Dayton Landmark Art Quilts: Mendelson's

Nestled in the north end of Dayton, just opposite 5th/3rd field, home to the Dayton Dragons, a farm team for the Cincinnati Reds, stands Mendelson's Liquidation Outlet.  Old industrial buildings fascinate me and I loved Ronnie Doyal's shot of Mendelson's....although there were a lot of people who complained that we picked it as a "Dayton Landmark."  When we thought of the project, it was things which were recognizably Dayton, not that it was a point of pride, a long time standing institution or whatever...and since you see the name emblazoned on the building when you drive past, or when you are at the ball park...well, it fits the bill, not matter how much people complained about it.
I felt that the shot offered lots of interesting tidbits for people to try.....but of course, I lusted after the water tower.


Chris Landis got the first slice.  I loved how she handled this.  Chris is a consummate quilter and has a machine quilting business, Feather Creek Quilting.  For her segment, she took the sky and interwove pieces.

you can see her quilting and what I mean a bit better here in this detail. I also loved the way she handled the trees.















Carroll Schleppi drew the next segment and had some really lovely graphic elements to play with.  Carroll chose a batik with an overprint of a metallic...sort of lightening bolt fabric. It is fairly subtle until you see it up close.

 The next segment belongs to Liz Schneiders.  The really cool thing about Liz' piece is that she bought all the fabric for her piece at Mendelson's!  Work clothes, etc. On the back side of it, she included labels and price tags for her purchases, and made a pocket to hold a card about Mendelson's in it.  Pretty cool!












Here's the front.  I love how she made the smoke rising out of the stack, even though in the original photo  it wasn't present.  That graphic smoke broke up the sky and gave it a lot more interest.  I love the shading and the lines made by the stacks and the windows.

The lucky bum who landed the water tower was Sue DeSantis.  Her tower is extremely faithful to the original photograph.  I love the contrast of the back ground of the sky to all the other artist's skys....and I especially like how it references traditional quilting.  Like Chris, Sue also does custom quilting on her long arm and like Chris' work, her quilting is to die for!  We are so lucky to have so many talented people in our group.

I apologize that this is taking me longer, but I have been having a very tough time with this round of chemo and find that I am often just too tired to sit down and right...in some cases, I've sat struggling with the photos and my stupid very old computer trying to get the posts up, but fail when my eyes are just too weary!  The quilts will continue at the Schuster Center through June 24th.  I can't wait until we can actually put them up WITH the photographs which inspired them.  So far, you are the first people seeing them together, so you should feel very special indeed.