I am not going to go into the complicated detail of this claim though – it’s long and complicated; I just want to post the link to this post on FB, which for some reason tonight doesn’t seem to want to allow me to post all three to illustrate the point I’m making in an exchange there 🙂
Distant Shores 1987
To rediscover this excellent scan of what is my first intentionally made ‘art quilt’ last week was a thrill (the original is a 2×2 transparency, back in the filing cabinet in Perth – remember those?). This is ‘Ancient Expressions’, so named because I thought that would help it be juried into an exhibition,”Expressions in Quilting”, Barrington IL 1989. Whether it would have made it without that little push, I don’t know, but it did get in and sold from the exhibition. If anyone knows who has this quilt I’d love to hear where it is. I was never informed of the buyer, and didn’t think to press for that detail at the time 🙂
This success really focused me on making my own designs in layered textiles; and further, it led to a series which became the Ancient Expressions series (I- XIV) Each quilt has an element of landscape in the design, and all celebrate the ancients’ connection with their landscapes, expressed in the patterns they painted or carved on those surfaces. Two or three were OMG flops, but on the whole they are still works I’m proud of.
Detail of the hands – it’s not a grainy photo, I sprayed paint over ironed-on freezer paper cut-outs of my own hand shapes. But the paint seeped under the edges in places, and my initial reaction was that my experiment failed, as I had been going to embroider using the hands and paint as kind of templates (which on reflection would have been boring probably) but when a fellow embroiderer said ‘You could put it in a quilt …’ I looked with fresh eyes and realised its potential, made the quilt and went on exploring the potential of this theme in the series, some of which are pictured below:
L – R #XII # I #X #IX
L – R #XII #XIV #VI #II
From a file of old photos not very often visited, here’s a photo of a work I haven’t seen or thought of in some years. I’m in the middle of a project that is bring a few gems to the surface, and I’ll show another soon including one from the ‘OMG What Was I Thinking? group. This one I always loved – typical of the Ancient Expressions series, exploring landscape’s relationship to the peoples who lived in/on it and some of the marks they left behind.
Ancient Expressions XIII 1992 Approx 125cm x 90cm
Since I began making quilts in 1987, I have always had each photographed with the best technology at the time; I’ve always kept a list of title, date completed, dimensions; kept an index file card for each listing exhibitions it was seen in, where it sold or two whom it sold. I kept my slides in albums of slide sheets, and kept catalogues or other paper stuff in a filing cabinet. Time’s moved on and all this is now woefully old tech – and in my case, disorganised, but it’s complicated, and partly because I never expected how long I’d living in this country, so never brought over stuff I would have if we’d actually moved house. Plus I haven’t spent any quality time with my records in Perth for some years. I’m wondering whether it matters, really, but just in case someone wants to curate a grand retrospective 🙂 I’m compiling a new document that combines basic info plus image(s) of each work. I’d really forgotten about several of them – a couple I am sure I have physically lost, some older works are here and others never made the journey, but I can’t be 100% sure they’re still rolled up in dust covers on top of the bookshelf in Perth.
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A couple of days ago while showing some visitors a few of my quilts, I unfurled this one, Someone said ‘There’s a needle in it…’ and we turned it over to find not a needle but a toothpick slightly protruding. It’s not of any kind I’ve ever bought, and I have no idea how it could have got there. The notion of someone stalking around an exhibition opening spearing a quilt with a used toothpick is quite bizarre. ‘Desert Wind’ (bound edges not visible) is approx 2m x 2m. It’s big enough for a bedcover – and in the right room in the right house it would be dramatic. I made it originally to use as an eye catching backdrop for my booth at a contemporary craft show in Australia. It doesn’t suit our style or anywhere we’re ever likely to live – but anyway it remains in my possession, and I exhibit it from time to time. In its exhibition history it’s been handled by quite a few people one way and another, and of course, it took many hours of machine piecing, machine quilting and hand quilting.
How strange this toothpick has only just come to light!
My much-travelled quilt Purnululu #7 will be appearing at the Into Craft Handmade Expo, Melbourne, Australia, in just three weeks’ time, from November 24 – 27. If you’re going to that event, look for it in the SAQA exhibition “My Corner of The World”
Alison Schwabe, Purnululu #7, 2015
English