Category Archives: Quilting

Quilting With Friends

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Celebrations, Design, Oregon, Quilting, Uncategorized

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I headed east over the mountains after the fourth of July to meet up with LeeAnn (coming from Seattle) and Mary (coming from Chattanooga) in Sisters in our home away from home for four days (The Quail’s Nest on Airbnb)…

We toasted ourselves with memories of five years ago when we went to Alabama to quilt

This year we were meeting up to go to friend Sujata Shah’s class called “Lattice”…a quilt from her book “Cultural Fusion”…

We set up…

and set to work…

and Sujata gave us encouragement and tips…

It was fun catching up with Sujata at lunch, and in the afternoon the quilt tops started to materialize…

Here’s the beginning of mine…I somewhat dully chose neutrals except for the turquoise…

We heard Sujata speak, we heard the quilter Joe Cunningham speak (after playing some walking-around-quilter blues) and other famous people…then the quilt show…all photo failures…

then a celebratory dinner with friends at The Open Door (Yum)

and a final goodbye…

with plans afoot to meet up and sew before another five years goes by.  Goodbye friends…

Sidney Day…

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Family photos, Just visual, Modern Life, Quilting

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the usual blend of magic and fun.  The day began with a quick chat before the parents headed to work when suddenly Zach noticed that a deer was staring right at us…

and then it started to rain and POUR, so the projected park visit was out.  Sidney gave me some advice on the last little bit of the blue cross quilt left to go…

and while I was thinking about it, the quilt quickly became the base of a fort…

Even though the rain had NOT let up we headed to the grocery store and out to lunch…where else…Laughing Planet…and the dinosaurs were HUNGRY when we got there.

Then, there was some kind of a “hatch” I guess…

which was a bit confusing to some members of the party…

so we moved on…still pouring rain so of course, where else,

We stayed for supper and headed home and only THEN, as we passed the falls, did the sun come out…

and by the time we got home I was all done!!  And now to bed…

 

 

 

 

Kate Speckman at The ANNEX

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Art work, Just visual, PNAA, Quilting, Salem Art Association, The Annex, Uncategorized

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Salem artist/quilter Kate Speckman is doing a five week AIR at The Annex in Salem,  She is interested in setting aside some time to think about future quilting projects, especially delving into the ideas of traditional patterns from carpets and how this might translate into her quilting work.  She got her sewing machine set up last week and today we put up a show of quilts in the Annex which will be up until June 8th.  Kate will be in the studio working Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and welcomes visitors.

The work for this show includes some of her own work, some from local quilter Kathleen Leonard, some of mine and some from the Seattle quilter Nifty Quilts.  It’s always a little daunting to face an empty room and a pile of stuff and try to make something out of it, but we managed…here’s the three from Nifty…

Kathleen’s selvedge quilt…

Kate’s medallion unquilted…

We began the “ladder wall”…a couple of years ago Kate took apart an old ladder to use in her home studio to display quilts and she was pretty sure the ladders would work into the show…

Because Kathleen has never shown her quilts before formally, none of them had hanging sleeves on the back so we called in the reinforcements..Eve, Diane, Kathleen and I sewed for HOURS!  and then there was “burying the threads”…yikes!

with the  help of Sam Speckman…Kate’s son home for only two days from hiking the PCT and other trails…slowly the whole thing began to come together…

If you are out and about go by Bush Barn and find Kate at work, or grab a quilting project and go sit and work yourself.  There is a nice blend of traditional quilts and modern quilts…something for everybody.  The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday 10:00 to 5:00, Sunday noon to 5:00 and closed Monday.

 

The Varied Life

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Cutler City, Drawings, Quilting, Trees, Uncategorized

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I keep waiting for a coherent body of photos, events, thoughts to surface (other than the car wash)…to no avail.  I guess the life I’m leading is chaotic these days, so lets go anyway…we left the car wash and headed east …first stop Edgefield, a destination spot in a former poor farm…odd but true, and now very beautiful…

Our room had tons of windows and was lovely day and night…

and then we headed east stopping briefly at Vista House

Hood River, Dufur, Maupin, Madras, Sisters…over the pass

down into Salem in the middle of a spring wind storm…

Studio time…

We’ve spent some time with the laughing boy…

 

and visited some artists including Henk

and we took Jon Bunce a funny little painting of his boyhood home that Mary Lou Zeek found at a junk sale…

We had a play-date at Sara and Marcus’  house where Sidney fed the fish and made a play-dough birthday cake…

I worked on the cross quilt…

we saw a nice Alden Mason painting at Mark Humpal’s (with a rug made by Amanda Snyder in front…)

and we went to the beach where the view from our living room has looked about like this for the last 25 years…

and virtually every time we have driven up we have expected to see the trees cut and a mobile home on the site…and finally…the day came…

there’s more probably, but not for tonight.

At A Glance

01 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Art work, Just visual, Quilting

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While in the Hallie Ford Museum of Art the other day I went up to the corner on the second floor where new work is often shown, and found these three nice prints, gifts of Greg Kucera and Larry Yocom of Seattle.  Collections Curator Jonathan Bucci had alerted me to the Louisiana Bendolph print “Shared Legacy” which was donated in honor of artist Marie Watt.  I had seen the show of Gee’s Bend prints back in 2000 or so at Kucera’s Seattle Gallery but had forgotten how really nice they are…certainly referencing the Gee’s Bend Quilts but also Korean pojagi construction.

Additionally Kucera/Yocom have donated this handsome Kerry James Marshall print “Untitled (Young Woman)” in honor of artist Stephen Soihl

and this print by sculptor Martin Puryear …

and hanging with these is a perennial favorite from the museum collection…a lithograph by Faith Ringgold “The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles”…

So even though Louis Bunce has departed there is still a museum full of artwork to go see…

 

 

 

Clay Lohman at JSMA

05 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Art work, Artists, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Quilting, Uncategorized

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We were heading to Eugene and wanted to see Clay Lohman’s installation “Camo Cubes” at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.  Parking is very limited and we had heard that we might apply for “movie star” parking due to my knee recuperation..What a delight to drive up and find…

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We met with Curator Danielle Knapp who led us to the Clay Lohman installation in the midst of a VERY busy museum day (Danielle is on the left).

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We knew about the camo cubes from a visit we made to Clay Lohman’s studio in 2013.  In this exhibition there hangs the last painting he made before he turned to quilting, which…if you step back two steps is suddenly superimposed on the Camo Cubes themselves…

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The giant over-sized squares of the traditional quilt pattern “Tumbling Blocks” are sewn together in a giant over-sized WIP (as quilters call it…work in progress, hence, NOT quilted).  Lohman’s parents were quilt collectors and one of his grandmothers was a quilter so he had always LOOKED at quilts, but he spent most of his artistic life making paintings and collage, clay and prints.  Five years or so ago he decided to leave painting behind and sew full time.  There is a video loop playing in the installation

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and one part of the video shows Lohman with a version of a giant Tumbling Blocks quilt-top-as-curtain…

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and as Lohman begins to pull it aside…

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he reveals his studio…

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here it is on utube.

In the video version the cubes are smaller than the Camo Cubes, and he hasn’t yet begun using camouflage material which, it turns out, comes in a variety of colors and configurations…

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the squares themselves are very keen…

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as a 2D artist, as a quilter, there was a lot to think about for me in this show.  Is it an engineered space?  Is it architecture, engineering, sewing?  Is it a quilt?  Does the camo make it masculine or do the tumbling blocks pull it back to feminine? Does the fact that it isn’t “quilted” say something about gender or process?  Does the scale make it masculine?  Go take a look, you won’t be sorry…and watch the video…my favorite part is the interview with Clay Lohman made by his wife painter Julie Green where she says to him…”in 30 seconds tell me if quilting is feminine or masculine (this is not a quote)…and Lohman says…’In 30 seconds?’ ” and just laughs.  A thoughtful and thought-full presentation.

 

Red and White Quilts

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Art work, Design, Modern Life, Quilting

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Over the weekend when I was in the “sewing cottage” I got looking at some weird old Red & White blocks I had put up on the design wall…

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and that reminded me of the terrific catalog of the amazingly beautiful show of red and white quilts at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC in March 0f 2011…”Infinite Variety” presented by the American Folk Art Museum…the 653 quilts loaned by the collector Joanna S. Rose.  The show was open free to the public for only six days…March 25-30, 2011.  In 2015 the catalog was published “Red and White Quilts: Infinite Variety”…

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Can you even IMAGINE what it must have been like?

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and then I got wondering why, in all my wanderings and searchings over the years I had only ever seen one red and white quilt, which I didn’t buy (maybe Mrs. Rose had already bought them all?)

On Monday we went to Etcetera Antiques in Salem, a fixture of a store run for 50 years by Cindy Day who is so very knowledgeable.  We went to pick up a Louis Bunce painting her niece is loaning to the upcoming Louis Bunce shows at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art and the Bush Barn Art Center.  Cindy told us the sad news that she is closing her store at the end of February and moving to Portland, opening two stalls at Stars Antiques Mall in Sellwood.  While R and Cindy were talking about paintings I prowled the store.  She is beginning to organize her move and things are chaotic…and on sale.  At the bottom of a stack of stuff on a chair I found…!!?..yep, a very nice red and white quilt…handquilted…in perfect condition with no stains or musty odors…

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and when I got home I grabbed the “Infinite Variety” catalog and found the pages relating to this pattern…”Snail’s Trail” or “Indiana Puzzle”??

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I folded the “new” quilt and put it on a chair where I stared at it off and on, only hours later realizing it has a wonderful anomaly…can you see it?

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Now I’m thinking red and white thoughts again…

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Studio Addict

08 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Art work, Bonnie Hull, Court Street, Ephemera, Garden Studio, Modern Life, Oregon, Quilting, Small Buildings, Studio, Uncategorized

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The first week of January.  Snow.

In an effort to get the year started right, I’ve been in one studio or another of mine every day.  In both cases I entered into long reveries about studios and how lucky we are who have them…alternate realities really.  They don’t have to be clean and tidy (though they CAN be), they don’t have to have “decor” (though they CAN if you want…)…(my first studio had 16 foot ceilings and no windows, no tables, one chair…you HAVE to have a chair.)

Once you have a studio though, you’ll probably always have to contrive to have one…they are refuges for ideas (or no ideas on some days).  And I like to see other people’s studios, ways of arranging work space and idea space, inspirations and oddments hanging around.  I have two studios…one for 2D, painting and drawing and storing work, one for sewing…

My 2D studio is Studio H at the Studios at the Mill….quiet, serene, all mine.

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My sewing “cottage” is at home in the back garden…path

…it was formerly my painting studio but I moved things around.  Today when I sat there working away, listening to the freezing rain pelting down, I felt guilty to have so many places to stay warm and dry and work.

So studio appreciation set in…for one thing, check my plywood floor…

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…remnants of the 2D days…

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ideas

some art work lingers…this painting is called “First Snow” from 2009…

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…fabric begins to intrude…

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and as it begins to get dark I can see the house…and think it might be time to “go home”…

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And tomorrow is Monday…on we go…

“Still Talking”

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Art work, Art World, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Coffee art, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Quilting, Salem, Uncategorized

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Today for me was a day of beginnings and endings…

Kay Worthington and I spoke today at Chemeketa Community College at the third quilt show we have produced together.  Last year we were invited by Tim Timmerman to show at George Fox University Gallery in the fall.

This year we were invited by Laura Mack and Kay Bunnenberg Boehmer to show our quilts at Chemeketa Community College’s Gretchen Schuette Gallery.  The 24 quilts in the show (12 from each maker) were all made since January of 2016, and all are hand quilted.

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We dropped them off a week ago and just put them on the floor in pairs for Kay BB and her assistant to hang later on…and they looked kind of pitiful lying there on the floor…

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here was one hanging suggestion we had…

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But by today, for the opening, they were all on the walls looking good…

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we had a good crowd for our opening remarks, lots of questions and lots of enthusiasm, which made us happy,  If you are out and about go take a look.  It’s open until October 28…Building 3 on the campus.  Closed weekends…

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After grabbing a coffee (it was National Coffee Day today)…

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R and I took down my paintings at the Compass Gallery at the Willamette Heritage Center, and turned off the lights…the end of a fascinating nine month experiment with Dayna Collins and Tory Brokenshire…

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…and on to the next adventure…

Improv Quilting

10 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by in Art work, Bonnie Hull, Design, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Quilting

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I don’t teach this Improv Quilt class to show people how to make quilts like mine, I do it to explain that there are no mistakes in quilting, that finding something unexpected is always best, and that the work and concentration of quilting transports us to “another land” like making music or art of any sort.  They begin with my idea but at the end of six hours they have a fistful of their own ideas…and what fun it is to see it happen right in front of your eyes.  Today was no exception.  We began with mine…

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and moved right along.  I think really the pictures speak for themselves with only this one explanation.  They begin slowly, ask some questions and then…they are off and running.  They don’t know each other, but by the end they are friends and are giving each other valuable critical advice.  The biggest winner of the day was most certainly me…I got some great ideas from these intrepid nine workers….take a look:

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Thanks you guys…it was fun!

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