On Line Quilting Courses and my experience with Pamela Allen

Back in July, I saw that Pamela Allen was offering an online quilting class.  Part of me wondered how in the world one could take an online quilting class, but then, since Pamela titled her class "Think Like an Artist" and said that it would be focusing on design, I thought that it should be fine.

I admire Pamela's work. Go to her website and look at some of her pieces.   I love the spontaneity, her use of color and texture.  I laugh at the almost cartoon-like abstraction that she uses.  Since Pamela doesn't teach in the United States and since I don't think I'm going to be making any trips to Canada soon, I decided I'd sign up.

After all....I was thinking we'd handle a lesson a week.  How hard could that be? I was getting my daughter ready to take to her freshman year at college, had to take her to orientation, and was still fatigued from chemo. But hey, it's quilting.  How hard could that be?

Ahem.  Well....I once again thought I was superwoman, only I seem to have misplaced my cape some where.

It was really hard.  In fact, it was so hard that I'm still behind one project, and haven't sewn down and quilted the others.

Pamela does a huge amount of work with her students.  We had a good group and several had had classes with Pamela before and so knew what to expect.  She showed us examples of what she's talking about, using her own work as examples as well as fine art pieces.  We critiqued.  Pamela critiqued and used photo editing to show us what she meant....and it was brilliant.

We were not to draw anything.  We were to free-cut our fabric and create our pieces.  The first work you see here is my self-portrait with our personal symbolism.  One of the things that Pamela reminded us about is not to make our pieces trite and cliche...so, instead of holding a cat (I have three...as I am an animal lover, not just cats), I'm holding a Dutch rabbit.....sort of a reference to cousin Maggie's dutch house bunny.  The swirl represents my mastectomy....and look at the plant at the side of the composition....can you tell what kind of houseplant it is?

The piece above is another lesson involving personal symbolism.  This is my first attempt, what Pamela recieved.  I was amused, and sort of surprised, when one of the class members thought it was a salmon run (it's koi or goldfish pond).

This is the first bit that Pamela did to improve the composition....why I didn't think of using it as a landscape orientation which seems so obvious, I don't know.  I think it is because the brocade I used had the large gold strip along the side so when I was looking at the yardage I got mentally stuck in how it was "supposed". to go.

This is far preferable to my original work....but Pamela had no idea about the symbolism, and took out the small goose at the foot of the iris.

Obviously, a goose is part of my identity....I've been Michigoose a very long time on the web and of course my blog name and my Amazon store name both bear witness to this.

When I explained this, Pamela lifted a goose from one of her own works which was more monumental and dropped it into my scene.  Pretty cool, eh?

I hope to get back and finish these.   Was it worth it? In true Michiganese, "You betcha!"  In fact, I enjoyed it so much and felt that I learned a lot from it that I have signed up for another course, this time through Quilters University, this time with Elizabeth Barton whose work I also admire....However, I have all intentions of clearing my calendar and concentrating solely upon the class.  At least that's the goal.

I think I'll do some more work with Pamela's style...but I don't think I'll stick with it.  As much fun as it is, it is Pamela's style, and I have my own style.

Photos, Quilting, and Art

Recently, there's been quite a bit of talk on the Art Quilt list about art and quilting.  Several of the people talking about it were commenting that they didn't like "photo realism" in quilts.  They weren't talking about  quilts done in the manner of artist Chuck Close who does what is sometimes called "hyper realism) but they were talking about people who used photographs in their quilts.

Gloria Hansen and Wen Redmond, two artists who use photographs in their quilts, were accepted as artists and their quilts as art.  Others, no names named, were dismissed as making works which were merely "paint by number,"  People who took photographs and then did thread work and quilting with them turning them into art quilts.

The first person who came to mind was Barbara Barrick McKie.  Barbara lives in Lyme, Connecticut and it was her work which I first saw that included photographic images in her quilting...ages ago...in the early 1990s I think.  At the time, digital photography was in its babyhood and Barbara used photo transfers.  She now manipulates photographs through Photoshop and creates works....which are then quilted.

Pamela Allen is quick to point out that she wants to see the "hand of the artist."  To that end, she has her students freely cut out shapes in her classes to make the quilts...with scissors...not rotary cutters.  She feels that the scissors give the artist's imprint in much the same way as an artist's brush strokes are indiviualized.

To take a photograph, perhaps manipulate it in Photoshop and use it in a quilt, adding threads and dimension through quilting  seems to me to still be art.  The photograph is the work of the quilter, only unlike Alfred Stieglitz, we don't stop with the photograph.  The motion of the quilting adds texture, and just as the scissors or paintbrush are unique to each individual, I offer that the quilting is unique to the individual as well.

I think part of the problem may stem from the fact that just as in the world of fine art (paintings) there is good and bad art and even more mediocre art, there are pieces which are produced in this manner which are mediocre as well.  The tenents of design apply here just as much as in painting or in photography and the importance of taking care in our creating....meaning workmanship must be high as well.

I admit, I'm not fond of Chuck Close's early work, and other than using a photograph printed on fabric to practice quilting on before I go to my own piece, I am unlikely to quilt a piece which is a straight photographic print...in the style of Barbara McKie.  I can tell you what I like and WHY I like it or don't like it.  However, I accept that Chuck Close's early work IS art even if it isn't a style I would use or would purchase.

I do find the subject bittersweet....I feel that fiber artists/quilt artists should spend more time honing our work and accepting the work of people who work in a style unlike our own but in the same medium rather than fighting among ourselves saying what is and what isn't art.  I would suggest that perhaps we should spend more time promoting art quilts rather than making and exclusive type of artwork more exclusive (meaning it's hard enough to be accepted in the art world without excluding people who work with fabric/fiber/textiles).

A Little Bit of Silliness

Self portrait: A night on Bald Mountain

I have been taking an on line class with Pamela Allen.  One of her exercises has us drawing inspiration from another artist's work or from another piece of art. 

One of the class members, Holly I think, chose Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" as her inspiration.  I happen to love Mussorgsky and enjoyed her rendition of the witches dancing on a mountain top.

Now, I know that a "bald mountain" is really one which has no trees....but I got the giggles as I thought about doing a self-portrait with me bald and  a bed on my head (how else can bald people have bed heads????) as a Night on Bald Mountain.  So...here it is.

Yes...very silly....and it only took me an hour to put together. Do you think it looks like me?  Well....me as if I had rosacea???