Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Uta Lenk (Germany)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Bella Kaplan (Israel)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Monique Gilbert-Oversteyns (Belgium)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Linda Colsh (USA)

Linda Colsh was a member (and rep) in and for the region Europe/Middle East for the longest time, which is why we still claim her as a part of the region.

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Geneviéve Attinger (France)

Taking it down...

On Saturday evening, when the doors of the Carrefour European Patchwork (note the change of name - it used to be European Patchwork Meeting!) closed, a bunch of motivated and dedicated SAQA members gathered to take down the exhibition "Redirecting the Ordinary".

Deb Cashatt, Uta Lenk, Kris Sazaki,
Paola Zanda and Paolo Zanda (from left to right),
getting ready to take it down!

The show had received a lot of interested comments and praise, and it will now travel to several destinations in Europe, the first being Vicenza, Italy in the end of October.

Structured and organized distribution of jobs - and in less than an hour it was history.

Then the sun could set on this year's Carrefour.

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Starting on Monday, September 28, this quilt will be up for auction via the SAQA website.

Regula Affolter (CH)

SAQA presence in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines 2015

The current European Patchwork Meeting in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines is a stage for SAQA.

Not only do we have a whole number of board and committee members on the site and present at the SAQA meet and greet.

Front row, from left to right:
Kris Sazaki, Misik Kim, Elisabeth Nacenta de la Croix, Gul LaPorte, Martha Wolfe, Betty Busby, Deb Cashett

Several of the prizes went to SAQA members in the competition.

Jette Clover, Conversation with B
received the prestigious teacher's prize
and will go to Japan to teach

Olga Gonzales-Angulo,
I...Reflection of Life

Geneviéve Attinger, Intermittentes

Marisa Marquez, The Mirror

And several SAQA members have solo or group shows:

Mixed Media Art Association from Japan

Erica Waaser from Germany

Barbara Lange from Germany

Sheila Frampton Cooper from USA,
currently living in Provence, France

Olga Prins-Lukowski from Netherlands

DESEDAMAS (Cécilia and Mercé Gonzales) from Spain

Viewpoint 9, from around the world

And, of course, the SAQA exhibition "Redirecting the Ordinary":

A view into the SAQA exhibition

Benefit Auction starts today!

The SAQA Benefit Auction starts today - 

take the chance to buy 

some contemporary art and 

support SAQA at the same time!

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Gillian Travis (UK)

Benefit Auctin 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Sandy Snowden (UK)

Preparing the SAQA-exhibition "Redirecting the Ordinary" at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines

Tomorrow the 21st European Patchwork Meeting will open. Today a very active and decisive team helped to hang the SAQA exhibit "Redirecting the Ordinary", which will be on display at the Espace Tisserands.

Thank you very much to Gabi, Ruth and Barbara for their help, and to the guys from the organizers.
Come and see us between Wednesday and Saturday, in the Espace Tisserands ('exhibition 4')!

Benefit Auctin 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Hilde van Schaardenburg (NL)

Note to Self - European Quilt Triennial Art work by Helen Conway DRAFT

Note to Self by Helen Conway

In December 2014 my father turned seventy and the whole family flew to Berlin for a weekend at the Kempinski hotel by the Brandenburg Gate. The idea of us all proceeding en masse to view the historic sights of central Berlin was a nice one, but we knew, it was likely to end up in squabbles and tears if we didn’t all get some personal time. So, one afternoon, having dutifully escorted my parents around three days worth of Christmas markets and war museums, I was given my parole and I headed eagerly for the Fernsehturm to join a Graffiti tour of Berlin.

My slight obsession with graffiti started when, with other artists in the North of England, I formed the Etcetera group and we agreed to work to the theme of Transition. I used to practice immigration law and decided to follow that interest and went to visit Brick Lane in London with the idea of making art based on the layers of immigrant communities that had passed through that area. I went with plans to work with maps and architectural plans of the area and did not expect that it would be the the graffiti that would capture my heart.

I developed a method of painting my cloth with acrylic and adding graffiti with oil pastel, then piecing strips together. The graffiti was done by way of greatly exaggerated or truncated letters, often rotated mid-word so that while I was writing it I knew what it said but no-one else would read it, especially when it was cut up and reconstructed. The very first quilt made in that style was accepted for the SAQA Wide Horizons which encouraged me to go further. However, by the time I landed in Germany I was feeling I was merely playing with small variations of the same and I was looking for my next ‘leap’ forward with the series.

The tour was led by an English graffiti artist now living locally and we hopped on and off trams as he took us to see both legal street art murals and the more informal tags and throw-ups often regarded as vandalism not art. I took many photographs and loved how choosing edges or angled shots created new art from the existing marks on walls and doorways. I  came to realise from his own account of how graffiti saved him from an unhappy childhood in Perth Australia, how much graffiti writing is about the writers creating new identities for themselves. Suddenly I understood what had been merely subliminal before - the reason graffiti seemed like the right way for me to express my feelings about immigration and migration. Both were about people redefining themselves and having different public personas ( as they assimilated) and private personas ( in their own homes and communities).

That insight alone I thought worth the (modest) cost of the tour. But there was more to come. At the end we took a bus ride out to East Berlin to an abandoned margarine factory. There in a cavernous, bare room we were given a small piece of canvas, spray paint, some basic instruction on how to do stencil street art and the suggestion that we try to replicate what we had been shown. Of course, I didn’t. I begged extra canvas, showed them my art on my iphone, explained exactly why I was now practically shaking with excitement, because it had never occurred to me that I could do actual spray paint graffiti on fabric and was given in turn permission to play with whatever I could get my hands on in that room. They talked to me in detail about the different’ caps’ for the spray paint cans and the best paint brands to use and why.

Later that night I sat in the hotel room and ordered some spray paint from a specialist graffiti shop ( who even knew such things existed?!) and as soon as I got home I painted and stitched me a new quilt then, donning a respirator, took a physical and metaphorical deep breath and let loose with the spray paint. The result, Note to Self, was accepted as my first ever entry to the European Quilt Triennial.

The design was not random but was based loosely on a photograph I took that day. The quilt also has writing on it, not totally legible but notes to myself about the courage and bravery needed for me to be an artist. For years I felt bound by the identity of being the ‘academic’ child in the family, the lawyer. Now with my art I am finding a way to form a new identity, the artist. I may have to go it alone as  my family will not necessarily want to be by my side as I do it ,but this quilt is a note to myself to remember the excitement and satisfaction of branching out and making art that is unique to me. 

As I write on the quilt itself: “Whatever you dream you can, begin. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

. 

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Elisabeth Nacenta de la Croix (CH)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Shoshi Rimer (Israel)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Vera Holmgren (Sweden)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Bodil Gardner (Denmark)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donations from Europe/Middle East

Jette Clover (B)

Benefit Auction 2015 - donation from Europe/Middle East

Maggi Birchenough (UK)

The SAQA Benefit Auction 2015 is coming up soon!

In just a short time the annual SAQA Benefit Auction for 2015 will begin. You can take a preview at all the donated quilts here.

On September 18, there will be a DIAMOND DAY with all quilts available at US $ 1,000. Further proceedings can be checked on here.

Dream collections curated by SAQA members and drawn from the benefit auction quilts can be seen here.

In a count-down to each of the sections, we will present pictures of the quilts which have been donated by members from the region Europe/Middle East. individually, in alphabetical order, starting soon.

Tell your friends about this event, so they can bid on a quilt and support SAQA and art quilts!