Food for Thought! A SAQA Exhibit
The Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA)’s newest touring exhibit of art quilts debuts this month at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, just in time for the annual AQS Quilt Show in Paducah. I’m thrilled to be among the 34 artists in this exhibit, and equally thrilled with the exhibit catalog (which just happens to be available for sale here on the SAQA website–thank you to Deidre Adams for doing such a great job on it.) More information about the exhibit is here on the SAQA website.
When visiting my mother we would often go to a restaurant called Insalata, housed in a building that had been a bank when I was a child. The chef/owner met the challenge of the enormous ceilings by commissioning oversized artwork of fruits and vegetables scaled to fit the soaring walls. I loved the persimmons, especially, and remembered it as I made another quilt in my tomatoes series. As I worked on these salad ingredients, I recalled the flavors of our food and the company of my mother and her friends as we lunched there.
My first tomato quilts became the basis of my Quilting Arts/Interweave video workshop which teaches my collage process. As Helen Gregory, VP of content for F+W said, the title may be the longest ever: Art Quilt Design from Photo to Threadwork, with Fabric Collage and Machine Quilting (link here, also available as a download here). But as she also said, there is just so much in it! Here’s one of the early tomato quilts:
Insalata is made of Artist dyed and painted fabrics, commercial batiks, poly-wool blend batting, textile paint, Mistyfuse, crisp interfacing, Superior Threads 40-wt poly and 60-wt poly thread, raffia. Techniques include dyeing and painting fabric. Fused collage. Intensely machine quilted.
The exhibit will travel to Great Britain (England and Ireland) next year, and additional venues thereafter. Sure hope I get to see it in the cloth somewhere!