In the past week, I have shared with you the work of the three other artists involved in the show fiber at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio.

Just to give you all one more chance to enjoy their work here are the links to their websites and the blog post I wrote on each of them.

Johnpaul Smith’s Website and the blog post about his work.

Dorothy McGuinness’s Website and the blog post about her work.

Christine Sauer’s Website and the blog post about her work.

Because I was already in Houston, Texas prior to the show at the Fitton, it was easy for me to travel from there to Ohio to attend the opening reception. I visited my sister Gina in Bloomington, Indiana and then we traveled to the show. Here we are.

The students of Joe Jahnigen from the Butler Tech School of the arts played music for the opening. Can you see my work in the background?

Two of the artist involved in the show were weavers, so the Fitton set up an educational weaving site.

I like it.

It was wonderful that each artist got their own promo card for the show with their own image on it. Here you can see the promo cards for Chris and Dorothy.

This is my card–trust me the photography doesn’t do it justice.

The mastermind behind this show was Cat Mayhugh. Here we are together. I hope all the curators of my future are like Cat–friendly, good communicator, organized, and with it.

Here is my contribution to the show–both from photos I took (which I kind of failed at!) and from my portfolio along with words from my artist statement.

This is me at this moment. December 2014.

I am a classically trained quilt maker whose work is firmly grounded in the American quilt making tradition.

Vintage and contemporary commercial solid and print cotton fabrics, as well as hand dyed cotton textiles I have created, are the materials I use in my work.

These textiles are improvisation-ally and ruler cut and then stitched into a two dimensional surface.

Once I create this pieced canvas, I spend hours on my long arm quilting machine stitching the top to cotton or wool batting and a fabric backing. The final step is to bind or face each individual piece. I hope the backs of my quilts are as beautiful as the fronts.

Since 2011, I have been working in a series called Colors Grids. This has been a very satisfying exploration of patchwork as art.

This past year, I began to expand my vocabulary to include not only solid colored textiles but also prints from the 1920s to the present day.

This introduction of pattern on top of pattern has taken my work to an entirely new level.

Essentially, I am piecing, with my sewing machine, my own prints. These quilts are modern day tapestries infused with fabric patterns from the past 85 years.

According to Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, my Color Grid quilts are related to the following quilt blocks–The Red Cross Quilt, Stone Mason’s Puzzle, City Streets, Crossed Square, and my favorite, Squares and Square.

Limiting the structure of my work to a particular quilt pattern in a grid format has allowed me to go deep into color and print.

How do I get color to vibrate?

How can I successfully marry a man’s dress shirt fabric from 1938 with a psychedelic flower power textile from 1973?

How can I stitch these elements together so that the viewer sees not only hundreds of scraps of fabric but also the SUM–the whole as great than its parts?

What would happen if a traditional bed quilt ate a healthy dose of psychedelic mushrooms?

Those are the questions I am trying to answer.

What makes me happiest is to create the most wacky colorful beautiful quilted compositions I can and then share them with the world.

Thank you for sharing this show with me!

04 Dec This entry was published on December 4, 2014 at 6:44 PM. It’s filed under Art in Place, News And Events, Uncategorized and tagged Cat Mayhugh, Color Grids, fiber @ the Fitton, Fitton Center for Creative Arts. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.