Wow. I feel as though I'm a very lucky person. Since I'm a teacher, I get a lot of time off and I am fortunate enough that I spend a lot of that time traveling and creating art. (Don't think that I don't like my job, because I do. I get great rewards from working with my students.) But school starts in one week and after that I wont have much time to work on my art so I'm trying to put my mind in some sort of order to decide which ideas I will work on first.I started a landscape series of art quilts a couple of years ago when.I got the inspiration by watching farmland go by as my husband and I drove through Eastern Europe. It was right after we had visited museums with paintings by Gustav Klimt. I saw the grasses blowing in the breezes and thought that maybe I could capture the patterns created by the wind by using some of the patterns Klimt used in the paintings with women and their garments. I also had taken a lot of photos of towers in the various towns and cities and wanted to incorporate those in some of the landscapes. Here are three of the quilts I've made so far. The next ones I make will come from modifications of these three. I especially liked making the one with the yellow foreground. The fabric for the sky was from a piece I hand dyed and the brownish fabric that goes across the whole quilt was a piece of white cotton that I rusted with rebar. I plan on experimenting more with rusting.
I just got back from 5 weeks in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and have a wealth of ideas. My husband took an amazing photo of brightly colored umbrellas glowing with lights behind them in a night market in Vietnam. I want to play with it in PaintShopPro and make a series of quilts with that as the theme.
The ruins at Ankor in Cambodia blew me away. We stayed 3 extra days to wander through them more. We have lots of photos that I can use as a basis for quilts. I'd like to make some featuring Buddhas, some featuring the temples, and some that feature the jungle overcoming the ruins.
Speaking of jungles, I'd like to make a series about jungle foliage. I have lots of photos that I can use as a starting point. Here is one I did a few years ago called "Jungle Rain"
So that is what is up with me for now. I'll update this blog when I have time and write about which project I'm working on.
