Virginia A. Spiegel

Boundary Waters 44

This is the third of three related Boundary Waters pieces. It features one of my all-time favorite photos of me in the Boundary Waters taken by my sister, Nancy.  I know that I have some coffee in my red mug, I have on my lucky blue bandana, and I’m just sitting there with a blank mind seeing what there is to see. If I’m wound up about something in life, I take out that photo and try to be there again in that calm and silent spot.

Boundary Waters 44 is a 13×12.25″ art quilt mounted to a custom-made 16×16″ stretched canvas.  Materials include white cotton fabric, acrylic paint, artist’s photos inkjet printed on silk organa, ink, colored pencil, graphite, and rayon thread.  It is collaged, colored, lettered and stitched.

Boundary Waters 44 – Detail

Boundary Waters 43

The eagle is, of course, a powerful totem.  But it holds additional meaning for me as it has more than once appeared at a special moment in a Boundary Waters trip and seemed to add a type of blessing to our voyage.  Boundary Waters 43 is also available; see my website for details.

Boundary Waters 42 – Collection of Mary Wise

These three artworks contain some of my favorite images from the Boundary Waters.  You can see some of their other incarnations here.

Boundary Waters 48

Boundary Waters 48 has been juried in to ArtQuilt Elements 2010 by jurors Jason Pollen, Robin Schwalb, and Deborah Warner. I’ll be sharing more close-ups here closer to the opening.

There were 257 applications for a total of 606 art quilts entered with 26 states and five countries throughout the world represented.  Fifty artworks were chosen for the exhibit.

ArtQuilt Elements’ opening reception will be Saturday, April 17 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

Morning Song

Morning Song will be available as part of Artful Home ’s Hearts For Anna, an online fundraiser, August 12 – 16.  All funds raised will go to Anna Millea an artist who is fighting breast cancer – again. Anna has been denied insurance, having been deemed uninsurable due to her “pre-existing condition.”

Morning Song is a 7×5″ mixed-media collage.  Materials include hand-painted fabric, screenprinted upholstery fabric, painted and screenprinted paper.  It is actually an irregularly shaped art quilt and is sewn to black matboard for easy framing.

Kudos to CEO Lisa Bayne for creating this event to assist Anna.  If you missed the guidelines to participate as a donor artist, they are here.  You still have time to donate artwork before the August 7 deadline.

I would be happy to share other fiber artwork here before the big event, so do let me know if you are donating fiber artwork.

And mark your calendar for HEARTS FOR ANNA on August 12 – 16, 2009.  Artwork will be sold first-come, first-serve with all items selling for $100 on Day 1, $75 on Days 2-4 and $50 on Day 5. The first 20 donations have been posted in a nifty slideshow here where more information about the auction will also be posted soon.

October:  Field and Forest

The Surface Design Association Conference begins today and continues through May 31, 2009 in Kansas City, MO. The Members’ Show Surface Matters is at the Belger Arts Center. More information here.

Materials include white cotton fabric, acrylic textile paint, oil paint sticks, pigment ink, rayon thread, cotton embroidery thread, vintage polyester scarf, Lutradur, and velvet fabric.

I am generally impatient to begin and finish an artwork, but I was working on this piece while I had several other big artworks in progress.  So I added a layer a day and let it evolve organically.  You can read more about the creation of this artwork here.

It’s interesting that I unconsciously return over time to the same themes drawn from my love of the Midwestern landscape.  Here is January Fields from way back in 2003:

And this is Four O’Clock from 2004.

I was studying the work of Helen Frankenthaler at the time and wrote, “I am inspired by Frankenthaler’s work and words to capture that feeling in the sky and fields in Nebraska late in the afternoon in March when the sun is slanting down, the wind is blowing like crazy (as usual!) and we are teetering on the edge between the death of Winter and the birth of Spring.”

A Sense of Place II, curated by Peg Keeney, is an invitational exhibit for artists working in a series with landscape as their inspiration.  Three artworks are required and they must be vertical in orientation.  That’s always a tough one for me as I love the horizontal, due to, I believe, the Midwestern horizon line.

I knew I needed to choose as inspiration something that in itself was vertical in nature.  Of course, inspiration would come from the Boundary Waters and the three artworks would be Boundary Waters 45 – 47.

I chose for inspiration a photo of the cliffs in the Boundary Waters with Fall color beginning to show (photo above) and laid it next to my sewing machine on hand-dyed cheesecloth and silk in greens and oranges.

I then pulled from my seemingly endless storehouse of scraps and pieces this palette of green, blue-green, orange and brown.

This is one of the three works in progress.  I cropped it to not show the background, so the VERY irregular edges do not show.  I’m going for organic and the pieces are not flat, not square, and pretty darn exuberant.  I’ll be sharing more after I finish them up.