PJ Howard - Fun with Creativity

PJ Howard in Orange Ski Cap
My friend and fellow member of Fiber Art Options, has a great sense of humor, it comes out in every thing she does. Love this photo of her, it really captures that spirit. Recently I bought a couple pieces of her work, one for me and one for a friend. I am so delighted with them that I wanted to share them with my friends.

Serene

I fell in love with this piece and purchased it before PJ could put it in the Denver Art Crawl.
The vase is recycled paper and gel. She has done a superb piece of art in a small piece about 10" by 8". Notice how she has moved the green in the vase around both with fabric and stitches. She has obtained a great deal of depth with the fabric choices, overlapping, and changing fabric sizes. She has repetition with color and mass, but keeps the viewer interested with a change in size for every piece of fabric. The round beads and the swervey green machine embroidery stitched leaves are a nice contrast to all the straight edges. Good study in art. I love it every time my eyes light on it.


Three Hearts

My friend Andy fell in love with this at the Annual Denver Art Crawl. Made for easy shopping for me. PJ has used a multitude of red fabrics and notice how she has moved the black and red print around to keep the eye moving. The three hearts are made from recycled paper and beads. I love the additional heart on the red wire she used to hang the piece. She has used built in machine decorative stitches to quilt the piece and add additional texture and details. Even small work can be a nice piece of art.



Blue and Green Angel
This tiny piece is chuck full of recycles. Note the body of the angel and the button face. PJ loves to work with plaids and has used one for the background. This tiny piece won big prizes at the last CQG show.



Baby Quilt
Now this is a baby quilt to stimulate the little sucker. Somehow I see the dear little one playing and giving high fives more than sleeping.


Blue Kite
Can you see the flying kites on this one? Two of them are stitched on. Love the pieced background in the irregular shape.

White Pin
PJ also makes jewelry generally from recycled papers, and other found objects. Love this one, with the threads and what looks to be a mobe pearl.
Hope you enjoy these pieces by my friend PJ as much as I do.

Keep Quilting
Nancy

Art To Go - 3 Gallery Openings Tonight

Rhododendron Seed Pods

Going to put on the track shoes tonight!! With three gallery receptions where my work will be on display, I will be moving around town.

The Charlotte Art League has an annual small art sale for its members to sell work no larger than 14 inches framed. I completed this piece and matted and framed it in an 16'' x 14'' frame.

This is my first time at this venture. Will be interesting to see how it goes. The entry prices were good: $10 for 4 pieces and $2 for each additional piece up to 8. If any are sold, the artist can replace them at no additional charge.


Pine Cone

Pine Cone was framed up to be 16'' wide, but the chair of the show indicated that she was not going to be measuring. This is a study for a larger piece that I will do later.

Burford Holly

This little piece has been used in photos by me for awhile, but I had not finished it. This was also matted and framed to sell. I also framed up several photos that I had photoshopped, printed on fabric, and hand embroidered. They will be a bit less.

This is a year for checking out the local art groups to see which one I want to have a long term relationship with. I entered two pieces from my Seed Play series in the Guild of Charlotte Artists December juried show with some trepidation. Both got in. The Guild is more of the fine art group, painters, sculpture, photography, so I had been hesitant to even try entering any work with them. But when the folks who took in the work saw my pieces, their reactions were very reassuring.

Get this, we delivered the actually work between 10 -11 am for the jurying and were notified before 3 if we needed to pick up any rejected pieces. The art world sure works differently than the quilt world.

My three winter pieces will also be at Ciel Gallery next door to the Charlotte Art League.

And before hitting the gallery crawl, I will enter 2 pieces in the Mint Hill Arts first juried show. Since they will have a fiber show in January, they may not be as interested in having any in December. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I am encouraged about the reception of my work in the traditional art world and think lots of other quilters and fiber artists should venture out.

Keep Quilting

Nancy

Small Works Underway

Rhoddy Small

Having completed a series of work all about size 38'' x 28'', I figured it was time to do something smaller to put in a local art show for small works for gifts. I want to use essentially the same style of work, just more close up and smaller. These are all going to be small enough to fit into an 11'' x 14'' frame. This design is inspired by the seed pods of the rhododendron tree.


Pine Small

People unfamiliar with fiber art seem more comfortable with work that is framed. This will be an experiment to see if they sell for Christmas.
Creating the templates and inking the pine cone was a challenge. This is a trial piece for a larger work. What do you think?

Juniperus Small

These little works went really fast because I printed the designs directly onto Quilter's Freezer Paper Sheets by C & T Publishing. I will use this product alot more. They are cut to run through a standard printer and made creating my freezer paper templates for inking the design really easy.

Let me know what you think of these designs.

Keep Quilting
Nancy