a pair - a mask and the story of the mask in a collage format. The next two are The Next Fire Shaman and Song Spirit.

Don has been really successful selling his work and they have primarily been sold out of his studio -- and our living room. It will be interesting to see what more happens at this first exhibition.

The exhibition committee at Community Church UU in Chapel Hill NC did a terrific job in laying out the exhibition. They are a very talented and dedicated group led by Marni Goldshlag.

The exhibition will hang through the last Sunday of April and can be seen during the weekday by going to the church office, and on Sundays during and following church services.

My 2011 Journal - Gift From Don

Don created this journal for me from a gold tooled journal purchased at Cheap Joe's. He began the tradition last year with a similar journal that I loved so much that he made me another personalized journal for 2011. He took detail photos of three of my quilts and made little recessed windows to display them in. And then he put my name and date on the book as well. The book has a half flap on the right that is magnetized to keep it closed and a pocket in the inside back for papers before they are attached to the book.

Last year, I used the book for business cards I collected, phone numbers and notes from meetings and planning while out of the office. A year's worth of thinking is recorded in it. Some sketches, but most sketches are contained in other journals. But it is the one place to go and find almost anything I collected during the year.

Do you have a special journal you love? And how do you use it?

Nancy

Art Comes in Many Varieties

This last week has been filled with art of all kinds. Went to the Mint Museum's celebration of the acquisition of "Charlotte Shout!" by Romare Bearden - a terrific piece of work. The Mint has finally achieved a good collection of this renown Charlotte artist.

But the celebration was mainly of a performance variety by groups from Johnson C. Smith University. There were several pieces of modern dance, well done by lovely supple young ladies from JCSU art program. But the highlight for me was the choral music by the JCSU chorus. Twenty seven members, 15 females and 12 males with a perfect balance of sopranos, altos, tenors, baritones and basses. I don't think I have ever heard as well balanced a group before. The selections they did were all gospel, but gospel done at the level of high opera. I still get chills as I remember some of the notes hit by the sopranos. If you have a chance to see and hear these groups, run, don't walk to the performances.


After the terrific music, we briefly checked out the Romare Bearden Gallery and then beat a hasty path to Halcyon Restaurant on the second floor of the Mint. Here locally acquired food is cooked and served as a fine art. A bit pricey, but superb. We especially loved the duck and the crepes.

And Friday night we went to the Jerald Melberg Gallery to see the work of Robert Kushner, whose work features wonderful florals and lots of gold. Great reception and Kushner was wearing a luscious hand woven silk top.

Next time I will post some artwork.

Nancy

Deidre Adams

Deidre Adams has done some wonderful photography for me and blogged about the quilts. Love what she wrote. Here is the link.

http://abstractions.deidreadams.com/2011/02/nancy-g-cook-%E2%80%93-seed-play/


This photo is one that Deidre took for me of Echoes of Tulip's Summer. Some readers may remember that I asked for help in naming it when my brain went dry.


I love Deidre's work. She does it all. She pieces, and quilts, and then she paints and does surface design work on the top. The results are very textural, complex and evocative images. I had the chance to see a group of them in a SAQA show at the Turchin Art Center in Boone NC a couple of years ago. It was truly magical.

If you are from the American Southeast, you probably recognize the Tulip Poplar tree. It is one of my favorites.

Our weather is wonderful right now. And a joy after the long cold winter we have had. It is mild to many of you, but long for some of us.

Nancy

3 in 1 Color Tool by Joen Wolfrom

Here is another in my series on color tools. This one was suggested by several readers. It is an impressive combination that should be helpful for a variety of decisions that quilters need to make. Compact enough for the handbag, it can easily be carried to the fabric shop or to class.



If one is not interested in investing in the Color Aid cards, this provides a wealth of color chips very compactly. Each color chip has a scale from the pure color in the center to increasing tints to the left and increasing shades to the right. And on the other side of the card and especially fascinating are the scales for tones. There is a scale of shade + gray to the left, a scale of pure color plus gray in the center and then a scale of tints plus gray to the right. You can see them in the blue and blue violet cards displayed.



I was particularly pleased to see the variety of pure colors used.

There are five color cards for blue, ranging from blue-violet, through, blue, cerulean blue, turquoise to aqua blue. you can see these on the second photo.



On the back of the color cards are the colors that will provide different color plans. The third photo shows the back of the cards.


It is interesting to compare adjacent color cards to see the very fine differences in that occur in the analogous colors and complementary color plans. If your quilts are not having the color punch that you want, you might consider checking these color plans out.































Several readers have written into the Quilt Art list that they do not need or use a color tool, that they use the colors that feel right to them. That is great, man, how I envy them. Some artists do have an amazing sense of color and what colors go with other colors to convey their message. My ex had a wonderful, intuitive, untrained sense of color that was far beyond mine.



I love color and find that I am always learning more about it. My intuitive sense is fair, but I find that I may need to tweak my color usage to better convey what I am trying to say. And then the tools are great. So if you don't need them, don't use them. But if you are like me, and are still learning, give some tools a try out and see if they help develop your comfort level with choosing colors.



Another tool at the back will be good for quilters who piece in small squares, circles and triangles to try out different patterned fabrics to see what they will look like in small amounts. This is another tool that can be very useful to the quilter who is just learning about fabric choices.


And then there are value finders in red and green that can help determine contrasting values without color confusing the decision making. All in all, this is a great little tool that is published by C&T Publishing for less than $20. Check out your local quilt shop. You can probably find it there.
May glorious color fill your life,

Nancy

Mockingbird's Larder

Mockingbird's Larder was a real joy to create. I started with photographs of the deciduous holly trees taken at the Mint Museum in Charlotte. The berries hold onto the branches late into the winter long after the leaves drop. Looking closely at the junctures of the berries to the stems, there are these interesting little knots at the base of the stems. Seems to me that they probably are where berries have been in the past. And then there are little leaf buds along the stems as well. The tree's past, present and future is visible right there. Love how this really portrays the continuity of life.

Here in the Southeast USA, the Mockingbird likes to find a source of winter food and stand guard over it, running away any competition for the berries. But just as the berries ripen in the winter, a flock of Cedar Waxwings, or American Robins will descend and strip the berries before moving on -- raiding the Mockingbird's larder. Such is life.

Just had the quilt photographed by Deidre Adams. She was able to get the full piece well lit and professionally pulled out of the background, skills I have yet to master.