Virginia A. Spiegel

peace 16

The Holiday Special on the peace series continues only until Wednesday, December 31. This is your chance to own one of my small artworks at a special price and, as my patrons are always happy to find out, any purchase of my artworks qualifies you for free shipping on any future acquisition.

The peace series is a meditation on the complexities of a simple word. Each artwork is composed of layers upon layers of paper, paint, and ink. You can read more about the process of making each individual artwork here (with a bonus view of my studio.)

peace 36

I accept PayPal and credit cards through PayPal.  It’s a personal account, so once you e-mail me at Virginia@VirginiaSpiegel.com, I will send you PayPal directions.

As always, I appreciate your support and patronage.  Happy Holidays!

Boundary Waters 31 (North)

It’s not often you are able to go to one museum and see three fiber art exhibits.

The New Focus art quilt exhibit, including my artwork above, opens tomorrow, December 12, at the Coos Bay Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon.  

There will be an artists’ reception from 5-7 p.m. for a total of three exhibits focusing on fiber art: 

Boundary Waters 29 (North) is an interpretation of the moss layered on the north side of trees in the Boundary Waters. Materials include upholstery fabric, white cotton cloth, acrylic textile paint, felt, organza, and copper wire mesh.

All artwork for this exhibit was mounted to 16×16″ stretched canvas per the request of curators Judy B. Dales and Kim Ritter.  I really like the look and bought three additional canvases for future work.  It’s quite easy to mount the artwork to the canvas using embroidery floss.  

Here is what the back looks like with the stitching almost done:

Boundary Waters 31 (North) Mounted on stretched canvas.

Jane Davila and Elin Waterston’s new book,  Art Quilts at Play, will be released in January 2009. But you can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting Jane Davila. 

Visit Jane’s blog to read all about this new book which follows their very successful Art Quilt Workbook.  Jane states, Once we’ve shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. 

That’s where I and other artists come in.  I completed a trade for 6×6″ art quilts with the theme of blackbirds for the book.  I was so happy to have a nature theme with which to work. Here is one of the artworks I traded:

blackbird 2

There will be a release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21, 2009.

Blue Sky

Even when it’s just grasses at the prairie reserve, there is always something to photograph.  

Remember that I stepped on my last little camera AFTER it survived the Boundary Waters?  I looked at a lot of little cameras, but ended up buying another Coolpix.  It has very good close-up capabilities, fits in a plastic bag nicely for the Boundary Waters, and not so expensive that I would be afraid to take it with me everywhere.

I taped a segment on making mixed-media art quilts from paper collage inspiration (yes, the Third Thoughts series and my 365-Days-of-Art book) for Quilting Arts TV at International Quilt Festival in Chicago last April.  

I have seen a preview and whew! my yearly 15 pounds of winter fluff don’t look THAT bad.  Pokey Bolton makes EVERYTHING fun, so it was a very postive experience.

My segment will be in the first show (301) of Series 300 kicking off at the end of December. The first show focuses on fabric collage.  The entire 300 series focuses on contemporary techniques.

Host, Pokey Bolton and guest designers promise to inspire viewers with everything from surface design, fabric painting and bias fusing to journal quilting, batik and free motion quilting at its best.

The Quilting Arts TV site has a handy Station Finder so you can check to see if a PBS station near you will be airing the series. The site also has online instruction and more information about each episode.

You can pre-order Series 300 from Quilting Arts magazine’s online store.