Artful trip to Chicago

Here are three art-related photos from our recent trip to Chicago. The first one shows me on Michigan Avenue, on the "Magnificent Mile." There were all these dress forms embellished by various artists, usually with recycled materials. I thought this was a pretty funny one. There are straws, plastic utensils, potato chip wrappings, and a plastic tablecloth.

The next photo shows what I am calling "furtive crochet" - maybe there's a better name for it. Someone crocheted the pole of a street sign in front of the Art Institute of Chicago! It's kind of like a harmless graffiti done by a sneaky crafter. I loved it!

The Art Institute was great, but many of the contemporary exhibits are currently closed for remodeling. Bummer.

But we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art on another day, which made up for the disappointing Art Institute visit. Jeff Koons are was on display - very colorful and fun, except that some of it got offensive. While looking at some of the other art, my husband would say "I could do that." But he hasn't! If he did, he'd be famous. I guess I enjoyed the museum more than he did. But I took a photo of him watching the one thing he liked at the museum, a video of one thing leading to another, like balloons rolling down a board and breaking, causing a fire, making something else tip over, etc. It was pretty fascinating, I have to admit.

SAQA Portfolio 15 News!

Woohoo, I just found out that my quilt, "Dos Gatos Primitivos," will be featured on page 240 of SAQA Portfolio 15 , in addition to getting its own page with my artist's statement elsewhere in the book. Apparently page 240 is an informational page, so it's a nice little honor to be put there. Portfolio 15 will make its debut at Quilt Festival, Houston.

We just returned from a trip to Chicago and elsewhere in the midwest. I'm trying to get organized and will post some new photos as soon as I can.

Everything Under the Sun on exhibit again

Just wanted to mention that the "Everything Under the Sun" exhibit, which debuted at Quilt Festival in Long Beach, is currently being shown in the upstairs gallery of Soft Expressions, at 1230 N. Jefferson Street, Suite M, Anaheim. My previous post shows a couple of the quilts - it's an impressive collection.

More on Long Beach Festival

I wanted to share more photos from the Long Beach Quilt Festival. First of all, here's the Carousel quilt I participated in, for the exhibit "Everything Under the Sun." I did the rabbit. This was a group effort with Stacy Hurt, Terry Waldron, Julie Schlueter, and Vickie Valdez-Green.

I also participated in this cool postcard quilt in the same exhibit, organized by Jamie Fingal. I made four postcards, mostly from old family photos taken at Alamitos Bay and Belmont Shore. See the red/pink one about a third of the way down on the left half? That's one of mine. There were a lot of really nice postcards, all having something to do with Long Beach.

Long Beach was fun!

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about the Long Beach Quilt Festival at the end of July. What can I say - it was awesome. My favorite thing was the Mixed Media Sampler class I took on Saturday. There were eight teachers - notably Yvonne Porcella and eleanor peace bailey - who all demonstrated various things while the students moved around the room. There was everything from calligraphy and felting to all kinds of stenciling, stamping, layering, drawing, etc.

Also the SAQA/Quilt Art Reception was fun. Karey Bresnehan was such a gracious host. Too bad the tiara parade sort of fell flat here - there is much more enthusiasm for this kind of thing in Houston!

Here's a photo of my Surf's Up quilt at the festival. It's called "If I Ever Tried Surfing." I'm thrilled that it was included in the festival vidcast. Go to http://www.quilts.com/lbqf08/enVivo/ and click on the ruby slippers. Then click on "New-Vidcasts" and then click on "Surf's Up." Karey narrates - it's priceless.