Early last month while visiting our daughter in northern Colorado, I enjoyed a gallery hopping day in Denver with friend Regina Benson of whom more in another post, as her latest textile exhibition was one of those I visited.

It really was a pleasure to see a collection of recent work at Spark Gallery, Denver, by Lisa Call titled Endless Horizon: 14000 feet to Sea Level   I have long admired Lisa’s quilted textile art since first encountering Structures #11 in Quilt National 2003.  Since then the output of this prolific artist has grown, developing signature elements which many have tried to copy.  These elements however go far deeper than her technique of heavily machine quilting improvisational pieced designs using hand dyed fabrics.  The rest comes from her approach to design and working in series, which can be explored by visiting her comprehensive website www.lisacall.com  

This group of 12″ x 12″ pieces, lifted from Lisa’s own blogpost, is of one group of works subtitled ‘Changing Perspective|Seeing Forever’ and really, for me this group sums up the theme of the whole exhibition.  Lisa’s life has undergone much change in the past year, with new perspectives coming from travel and a new personal relationship that influenced her to leave her home in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies to live in New Zealand’s North Island. There, one is never far from ocean views and influence of the surrounding sea. Gazing out to sea or at a line of distant mountaintops is a meaningful experience in either location.    These life changes are reflected in new and strong expressions of landscape colour, even in such small works achieving a sense of looking through vast distance to the horizon, something new in Lisa Call’s art.

There were other, larger, pieces in the 40″ – 20″ range, mostly vertical panels, presenting groups of related sets of abstract compositions in colours observed in several particular named NZ locations.  It was interesting to see her hand painted small landscape studies from which she developed the works.  I think the act of actually sketching and painting them brought her deeper knowledge of her subject from which she was able to conceive and execute these successful pieces.