Sidney Day…

11 Thursday May 2017

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

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Cloud City Ice Cream, Laughing Planet, Quilts, Sidney Day

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

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Kate Speckman, Kathleen Leonard, Nifty Quilts, PNAA, quilting, Quilts, Salem Art Association, The Annex

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

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Alden Mason, Art, Artists, Cutler City, Drawings, Edgefield, Henk Pander, Jon Bunce, Quilts

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.

Clay Lohman at JSMA

05 Sunday Feb 2017

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

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artwork, camo cubes, Clay Lohmann, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, PNAA, Quilts, quilts as art

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…

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).

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…

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

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

and as Lohman begins to pull it aside…

he reveals his studio…

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…

the squares themselves are very keen…

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 bonniehull in Art work, Design, Modern Life, Quilting

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"Infinite Variety", hand quilting, Quilts, Red and White Quilts

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…

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”…

Can you even IMAGINE what it must have been like?

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…

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”??

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?

Now I’m thinking red and white thoughts again…

Art Laundry, III

30 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Drawings, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Salem, Uncategorized

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Art, Art Laundry 3, Art work, Bonnie Hull, Carolyn Schneider, Drawings, hand quilting, PNAA, Quilts

Carolyn Schneider and I met in a 7th grade art class. Our first forays into the art world were on the subway into the city to go to the Art Institute of Chicago when we were 13. We’ve been looking at art, thinking about art and making art ever since. For the last decade we’ve had an annual studio event either in her California studio, or in mine…more talking, more looking, more art-making, some writing.

In 2012 we had a gallery show in Fort Bragg, California which we called “Art Laundry” and it looked like this.

Drawings, quilts, mending, sewing, prints…it even included my little “Gallery of Plaid”

and then in 2015 Carolyn and ART LAUNDRY came to Salem…and it looked like this:

It was drawing, it was quilts, it was talking and masks and thinking of that interface between making art and doing routine work and domestic work, it was fun and serious.

This year Art Laundry III comes to the Compass Gallery at the Willamette Heritage Center, 1313 Mill Street SE. August 3 the gallery will be hung with Carolyn Schneider’s drawings, my quilts and monoprints. Beginning Monday August 8 Carolyn and I will be in the gallery for 4 days, 11-3 daily. Carolyn will be performing public ironing and talking about work of all kinds. The “opening” will be Thursday night August 11th at the gallery, from 5-7. We urge you to come see us, bring some ironing, sit and talk about the work you are making, the work we are making, or how you learned to iron a shirt…see you very soon!

A Trip to Clear Our Heads

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Coffee art, Design, Drawings, Just visual, Modern Life, Quilting, Uncategorized

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Christine Hemp, Coupeville, Dan Schmidt, ferries, Fort Flagler, Nifty Quilts, Ole Kanestrom, Olympic Pennisula, Port Townsend, quilting, Quilts, Snail Blog, Sujata Shah, Sweet Laurettes, vacation

It was true we needed to get away for a bit…see some new sights, regain perspective on our creative endeavors, visit some friends and family, connect. Well it worked sooo well that I came home and forgot about all the stuff I normally do, like blogs…oops. So here is the long and laborious journey…mostly sights, not too much art, lots of fun…

We left after a nice day with Sidney…

and headed north up along the Hood Canal on a sunny and hot (85 in April?) day…

We arrived at Linnea’s for a good dinner, lots of talk about Whitman College (Linnea and R both graduated from Whitman 50 years ago!) our families and activities…catching up. Linnea (retired library director) was a fantastic tour guide and our days in Port Townsend were sunny and bright and interesting.

Port Townsend, for those who haven’t been there, is a place apart. And I have come to love such places…long drives off freeways, no nearby metropolitan areas, no big box strips…what I guess I think America was like before freeways and strip malls were invented. Many such places have become meccas for 70’s hippies (we are those, I guess), trust fund kids avoiding the corporate world, artists…often there is nearby water for sports and daring-do. Port Townsend sits on a point of land surrounded by bays and straits and sounds….its founders felt it would become the New York of the west…hurray it didn’t. Kayaks and canoes are here. Wooden boat-building is key, sailboats big enough to go on the sound and the ocean…We went to see the sights and have some great meals (good restaurants and coffee abound…thankfully) in restaurants and made by loved ones. Here’s how it went…

First the post office to get Linnea’s mail…

then the Jefferson County Courthouse…visible from everywhere in town with an almost Richardsonian facade…

Flowers are everywhere…

lunch at the Hudson Point Cafe…

…a town of wooden buildings…

good food…

coffee…

views…

lots of public foot paths…

…friends. We had a great fish stew and lively conversation with Christine and Ole. Christine Hemp is a poet and we visited their “compound” of writing cottage…

and bow-making studio…Ole Kanestrom is a bow maker…

here’s the bow stock…

and the inlaid and gorgeous finished bows…(as I write this they are off to a week in Amsterdam delivering some bows to musicians…)

Inside awaited our fish stew and some Blue Hour conversation…

seeing a few favorite pieces of art…like these two Dan Schmidt paintings (Dan now of NYC)

messing around with Ole’s pen and talking of a Spencerian hand…

and then a fond farewell.

One more day which included a picnic at Fort Flagler…one of three forts guarding the entrance to Puget Sound…Fort Worden is in Port Townsend, Fort Flagler is on the tip of Marrowstone Island, and Fort Casey is on Whidbey Island, our Friday destination….

(This photo cracks me up…with my polarized sun glasses I couldn’t see the shadow of my hands and the phone…I LIKE it!)

Back to PT for coffee at Sweet Laurette’s

the movies at the Rose Theater…

and we LOVED this one…

out for dinner and more chat…and luckily there’s a good restaurant right next door…

one last Blue Hour view…where we’ll catch the ferry Friday…

Up early for a quick breakfast at Sweet Laurette’s…WHAT? Karen from Salem sitting outside with her NYTimes…small world…

down to the Ferry…

Look…there’s the post office on the hill…

Goodbye Port Townsend…

Hello Coupeville…

…a drive down Whidbey Island to catch the ferry to Mukilteo and then heading on to Bru and LeeAnn’s in Ballard for dinner…

where we caught up with our much loved but rarely seen nephew Sam…AND LOOK WHAT HE’S UP TO…whittling spoons… Beautiful…

Saturday quilt day for me, with show and tell at Sally’s…this group of women is talented, loving and kind…nothing better…

Mary, LeeAnn, Sally, Sujata and Tina…

Breakfast Sunday and off we go…goodbye Seattle! Heading home.

Stop in Portland for a coffee…

…a Sidney sleepover…here’s what I saw while doing my stretches on the floor…

and then finally home…ahhhh. News from the Snail Blog…

Happy to go, happy to come home.

Hello March!

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Artists, Celebrations, Family photos, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Uncategorized

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Artists, birthdays, gardens, quilting, Quilts

In Like a Lion today…hail, wind, pouring rain…but a happy day nonetheless. The first Tuesday of the month is quilt group and today we went out to Lynda’s where everything is about sewing…the flower bed…

and the dog (“Buttons”)…everything…in a good way.

Show and tell included Lynda’s new quilt made from a pattern called “Smitten”

but my personal favorite was a vintage quilt top Eve brought out, given to her by a friend who just didn’t know what to do with it…his mother had made it…

Eve (very happily from my point of view) is going to hand quilt it…

and then on to lunch with two artist friends…to eat and then to discuss the recent review of the Edvard Munch show in the New Yorker…fascinating to talk about work, intention, working in a series vs. “one-offs” the creative life as an antidote to a variety of things…so good that next month we’re going to do it again with the topic being the painter Charles Birchfield and how we can draw dramatic oak trees outside the window…

the lunch was a feast for the eye and tummy…”Israeli elk meatballs” (we did ponder where in Israel the elks actually live…?) and polenta…yum…

cauliflower and tea…

and then the garden…bursting…

and then…around here…it’s birthday month. Of my 3 sibs and me, three of us have March birthdays…my adorable sister-in-law has a March birthday…friends from near and far (Happy Birthday Larry and Nan and Patrick and David and Sara and Jerrod and Kathy and Dick!)

but the milestone birthday is Emma’s. She will soon be 21, which is hard to believe for some of us…

…she’s a star…always has been…

and though I think this will make her squirm, she has grown into a smart, talented, funny and beautiful woman…Happy Birthday Emma…I love you!

Valentines

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Coffee art, Drawings, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, photography, Uncategorized

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Abigail SUsik, Andre Masson, Archive Coffee, Basket Tray Quilt, Cowgirl Quilt, Drawings, Elizabeth Bauman, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Imogen Cunningham, Jean Dubuffet, Ponderosa and Thyme, Quilts, Rudolf Bauer, tulips, VALENTINES

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here in the Northwest it’s chilly and overcast…just about the perfect day to run around doing a few errands and then COFFEE! Archive Bar and Coffee was hopping today and Bigwig Donuts were down there, as well as Ponderosa and Thyme…

Coffee first and then a bouquet for a loved one to be delivered tomorrow…

and then we headed over to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. The big show up at the moment is a 20 year retrospective of painter/print-maker James Thompson (on the faculty at Willamette)…which is nice…

but our particular quest on this day was the new Imogen Cunningham show. The opening is this Friday at 6:00 at the museum, with remarks by curator/art historian Abigail Susik and a dance presentation…Cunningham photographed dancer Martha Graham and a body of this work is in the show. Cunningham was born in Portland and her first one person show in the northwest was at the Portland Art Museum in 1914. This show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, a little over 100 years later, is the second such show. About time. Susik has gathered photos and artifacts that make for an arresting and interesting exhibit and include one of Cunningham’s cameras…a Korona 4 x 5 view camera…

The photos are gorgeous…the study gallery filled with nudes…other photos including some family photos are in the Print Study room. But for me today, and in this era of “selfies” (which I occasionally indulge in…) her self portraits are particularly wonderful. She stares right at us…we can imagine her concentration and humor…we’d like to know her…they are interestingly composed. Several of the self-portraits were only seen in a video loop playing…I loved them all…

Just outside the Print Study room are a few wonderful loans on view. Collectors nationwide can reduce the taxes they pay on a purchase if the item they have purchased is put on view for 6 months or so in an Oregon public institution…The viewing public at both the Portland Art Museum (they had the Francis Bacon Triptrych) and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art has the chance to see things nobody every will see once they reach the purchaser. Currently on view at the Hallie Ford are this beautiful Rudolf Bauer of 1916 “Sinfonie 23″…

This Jean Dubuffet of 1965….

and this Andre Masson of 1966 called “Les Trueurs des Lapins” (The Murderers of Rabbits)

On the way out I saw this Klamath Modoc “Basket Tray” of 1925 which seemed almost shocking…

after spending the morning working on the next quilt (which I will now call Basket Tray)…reminding me anew of the fun of how everything relates to everything else…even when you don’t know it does…

On the way out we stopped at the shop and I got an additional Valentine present…a tiny Elizabeth Bauman Painting “Bertrice”

and then home again, where pink things are blooming…

the house is full of tulips…

and the “Cowgirl Quilt” is all done…

Dinner with my Valentine ahead…

THE SHOW IS UP

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Just visual, Modern Life, Quilting, Uncategorized

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"Conversation", Bonnie Hull, George Fox University Minthorne Gallery, Kay Worthington, quilt shows, quilting, Quilts

The deed is done and it was fun! On Tuesday we packed our cars, grabbed a coffee and took off for Newberg…

Gallery director Tim Timmerman and his student assistant Sarah were ready for us and set to work…we arranged the pairs, it went up quickly…

and when we arrived Friday afternoon…Voila!

…just a few last minute details…

the chairs looked good…Kay’s

and mine…

the birds…(mine the black one Kay’s the white one)

People came…said the nicest possible things…here’s Kay with her granddaughter Amalia, owner of the white quilt which was a birthday gift last spring, and Amalia’s Mom Lisa…

Kay and Holly…

husbands…

We gave remarks ( my FIRST Power Point, and possibly my last)…

come take a look…

Directions: follow signs to George Fox University which ever direction you arrive from turning on a street I think is called Meridian. Enter at the large permanent sign for the campus (black with white) and the first building you will see is the Hoover Academic Building, with a guest parking lot near by…the gallery is to the right just inside the front doors…the gallery is open from 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday. The official end date of the show is December 3rd, but it will be up a week longer…