Why Didn't I Think of That?

Some one should invent a quilt block with a little girl in a big bonnet!

Sunbonnet Sue goes to the pool

If you ever wondered how "Sunbonnet Sue" got started, here is a little history of Sue and some of her first creators.

The little sunbonnet girl above is my granddaughter, Charlotte, who spent the weekend with us at our Raleigh home.  What a joy!

Last Look at Art Quilt Whimsy! Exhibit

The Art Quilt Whimsy! exhibit at the Page-Walker Art and History Center in Cary, NC, will be taken down after this weekend.  There are still a few quilts that I liked but have not yet featured on my blog.

Whimsical Bayou, by Joan Raciti, appealed to me quite a bit.  I love the colors, the imaginative foliage, and the somewhat abstract "critters" she created.

The circular landscape quilt, Land or Sea?, looks lovely on the wall, and calls to mind my visit to Hawaii a few years ago.

Dreams of Flying was one of two quilts by Denny Webster in which she pictures herself seeing the earth from above.

Line Dancing, by Gerrie Congdon, was one of my favorites, with its glowing colors.

 The next quilt really meets the definition of Whimsy, in my opinion, and reminds me a bit of the colorful art of fabric designer Laurel Burch.

As someone who has attempted to paint realistic portraits, I appreciated the next quilt which has a portrait on fabric.

The next quilt featuring snow falling on the village  includes lots of interesting techniques.  I'm not too crazy about the face and arms on the sun, but do like this one quite a lot.

 The next few pictures are of a city scape done in red and black.

 I love the next one, which would be so fun to create.  It is almost a great big journal quilt recording events in the maker's life.

And, finally, I had to include Pamela's Chix, which refers to my online teacher Pamela Allen.  She jokingly calls her students her chickies.  One of her students made a Pamela-styled quilt in her honor

A Quilty Visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art

Paintings, textiles, quilting friends, and delicious food made for a perfect day today!  Nine of us went to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, which is only about five minutes from my house.  One of the ladies in my art quilt bee arranged for a docent tour of the Impressionist paintings, and of other items in the collection that might be of interest to quilters.

I enjoyed the chance to revisit the Impressionist-style work in the museum collection.  My favorite is this Monet, The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists.

After brief introductions to the paintings, we visited the Rodin sculpture gallery, a few of the contemporary paintings, and then the African gallery.  We were all gob-smacked by this costume from Africa.

Egungun Masquerade Costume front

Apparently the costume is worn by dancers, who must peer out from between the beads located near the headdress.  At each event, a new panel is added, so this costume is extremely heavy, with many layers of heavy beaded, sequined and stitched fabric.

Egungun Masquerade Costume, detail

I would love to see someone dancing in this get-up, with the ornate panels swirling and moving.

There is another piece in the museum that we all admired, an immense assemblage of labels and parts of everyday items like aluminum cans by El Anatsui titled Lines That Link Humanity.  You can see that it extends from floor to ceiling.

El Anatsui
Dimensions: (irregular) 18 x 25 ft. (5.49 x 7.62 m)
Medium: Discarded aluminum and copper wire

One of the last pieces we viewed was Bride, an amazing display of hand-blown glass staged to look like a tiered wedding cake.  Many of the glass objects recall familiar items from famous paintings, especially still lives.

Bride

Beth Lipman, 2010 

http://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/bride

Admission to the NCMA is free except for occasional special exhibits.  The docent tour was also free.        

What a great way to spend a morning with friends!

Two Little Watercolors

  

 I did two little paintings to thank my kids for my Mothers' Day surprises.

You can buy ready-made watercolor paper cards and postcards.  Usually I use a color photocopy on card stock of one of my paintings, but I made originals for these.

I also did a page for Week 3 of the Strathmore Online Workshop with the Journal Junkies.  This one was about incorporating text onto the page.  

And here is a picture of my littlest grandchild, Charlie, looking cute as a bug!  We have been enjoying playing outside this week.

This is Memorial Day weekend in the USA, and all our kids and grandkids will be joining us at our new mountain cabin.  It is supposed to be very warm and sunny.  We are hoping to do some creek sitting while they are here!

Strathmore Free Artist Workshop 2: Visual Journal Fodder

Visual Journal Fodder,  the second of the 2014 free Strathmore Online Workshops began May 5, and this time the instructors are David R. Modler and Eric Stott, the authors of The Journal Junkies Workshop.  I purchased that book a couple years ago.  I used it as a guide to make my Grow Old With Me collage.


These online workshops are a great bargain.  (Can't beat free, right?)  Each workshop has four weeks of lessons, which include videos and written instructions.  You don't have to use the exact materials that are listed, just whatever you already have.

Week One is titled Engaging the Page with Watercolor Paint.  Several fun techniques for backgrounds are included.

Here is what I did for the first week's lesson.

Splattered some paint, stenciled, added salt

Stencil, several shades of watercolor paint

Pulling string through paint on page, stencil (isn't the Pomegranate stencil cool?)

Rubbing alcohol drops on wet watercolor, a little stenciling, some salt

This one is just blocks of Caran d'ache water-soluble crayons activated with water.

This one has watercolor through a very interesting new stencil of two trees.  I think I used some saran wrap on the blue section of watercolor and got that crackled effect.

Week Two: Building Layers with Watercolor had us dividing the pages into geometric shapes with watercolor pencils, then activating the pencil with water, watercolor paint, or water-based markers.  There is some additional layering with watercolor pencils (the short and long lines.)

I went a little crazy on the next one.  I used the Caran d'Arch Neocolor II water-soluble crayons to make the outlines of the shapes.  I used some additional watercolor paint on the backgrounds.

All of these are just backgrounds.  I'm not sure if we will be adding to them during the subsequent lessons, or just adding on to these as we feel inspired.  All of my pages from the workshop are in my Strathmore Visual Journal Watercolor book.  It has a spiral binding so it lies nice and flat, and the pages are heavy enough that they do not buckle.

If you have not tried art journaling, why not sign up for this free online workshop and try some fun art techniques?