Virginia A. Spiegel

International Quilt Festival – Houston
November 4-7, 2010

It’s the Olympics of the quilt world with over 50,000 people attending each year. I’m honored to have my artwork showing in these exhibits:

1. Studio Art Quilt Associates’ Creative Force 2010
Supported by a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Boundary Waters 50
Photo by Deidre Adams
Catalog available from the SAQA Store

2. Beneath The Surface –  Juried Invitational

Boundary Waters 52 (Knowing)
Photo by Deidre Adams
Catalog available.

3. 500 Art Quilts – Featuring artwork from the book 500 Art Quilts

Boundary Waters 21 from the Collection of Carol J. Moore

4.  Eye of the Quilter:  Inspiration – A photography exhibit with the theme of reflections.

This is a sister photo to the one accepted to the exhibit.

5.  Sightlines

I happily served as juror for Sightlines and was honored to choose the fourteen artists.  Each artist was invited to create an installation of artworks featuring a sightline linking all the artwork in the exhibit.  Each artist chose her own themes and created five to eight artworks, including four 8×8″ linking pieces, covering a ten foot wide space. Perhaps the required continuous line provided provocation, both conscious and unconscious, to the artists to focus on time, personal history, and memory.

Hardcover catalog with six-page gatefold showcasing the exhibit as it will be shown is available.

Please note that Clairan Ferrano is the Managing Curator of the exhibit.  The tACTile group of Australia introduced this concept to SAQA with an exhibit entitled eyeline.

It’s not very often that you can say a catalog in the art quilt world is actually unusual, but this one is. The Sightlines’ exhibit catalog is 64 pages, hardcover, with 6-page gatefold that opens in the center showcasing the ENTIRE exhibit as it will be shown on exhibit.  The catalog was designed by Deidre Adams with all photography by Gregory Case.  The catalog is available from the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ store here.

The exhibit will be premiering at International Quilt Festival in Houston this week.  You can preview and purchase the artwork here.

The publication of this catalog was supported by a generous donation from Herb Anhaltzer, “in memory of Mary Anhaltzer, who wanted to put art quilts on the map.”   In 1999, Mary opened “Thirteen Moons Gallery, the first and only gallery in Sante Fe (and quite possibly the country) to focus on the hot “new” medium of the art quilt.”

Each artist has a four-page spread with an image of their installation, detail image, artist statement, and artist bio.   The artists include:

Britta Ankenbauer
Regina Benson
Shelley Brenner Baird
Yael David-Cohen
Linda Colsh
Sue Dennis
Anne Helmericks-Louder
Fulvia Luciano
Wendy Lugg
Kathy Nida
Pat Owoc
Mirjam Pet-Jacobs
Jayne Willoughby Scott
Leni Levenson Wiener

There is also a curator’s introduction by me, the person who was lucky enough to be chosen to invite the artists.  I emphasize in my statement that I didn’t want artists who conceived of the sightline as a gimmick, but rather those who would be able to subsume it under a larger philosophical statement.  The artists succeeded beyond my wildest hopes.

The exhibit itself is unique in that each of fourteen artists created a complete installation of five to eight artworks to fill a ten-foot space with only one inch between artworks.  Each installation is linked to the next by two eight inch squares before and after the main artworks.  All the artwork have a line, literal or implied running through them  It sounds confusing, but here is Pat Owoc’s installation:

Green
Two photographs that I took at a Coast Guard yard in Homer, Alaska have been accepted to the Eye of The Quilter exhibit to premier at International Quilt Festival – Houston.

Coordinator of the exhibit is Wilma Hart, Vice President of Corporate Projects for Quilts, Inc. Ms. Hart is herself an avid photographer and stated, “Photographs have the power to invoke a lot of feelings in their viewers— everything from unbridled joy and intense anger to sheer wonder and heartwarming poignancy.”  Of course, photos have long served as inspiration for quilters and other artists.  (Case in point:  my latest Boundary Waters photos.)

I don’t want to spoil the surprise of the photos that will be shown, but above is another photo from that same location.  I am always interested in color, in numbers, in texture. The yard was an amazing and inspiring conglomeration of buoys, chain, metal and concrete.

International Quilt Festival – Houston is October 15 – 18, 2009 at the George R. Brown Convention Center.  More information here.