Quilt National 2015 - Brigitte Kopp

Brigitte Kopp, “On the road to…”, 2014

64” x 61“

Material:

Self painted linen and cotton, silk organza, latex, different threads

Technique:

Layered fabrics, open edge appliqué, draped latex, hand and machine quilted and embroidered

I felt honoured being selected for the second time for Quilt National and I promised Maggi to write something about my travel to Athens and my quilt.  After booking the flight to USA, I decided to go to see the dentist for some corrections. To make it short, after some surgeries it is not yet finished – impossible to travel.

To see the exiting pieces of the others, meeting quilters from the USA and other countries, getting all the information at the SAQA Symposium was a great experience for me when visiting QN in 2013.  Therefore I was very sad to stay home.  I hope somebody else was travelling to QN and will post some pictures.

My quilt selected for 2015 is from the series of quilts about women’s life I started in 2013.

This work is dedicated to all women who have to deplore losses, whether the loss of their home, livelihood or even their relatives.

At first sight you may think it is a piece of a Madonna but if you look of the little appliquéd pictures around and the hand stitched background, showing a oriental city getting more and more destroyed, you will see that it is about a mother and her baby fleeing war and destruction.

As in the visual arts, each stroke for a work is important; to me each stitch in a quilt is a significant design component. The stripes of red self painted fabrics and the cut outs in form of an “L” as a sign for lost, are essential components of the design. I have fixed the red stripes with big cross stitches. Crosses are my sign for something that has to end, as the wars in the Middle East. The dark blue draped latex is a sign for the path of the women. You can find some other signs in my quilt, but I will leave it to you to find an interpretation.

Thank you Brigitte. I found this piece really moving.

And, as Brigitte writes 'You can find out more about the Dairy Barn and the quilts of Quilt National 2015 in the gorgeous catalogue you can by at the gallery shop on the QN website:'

http://dairybarn.org/quilt-national/quilt-national-2015/

Quilt National 2015 - Olga Norris

Today's Quilt National offering comes from Olga Norris from the UK. Olga describes both her inspiration and process.

'Crowded is the result of work I am doing on the subject of repeats.  I am attracted to the idea of a repeat being both exact and different.  The differences for me make the repeats more interesting, revealing more about the image.  Crowd was the initial image, and I hope an enigma: what kind of crowd? Positive or negative? Political or religious?  Herded or spontaneous?
This is the third time that I have had work chosen for the Quilt National exhibition.  My work uses digital collage and print as an important element in its image development, but Crowded is the first to be developed directly from traditional printmaking.  I started with a collagraph plate made simply of cardboard, masking tape, acrylic medium, and carborundum. 

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This was an experiment in viscosity printing, where inks of different densities are used to create intaglio and relief printing at the same time.  I was pleased with the five variations I achieved; I very much liked the effect of them together, and decided to make a quilt out of them.

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I scanned the five paper prints and digitally tidied up little elements, then printed out three copies of each of the five versions.  I used a desktop printer with prepared sheets of A3 size silk.  These are extremely fine, and so I ironed on thin Vilene in order to provide enough stiffness to stitch comfortably.  I joined all the rectangles together by machine before beginning to hand stitch the individual panels.

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I was delighted with the result and even more delighted when Crowded was chosen for Quilt National 2015'

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Thank you sharing your work with us Olga.

Quilt National 2015 - Dorte Jensen

Quilt National seems to be a show that most art quilters aspire to enter.  Several members of our region were juried in this year and now that the exhibition has opened we are able to take a look at some of their work. 

From the Quilt National website:-

Quilt National was intended to demonstrate the transformations taking place in the world of quilting. Its purpose was then, and still is, to carry the definition of quilting far beyond its traditional parameters and to promote quiltmaking as what it always has been — an art form.

The works in a Quilt National exhibit display a reverence for the lessons taught by the makers of the heritage quilts. Many of the works hold fast to the traditional methods of piecing and patching. At the same time, however, the Quilt National artist is intrigued by the challenge of expanding the boundaries of traditional quiltmaking by utilizing the newest materials and technologies. These innovative works generate strong emotional responses in the viewer while at the same time fulfilling the creative need of the artist to make a totally individual statement.

Dorte Jensen from Denmark is the first artist in this short series with her piece entitled 'The Sunshine of My Life'. In her own words she says -

My picture “ The Sunshine of My Life”  shows my daughter and her son. They play on the beach in the summer and she lifts him high above the water – all the way to the sun. His head becomes the sun itself and he beams back to his mother.

And isn't it just the way it is: our children are small sun rays. If we "lift them up" and support them the right way, they will shine upon us and fill our lives with sunshine.

Thank you for sharing this with those of us who could not be there Dorte.