Looking for Romanian Website

I found that my web URL was listed on a page from Romania. All websites have behind the scenes panels where you can look up all sorts of information. That's the good part. The not so good part is that after a certain amount of time the information is discarded.

I would like to hear from textile artists, quilters and art quilters in Romania.

If you are an artist from far away please leave a comment on this blog or email me. I would like to do a series of blogs about artists from all over the world. Let me hear from you.

She Made Her Mark - Judges Comments

March 3, 2007

Judge’s Comments For “She Made Her Mark”

Best of Show - “Marie Curie”
By Carol Clasper

I could recognize the subtleties and surface complexities even from a distance. The hand x-rays were clear as well as a sense of radiant glow from around the hands. Subject was immediately engaging.

1st Place
“Seeking Higher Ground”
By Larkin Jean Van Horn

Doesn’t honor any one woman, but notes all who have stepped forward and held themselves up for all of us. Although not dramatic at a distance a closer view reveals a subtlety swirling emerald surface, textured by superb quilting. The eddies and whirlpools of stitching only make the elevation of the glass (allegorically, the individual) more dramatic. If I could have any of these quilts in my home to view daily, this one would be it.

2nd Place “Ruby Bridges”
By Marion Coleman

The entire composition of the quilt and its restrained use of color really accentuates the story of the girl who inspired it. There is a very journalistic quality to this piece.

3rd Place “Lady Godiva”

By Ruth Powers

Glorious color and superb quilting! The variety of stitched textures and fabrics are full of excitement and drama.

Ann Calland
The Quilters Hall of Fame
Museum Curator

Judge, Kathleen A. O'Connell
Herron School of Art and Design
Indianapolis, Indiana
Herron School of Art and Design, Associate Professor
Herron School of Art and Design, Visual Communications
MFA from Syracuse University

Kathleen looked over the entries several times in making her decision. She had good comments about all of the quilts.

Her Honorable mention if we had had one would have been “Doppleganger”. She really liked the play of light and dark, life and death, etc.

She very much wanted to give an award to the O’keefe quilt, but thought it was too much about Georgia’s work than about the artist’s own interpretations. But, she very much liked the upper center panel of the mountains and sky.

The Quilters Hall of Fame
926 S. Washington St
Marion, IN 46952

Day Eighteen - She Made Her Mark

Finally and at last, the work of curating the fiberarts, art quilts for She Made Her Mark at The Marie Webster House in Marion, Indiana, is complete. Lists of the accepted art works from thirty three artists have been published in prior days.

She Made Her Mark, Too, a separate but associated exhibition, also has thirty three art works from thirty three artists.

Day seventeen was a six hour day for anyone keeping track of the woman hours. Today, I've spent two hours cleaning and tidying my workroom and filing away all the documentation from She Made Her Mark in my quilt archival files.

Someday I hope that some researcher receives all my archival files. There is a lot of information in there. I don't sell the patterns I draw when I make one special quilt. I fold up and file the kraft paper drawing. Most times I also save the vellum tracing of the pattern that is used to cut every piece of the sonoran desert landscape quilts accurately.

So, with some sadness, I must conclude that this job is done. I have had a great deal of pleasure working with all the images other artists have sent me to select from. She Made Her Mark is going to be a memorable exhibition.

Day Eleven - She Made Her Mark

I received a lovely pack of snap shots in the mail. Yes, they clearly match the space I have mocked up. Whew ! That is a relief. The exhibition She Made Her Mark is going to be memorable. I can now see each piece in it's place in my mind's eye.

She Made Her Mark will open on Sunday, March 4, 2007. The reception will be by invitation only. The exhibition for the general public will open on the sixth. Last day will be June 30, 2007. Check the website; there is a treasure trove of information behind the index listings.

The Marie Webster House has been lovingly restored and is far from the childhood image in my mind. I used to pass it on my way to school. Next door was a drive in and soda fountain that had tin roof sundaes. Just south of that was the railroad station, Railway Express, the Broadway Limited; the door to the universe.

The selections for The Quilters' Hall of Fame are visually complete. The administrative work has not been done. The form letter and database need work. Selected artists should receive their emails no later than Monday, February 5, 2007.

Artists who have works selected for the greater Los Angeles basin exhibitions may lag just slightly behind this. Shipping instructions will follow in a separate bulk email. Please make sure my thelmasmith@thelmasmith.com email address is in your address book. You don't want your notification languishing in a spam blocker.

This has been one of the most exciting months of my life. It is also the most heartbreaking. You have a certain number of wall spaces. There are four or five equally good choices for each space. Quality has not been an issue. What has been the most difficult is understanding the flow of a residential space. It was restored with white walls and lovely carpets. It is good, professionally lit, display space. It is not one huge gallery room.

I have lived my life by the rule of the continuous right turn. No sooner had I said that publicly than Robert Genn published his thoughts on Gallery Flow. I felt a bit foolish. I read what he said carefully. I tried to put my past experiences with different sorts of spaces, my thoughts on flow, his thoughts on flow, the images in hand, into some sort of pleasing equation.

I know I have gotten it right. The selection became not a question of what was best; almost all were "best." The selection came in response to the space itself. People will laugh if I say the house told me to do this. So laugh. The snapshots confirm my intuitive process.

Sarah Ann asked about the mock ups. They are not actual architectural models; just a rough spatial 3D. I would be ashamed to have them exhibited. They are very rube goldberg in structure.

However, once the acceptances have gone out to the artists I will photo document the stack with the scaled images in place. I'll get pictures from every angle. Sadly, the doors and windows are in light pencil. They are not cut in. I did not think the mock up would hold together if I cut out the broad pocket doors. The broad bay windows to the north both upstairs and down were not mocked up. Maybe I'll take a felt tip so you can see more, to better understand the photos. However, it's almost impossible to get a straight edge into these rooms once they become 3D.

The cats are quite fond on the grand parlor. Don't know what they would have done had I opened the pocket doors, built the staircase instead of just the landing, put in floors upstairs. So far they have made no deals with the golden retriever on TV who is trying to sell recipes.

An aside here, eleven days hardly make up most of January. My life right now is quite complex. I've lots of medical trips for my husband. So, even though I touch on this work daily, some days it's a snoop at two in the morning to reconfirm that I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing.

Day Ten - She Made Her Mark

I know it seems as though I've been absent without leave. Actually I've been present, accounted for, and absolutely horizontal due to some sort of virus that produced the filthiest sinus headache I can remember in some decades.

The image of a jig saw puzzle of a Victorian house I once owned in Port Townsend, Washington, will be more interesting that a haphazard pile of foam core board. When I was young and foolish I ran a construction company that specialized in the restoration of Victorian and Edwardian era residential buildings. So when Anne Copeland of FiberArts Connection of Southern California took me up on my word about curating an exhibition I thought I know all about old buildings.

Ah, hubris, I thought that less than favorable aspect of my personality had gone the way of all my dark brown hair. Mock-up, sure, not a problem; um, . . . the walls in my stair well are not plumb. The downstairs has no ceiling. The two rooms I've been assigned upstairs have no floors. I thank the universe every day that I had enough sense to mock this up in scale.

There is no way I could have gotten the rhythm, balance, cadence of this exhibition without being able to see it in miniature in the round. It has truly been an exercise in humility. I think there is a possibility I am done. I don't really know. I need to look at this again, and again, and again. I look in from the vantage of the front window downstairs. I look in the rooms upstairs like a parakeet. Mighty pudgy parakeet.

Even if this still looks right on Wednesday there is still a lot of work to do. I have to annotate the data base. I have to notify each artist. I have to work my way through the first round of declined works because every one of them is worthy of being in the master exhibition. I still have to pull two small, concise exhibitions that will be specifically for the greater Los Angeles basin.

I have about five and a half hours in today. I've completely lost count of the total woman hours to date. Maybe someone who has been paying attention can post a tally as a comment.

I'll be back at it again tomorrow.

Day Eight - She Made Her Mark

Aurora Horribilis, © Nancy Erickson.

Well, I think the phrase is "hoist on her own petard." My living room is twenty two feet long but due to cabinetry I can't get more than nineteen feet focal length. I was in a big hurry this morning. Cold, grey, bleak, shooting in ambient light, I thought I had this image famed properly. It's easier to fudge as it is not rectangular. Notice the tell tale of the line between the wall and the ceiling. I screwed it up.

This is the exact same image dropped into photoshop and custom rotated 1º right. See how it is not even with the text. If I had cropped out the ceiling line I could have gotten away with this one. Yes, the bottom is uneven; it is built that way.

This is the first one I took from about twenty five feet back and maybe ten feet to the left. Are you beginnng to see how important it is that your camera and the work are square with each other?

This one was taken from about ten feet back and maybe twelve feet to the left. See the keystoning that is looking like visual perspective?

All this to show you that good photography is not easy. If you do not own a tripod, the least expensive is about $30 retail. Look for the levels. There should be a leveling bubble on the tripod body. There should be another leveling bubble on the head that actually holds the camera. Use them; they are there for good reason.

One of the problems a tripod solves when it comes to keystoning is the winder that makes the camera higher. I am the shortest person. Without a tripod I am looking up at everything. There is no way I can get a square image without standing on a ladder. Frankly, $30 is the cheapest emergency room insurance for me.

Learn to use your tripod and your camera. I am very fortunate that the Spider tutors me. It's an ongoing process. I'm honored to have his help.

However, for exhibitions that require slides there is no way, no matter how good the tutor, that I can replicate Jack Kulawik's studio. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and decades of photographing art put Jack in a class by himself. He regularly puts my slides in the accepted column in national exhibitions.

I don't have the time or the fuel to take a photography class at the local community college. It may be an option for you. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that the best digital camera can replace a professional. I proved it myself this morning.

So here I sit, with my head stuck up like a turtle looking through my trifocals. I've worked seven hours today. Four hours of that is PhotoShop time. The other three hours is in photography, color printing, and computer and phone communications. All these things take time. I am waiting on two images.

Tomorrow I begin the mock-ups in earnest. I've avoided them as long as I can. However, working with the images, sizing, going through things again and again, I'm beginning to get the names, the works, and the sizes comfortable in my brain. Without that nothing happens.

She Made Her Mark -- Day Six

Well, day six is sort of squirmy. Maybe it's me that's squirmy. I'm heartily sick of the back brace that allows me to sit upright in what a doctor considers comfort.

I've been through this image deck again and again. I've sorted it six ways from sunday. Sorting is about useless when it comes to setting the sequencing of an exhibition. The Marie Webster House, The Quilters' Hall of Fame is an Edwardian mansion built in early in the first decade of the twentieth century.






This image is the floor plan of the entry and main area in the building. It shows the architectural vestiges of the Victorian era. Note the main staircase in the very large entry hall. On back you see the servant's stairs.

From two thousand miles away it's a bit difficult to envision the traffic flow. An exhibition has to grab a visitor and pull them along in a predetermined path. It's particularly important in a space such as this. As 80%+ of the population is right handed and everyone in America drives to the right of the center line of the road, it is normal and natural to live one's life in the continuous right turn sequence. It avoids all sorts of problems in life.

So, looking at this floor plan, the reception area opens directly on the staircase proceeding up. It is the most "drawing" architectural element. So, with right hand preerence, the keynote and first major exhibition area is just past the double pocket doors leading into the grand parlor. It's counter intuitive because the huge space of the pocket doors wants you to turn right. However, if you want the viewer to enter the grand parlor a bit farther back in the house, the enticement must be strong enough to be placed between the front door, the stair, and the entrance to the gift shop.

That done, the visitor can choose whether to work their way around the grand parlor in the continuous right turn of clock wise. So, the works selected for the grand hall~reception area and the grand parlor all have to speak to each other. It's like selecting voices for a large choir; each has it's own range yet each must be a comfortable and capable part of a congenial whole.



This image gives you the wall space of the interior of the grand parlor, the wall containing the pocket doors.

I had thought about doing the arithmetical acrobatics to scale color xerox images to match the scale of these drawings. Then, hum, you do call yourself an artist? Don't you? Eight inches to represent a ten foot high room doesn't seem quite sufficient.

Why not draw each wall in a one inch equals one foot? That will make, eventually a mock up of each room. You will be able to sort and try and fuss and fidget. The works will finally tell you where they belong. So, I'm thinking of searching out the B size quad pad. What? You have a T-square and the ability. Why not just re-draw each wall on foam core?

So, that is where my squirmy mind is taking me today. Choosing the works for an exhibition is the very least of the work. Creating the sequence, rhythm, balance, and cadence of the works is what excites the viewer and draws them through an exhibitin.

Bleght ! I've a lot of work to do.