The Frayed Edges Show at the Camden Public Library (Maine) is up and open for public viewing! And, thanks to sending out press releases, we have coverage in print and online from The Village Soup (Knox County edition) and The Camden Herald, which has a picture, too! The show is in the Jean Picker Room, on the lower level. If you enter from Atlantic street, pass the check-out desk and bear left past the “new books” and card catalog computers to the room. Here’s the view as you walk into the Picker Room, which holds a new show of various art media every month; the director for these programs popped in as we were hanging, and said again that his favorites are the quilt shows…yeah!

On Thursday morning, which was sunny, warm and sticky, Kate Cutko brought up her pieces and Hannah’s from the Bowdoinham area. Deborah has shipped hers from Dallas, and Kathy–who lives in China Village–had dropped hers off at my house earlier in the week since she had to work that day. Thank heavens Kate was there, as I was all butterfingers from so many nights and days at the hospital…I think she hung two pieces for every one I managed to get up! AND, we got all but one piece displayed! Then we trotted over to Rockport Blueprint, because she realized we ought to have a guest book, and bought one!

The day began with a wondrous gathering…the first time we were able to assemble our “grid” pieces! This was an idea I had to have each of us provide a photo, then all five of us interpret the photo in something small…the pieces are all 7 inches tall. The verticals are 5″ wide by 7″ tall, the horizontals are 10″ wide by 7″ tall (size was dicated by the space available between the chair rail and maximum upper viewing level!). They are arranged so that each artist has a row for their work, and each column is five variations of one photo. Then Kathy made a great poster (and labels for all our pieces) with the five original photos from which we drew our inspiration. Here’s Kate setting them out:

As you walk into the Picker room, you can see the grid on the center of the left wall:

This shot is from the grid, around the corner to the far wall (with all our junk on the table…the room looks better when we’re not in the middle of setting up…grin!), with my Koi quilt:

Then, turn the corner to the right wall, which has a collage of various works by four of us, Deborah’s “Anthony Avenue” piece anchoring that wall, two cool pieces (Kate’s nest on top, Deborah’s Encrusted Cairn on the bottom), Kathy’s pink flowers/trees/wonderfulness, then Hannah’s two pieces, and my Flying Toast about Gramma’s kitchen.

Here’s the corner next to the doors, with Flying Toast again and a small piece which I forgot to tell Kathy about (actually forgot I had it!) called Essence of Summer Rose, a mixed media…quilt on painted canvas.

Just to the left of the doors is a large display case with our group round-robin books, some of Deborah’s small pieces (we’re going to work on the display of those!), will add some of Kate’s Adoption Day cards (her website is here), and a few more items. Our binder with information about the show, a picture of all of us,the Winter 2006 Quilting Arts article about us, and artists’ statements is on to, along with the guest book and our cards. Above the case is Kathy’s birches and my Autumn on the Village Green.

MANY of these pieces are for sale…if you are interested in any of them, just drop me a line and I’ll get back to you! Because Joshua is still in the hospital, it may take a couple of days, but I promise I’ll return e-mails as soon as I can.  More about Joshua soon.

We hope you’ll be able to come visit, and if you do please leave us a note in the guestbook on the display case.  AND if you’d like to be on our mailing list, or on my newsletter, please leave an e-mail address!

Well….. medicine in the US can do many wonderful things, but taking into consideration the patient as a feeling, sentient single entity, and his family, is not one of them. Yesterday the doc said if all goes well he could have surgery Weds. and go home Thursday. Today he actually LOOKED at the incisions and said they would have to do skin grafts, meaning MORE days in the hospital and not home Thursday. Sigh. I’m sick of the ortho guys not taking to the plastics guys not talking to trauma not talking to rehab … or if they ARE communicating to each other, failing to communicate that to us.

Anyway, I’m tired, and that is part of my grumpiness! I hope to have time to blog about Maine Quilts, this past weekend (I got a 90 minute window of opportunity to visit! YEAH!), and Kate and I hang the Frayed Edges show at the Camden Public Library…. if you put Frayed Edges into the search box, it will bring up posts about our mini-group; the most recent is your invite to come to the show! Gotta run….chores to do before heading back up to Bangor, Cheers, Sarah

Here’s a press release I sent out for our group show this August. Thought I’d insert a little quilty content into the medical reports. Joshua continues to improve, albeit slowly. He had another unit of blood today to combat the anemia, but he is getting stronger every day. Today he ate more than he has, tho not enough. One day at a time. And thanks again for ALL the many good wishes.

The Frayed Edges will have a show of textile and mixed media art at the Jean Picker Room of the Camden Public Library from August 2 through 29, located at Main Street and Atlantic Avenue in downtown Camden, Maine. Meet the artists at a reception on Saturday, August 11th, from 1 to 4 pm, in the Picker Room. For library hours and directions, visit the library website here .

The show will feature a selection of works on the theme of “Home,” a collaborative piece entitled “Five Artists-Five Views”, and selected other works. For the collaborative piece, each artist contributed a photo, then all five artists made a small piece based on that photograph. The resulting twenty-five small works are displayed in a unified grid. This piece illustrates for the viewer how each artist’s style reveals itself through five different interpretations, and how differently each person can “see” a single photo. Here’s the poster Deborah did up for us:

The Frayed Edges are a group of five women who live (or lived) in Maine and met through Art Quilts Maine, a part of the statewide Pine Tree Quilt Guild (www.mainequilts.org): Hannah Beattie of Brunswick, Deborah Boschert of Dallas, Texas (formerly of Topsham), Kate Cutko of Bowdoinham, Kathy Daniels of China Village, and Sarah Ann Smith of Camden. They are professional artists who sell their work from their websites, have won awards and been juried into national level shows, have been published as a group in the top art quilting magazine, Quilting Arts, and have projects in the forthcoming Quilting with Beads by Lark Books.

Some of the work in this show is available for purchase; please contact the artists directly. For questions, please contact Sarah at sarah@sarahannsmith.com .

Just a brief note today…. somewhere in catching up on various blogs I came across this link for a man who does graphic designs, book covers, posters and websites.  Honestly, the site is not very intuitive.  You have to wait for a flash opening, then a skinny line with no words or any other hints pops up.  Click on the middle of it, and the line will blink, and then you can mouse over the color bars to see Covers, Books, Web, Type, Posters and Contact.  Little circles will appear on either side of the color bar.  If you click on THOSE you will be rewarded for navigating this not-so-helpful site design with a feast of glorious, and very different designs.

I love this book cover, and this one.   Hmmm…OK, those links may take you to the same page.  Click on the third and fifth dots to the right of the vertical color band!  And the first poster I would order if he still had it…. try clicking here, it is the top dot:  here .

I’m screamingly busy working on my book, so hope to have more quilty and art-y content anon.

I mentioned in an earlier post about our mini-group, the Frayed Edges, that we are having a group show in the Picker Room at the Camden Public Library (there is month-long show each month ranging from vintage lithographs and etchings to contemporary oils to art photography and more). We wanted to do a single group project, but one that our hectic lives would be able to absorb. We each contributed a photo, and each of us made a small project based on the five photos. I offered a photo I took last summer at the Ringling Museum, in Sarasota:

This photo and one Kathy took, of a brilliant orange beach umbrella, sand, sea and sky, are the two 5″ wide by 7″ tall pieces. The other three photos are also 7 inches tall, but 10 inches wide. That way when we hang them, each row will be of five 10″-tall pieces. So, here are mine, starting with mine:

And here is the one I did from the photo Deborah contributed (photo was taken by her husband Jeff in Central America):

Then I tried an abstract (actually, I did this one first, but love the way it turned out!). I fused up Kathy’s umbrella, then sliced it up into pieces and put it back together:

Hannah’s Flower was a challenge, so I think I’ll save that one for my next post, and show the first attempt, how I saved the first effort, and my second much more successful effort at the 7×10 size. That leaves Kate’s St. Michael’s church in Kiev. Kate’s daughter is adopted from the Ukraine, and she took these photos on the adoption trip. The domes and colors are spectacular in the original photo. All of us honed in on the domes immediately, but in very different ways. I decided to try my hand at foiling with beads: