Holiday "Quilty as Charged" Anybody?

I know, I know. I have so sorely neglected this blog that I deserve to be kicked out of the blogosphere for all of time and eternity. From the "excuses, excuses" list, please note that I was on that book deadline, and then I needed a break, and then I had to gear up for a hysterectomy, and then I had the hysterectomy, and now I am still recovering from that, which really is taking as long as they said it would-- six weeks. Which is kind of a drag because I'm tired all the time.

But I have a speaking gig at a quilt gig lined up for next Tuesday, and another three gigs lined up for 2009. And I'll be selling my book, "Quilty as Charged: Undercover in the Material World" at these events. Which got me thinking-- you need not be present to win and all that. So if you would like to send a signed copy of "Quilty" to some quilt nut you love who would love to receive it for the holidays (or for no particular reason at all besides quilt love), let me know. You can email me at spike@spikeg.com. Yes, it is cheaper to order from UT Press, so feel free to do that. But if you order from me, like I said I'll sign it and I'll also wrap it real nice and mail it direct.

Happy Thanksgiving,
spike

Book Finished! Everything Coming Up Roses!

Once again, I've let a good stretch lapse between posts. I finally had to buckle down and get the book finished. The deadline was September 1st. I turned in the manuscript late on August 31st. The goal was to go to the beach for a few days to unwind after that but Hurricane Gustav dashed those plans. And also, without stopping to breathe deeply, I dove right into researching my next book, a lost-at-sea saga that is going to be very intense in both the organizing and the telling.

But despite that, I am feeling some relief at finishing Quilting Art. And to trot out an overused analogy, writing it was like making a quilt. I had all this great material to work with, material I had gathered all over the place in my travels. And I had to cut it and piece it together and make it into something others can appreciate.

Even though it's a tired metaphor, it remains apt. And I actually reminded myself, as I worked, that really, I was working on the written equivalent of an art quilt. The book was such a departure for me-- my first three books were memoir/first person. And even my fourth book, which was about quilts, had a big first person component. Not this one. Yes, I do a little first person commentary in the introduction. But after that it's me telling the stories of others.

That turned out to be a great experiment for me. I know I'm not totally done writing accounts from my own life. Which, of course, is why I blog. But a part of me feels at peace with a lot of the stuff I used to work through in my memoirs. And I realize that, after over twenty years of reporting-- my bread and butter work-- I've gotten really good at listening to other people's stories, and observing them closely, and zooming in on the details needed to paint a decent portrait of them.

So now the writing doesn't feel hard. Which isn't to say it's easy. But I'm not swinging in the dark anymore and I have a good idea, going into a project, of the size and shape it will take in the end. Very nice to be on this perch after literally decades of honing my skills.

Hopefully, very soon, I'll resume running interviews and stories here of art quilters. For now, it's nose to the grindstone with the new book proposal and, okay, a little relaxation, too.

Boo Davis Rocks Out with Her Quilts Out

Wow. Keeping up with the blog and trying to meet the book deadline while simultaneously working my other jobs is... well, let's just say it's a good thing I like a challenge. I spent time last week polishing off some profiles and also talking to Susan Else, who does these amazing, 3-D sculpture quilts. But I still haven't told you about Boo Davis, whom we visited in Seattle weekend before last.

Boo is a designer and illustrator by trade. Earlier this year, she ditched her day job to pursue the quilting thing full time, a choice she admits has its hurdles. There's the COBRA insurance plan (expensive), the lack of ready company she had at the office (though her cats do stand in as coworkers now), and the need to generate enough work to stay afloat. Toward that end, she recently got a contract to do a book of quilt patterns. Alas, the book will not exclusively feature her Evil Rock Quilts. The publisher wanted some, uh, kinder gentler patterns, too. But at least there will be some of her trademark heavy metal work.

Boo really is a metal head, who used to listen to Ozzie Osbourne while wrapped up in a quilt at her grandmother's house when she was little. After making lots of baby quilts for friends, she decided to do a mash-up of her love of sewing and her love of metal. I'm pretty sure she's the only quilter out there doing this thing as a full time gig.

Here's another one of her pieces. And you can see more at her web site:

Hanging Out With Margot Lovinger

Warren and I had a great time visiting with Margot Lovinger in Seattle. I have, in my years of learning about alternative techniques, seen an awful lot of innovation. But I have to say that I have not ever before seen anything like Margot's work.

I ask just about every artist I interview to tell me what they think about the word "quilt" as a description for what they do. Some shy away from using the term "quilt artist" to describe themselves, preferring "textile artist." This isn't so much a shunning of the craft root of quilting. Sometimes what it's about is recognizing that some gallery owners, art buyers, and museums pass unfair judgment and are immediately dismissive when they hear the term. Others embrace the word quilt and find that it opens doors for them because so many people instantly get a good feeling when they hear the word. Even if they view a portfolio of work that doesn't match the mental image that "quilt" initially conjures, the fact that that initial connection got made makes for a good start in some cases.

It's not a black and white argument, of course. And plenty of artists see both sides. As for Margot, she doesn't have a problem with the word "quilt" or, as her fellow artists in the Contemporary QuiltArt Association sometimes jokingly call it: "The Q Word." For Margot, it's just hard to come up with a term that accurately describes what she does. Does she use fabric? Check. Does she use layers? Check. Does she use stitches? Some, but not that many-- not nearly as many as most. Still, she incorporates all the basic components of quilting.

Her background is painting and her passion is figure painting. She attended both Parsons School of Design in New York and The Museum School in Boston. By her own admission, her attempts at painting figures wasn't what she wanted it to be. She fell into painting with fabric by accident. Working on a huge quilt to honor her deceased father, she created large wings comprised of thousands of "feathers" made of sheer fabric. She spotted "a piece" of fabric across her studio that was a precise color she wanted to work with. Upon closer inspection, she saw that what she was actually looking at was several pieces of sheer fabric layered. Which is when it dawned on her she could create an infinite color palette by layering different colors.

This led her to where she is today. She'll begin by taking about 200 photos of a model and then, through a process I'll detail more in my book, she eventually creates a map on the fabric. She then "shades" with colors she creates with layers of tulle, organza and chiffon. She doesn't use paints or dye, just fabric. This seems impossible to believe, even when closely inspecting the results, which I had the pleasure of doing.

Really, it's just astounding stuff.

So thanks, Margot, for the great art talk, the delicious lunch, and the chance to learn about yet another incredibly innovative way to use textiles to create art. Here's another:

Textile Delights in Portland/Astoria/Seattle

David's quilts hanging in the Blue Scorcher Bakery in Astoria, Oregon

Warren and I spent the weekend in Seattle. We were there to interview and photograph Margot Lovinger and Boo Davis for the Quilting Art book. I’ll tell you about each of them in posts later this week. For now, let me say, Warren and I LOVE Seattle. We were there less than forty-eight hours but during that time both of us announced, numerous times, how much we’d love to live in such a cool city. (And we know from cool cities—Austin is fabulous in its own right.)

I actually flew to the Pacific Northwest earlier in the week, to Portland, to meet up with my ex-brother-in-law, David, who is a quilter. He’s got a place in lovely Astoria, a couple of hours from Portland, and he’d invited me to stay there with him. Astoria is where the Columbia River meets the Pacific. It’s also where Lewis and Clark finished up their little walk. The views there are stunning and many of the quilts David makes are inspired by the view out his second story bay window at an every changing, multi-layered horizon, a sandwich of river and tree line and mountains and sky. For my part, I got to sleep out on the deck in a tent, in weather that included rain and temperatures in the 50s which was such a welcome relief after leaving 100+ degree Austin.

This was my third trip to Astoria and so I’m starting to remember how to find my way around town, and the names of some of the locals. On the flight to Portland, I finished listening to the audiobook version of Julia Child’s, My Life in France. I keep meaning to file a gushing book report here about that book. I found it so compelling. Okay, wait, let me stop the Seattle report for a minute and deliver the mini book report, since I want to relate it to my Astoria trip. Here we go:

So Julia Child and her husband Paul worked for the US government and Paul was eventually posted in Paris. They arrived when Julia was in her mid-thirties (and Paul in his mid-forties) and she spoke no French. Nor, in fact, was she much of a cook. But she fell in love with the city instantly, determined she would learn the language and, as time marched on and she was seduced by all the amazing restaurant food, she set out to learn French cooking methods for herself. This led her to the Cordon Bleu School.

There was a lot to love about the book—Julia comes across as pretty ballsy and pretty brassy but that was fine, not annoying. Because when she dictated the book to her co-author, she was in her eighties, and it wasn’t like she was telling tall tales of her plans for taking over the world of cooking. She’d already proven herself. This was recounting, and reminded me of Isadora Duncan’s ballsy, brassy autobiography, My Life, which, though far more tragic, shared thematic elements with My Life in France. Namely, both women got it in their heads to change the face of something that already existed with deep, cultural roots—French cooking and dance. And each did it.

The passion exhibited by each inspired me to no end. To the point that, while I’ll never be a dancer, I did spend a lot of this weekend fantasizing that I might become a food writer who travels the globe in search of the next gastronomical orgasm, getting paid handsomely to write about my experiences while Warren, ever my accomplice, snaps gorgeous photos of food so obscenely beautiful and delicious that eating it fills me with the perfect amount of guilt, which I compensate for by giving 75% of my hefty celebrity-food-writer salary to hungry children around the globe, children hand selected for me by my close, personal friends, Brad and Angelina and their seventy-five children. Yes, that is how inspired I was by Julia Child, and inspired even further that she didn’t really get going on her career til she was about 45.

OK, wait. Where was I? Oh, I was passionately praising authors who are passionate about their work to the point that their passion inspires passion on my part. This is not unlike what I experience when I meet and talk to art quilters around the country. I am reminded of the many parts—good and bad—of leading an artist’s life. This in turn rejuvenates me when I am fighting to reclaim time for my own creativity, or when I am struggling to express myself creatively in a way that really represents what I want to say, and doesn’t go treading into commercial waters. That’s not always easy, since I do so much commercial work there’s bound to be a little leakage.

As I listened to Julia C’s book, I was struck by this low grade jealousy I sometimes feel when I read/listen to accounts of people jet setting and partaking in the sorts of rituals that seem forever out of my reach. I just don’t think I’ll be building a country villa in Provence anytime, soon, you know? Or hanging around in my kitchen mixing up some duck blood and veal hearts for internationally renowned chefs and over eager magazine writers from Vogue.

That said, it did dawn on my that my yarn buying ritual in Astoria is the sort of experience that, if I think about it, is my own version of an annual pilgrimage to France, the stuff that exciting memoirs are made of, the sort of accounts that make others appropriately jealous. Because each summer, for three summers running, I have taken advantage of a chance to buy yarn from Margaret Thierry. Margaret used to sell at the Astoria Farmer’s Market. That first time I met her yarn, I didn’t meet her. Her booth was being run by Shannon. More on Shannon in a minute.

The second year, last year, I did meet Margaret. I bought some hand dyed mohair from her, bright red, which I made into a top-down sweater. Actually, being a sloppy crafter, I mismeasured my arm length calculations and so fixed things by renaming the sweater a shrug. It’s just beautiful if I do say so for myself. I also got some cool green worsted weight stuff from her, which I made into a scarf for Warren even though Warren, being a guy, said something like, “I already have a scarf, what are you making me another one for?” when I started the project, not understanding the importance of letting one’s girlfriend make one a nice homemade scarf.


Me modeling Warren's scarf which he now appreciates and which matches his eyes perfectly

This year, when I got to Astoria, I was standing in the Blue Scorcher Bakery (which I wrote about here and here), when I spotted a woman who looked familiar. I could’ve sworn I’d seen her the year before knitting outside the cafe.

“You’re a knitter, aren’t you?” I asked.

She gestured at my hand-dyed Manos sweater, which I’d made myself, and said, “So are you.”

That was all we needed to get the conversation started. I asked her, over coffee, if she knew Margaret. She laughed and said not only did she know Margaret, she was living in Margaret’s house with her two kids when the house burnt down. Shannon and her kids made it out safe. Margaret, it turned out, had moved away to Washington before the fire.

Though I hadn’t known about the fire, I actually did know already that Margaret had moved away since, on my way down to the Blue Scorcher, I’d called the number on her website. Margaret told me her Astoria days were over, but that she’d be in Seattle on Sunday. My heart leapt. I would get to stock up on her beautiful mohair after all.

Meanwhile, I still had some time in Oregon to enjoy. Shannon and I reconvened the next day and she said to me. “Hey, the first time you bought Margaret’s yarn, was it two years ago? And were you with a guy?”

Bingo. When she asked that it came back to me. She’d been working the booth, I’d bought a bunch of chartreuse-ish mohair. I was with my then-husband and we were on our honeymoon, no clue that the marriage would last less than a year. She described the yarn I’d bought before I could. And then I remembered out loud that she’d been knitting a bra when we met, a memory she confirmed. I told her what I’d done with the yarn I bought—it was far too beautiful to give away or throw away, but it reminded me so much of my ex so I couldn’t keep it around the house. Since I worked with the yarn during therapy a lot, knitting away as I sorted through the hell of divorce with my therapist, when I finished the lap blanket, I asked if I could leave it at the office. And that is where it remains, there to offer comfort and warmth to other people working through stuff.

I bid Shannon good-bye on Friday and David and I headed up to Seattle where Warren flew in that night. Saturday morning Warren and I wandered off to Pike’s Market, the famous tourist spot with live music, acres of fresh cut flowers, piles of lavender and, yes, fish being thrown around. There I met another Margaret, who makes these cool bags that look like those old pot holders I made as a kid, or like rag rugs. She also makes bags on a simple loom using bulky wool. Here are some pictures. I was in textile heaven.


A cool rag rug style bag


cool bags


more cool bags



Margaret who makes cool bags

Then we visited Boo and Margot and, like I promised, more on them soon. The crowning moment came Sunday when we went to the Ballard Farmer’s Market, totally bustling on a gorgeous, just-barely-chilly morning, and found Margaret and her yarn. Margaret is a trip. She’s seventy, an artisan and craftswoman. She’s got the long gray braids I always fantasize about growing (though, once again, I just cut off all my hair because that’s the kind of girl I really am). We had such a lovely time and I got all of this very cool yarn.


Margaret The Yarn Dyer at Ballard Farmers' Market in Seattle

This Is Not A Light Bulb

I am having a grand time imagining the quilts I'm not actually making. But, no, really, I swear I will one day. After talking to a number of artists and hearing about their series work, I've decided I should do a whole series called This Is Not...

The series begins with the This Is Not a Cigarette quilt-- I'm actually going thrift shopping in hopes of finding what fabric I need for that today. Then I will do This is Not a Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cake, which will have a thin layer of purple and white at the top, a whole lot of dark brown in the center, and maybe a big fork on the back. What appeals to me, besides the silly homage to Magritte, is that, frankly, these pieces will fall in the Very Simple category, which is what I need to get going. Oh I find the process daunting, still haunted as I am by my eighth grade home ec's teacher palpable dismay at my "skill set" at the machine.

Today's addition the the This Is Not a Series In My Head series, is the This Is Not A Light Bulb quilt. And it is inspired by my trip this weekend to meet with Joan, Joanie and Ai. Joan and Ai both have really organized workspaces (which is not to say Joanie doesn't-- I didn't get to see hers). And Joan and I were discussing how it's important to each of us, when embarking on a new project, to clear the space.

I'm not the neatest person in the world. And as I move toward a deadline, papers and magazines and other detritus can pile up around me. But when I am really ready to move on something, I organize, sweep, mop, the works. Inspired by the conversation about art, the organization of space, and my confessions to Joan about a novel I really want to start writing, I came back to Austin and had a major light bulb moment. Big pieces of the novel started flying at me. So I started cleaning my office, which had fallen into quite a state these past few months.

As I cleaned, I listened to Fresh Air, and a segment about the new Batman movie made me realize instantly a major theme I want to include in the book. It was like the universe was rewarding me for making time to clean, because if I hadn't stopped to do that, I wouldn't have heard the radio show and thus wouldn't have had light bulbs popping on. One thought led to another and, knowing how my brain works when it comes to writing, I made myself wait about an hour before sitting down and typing up the notes that were racing around up there. That's not stupidity, the risk of losing ideas. It's pure percolation. And it worked.

Then this morning, I sat down to do my daily meditation, which is when ideally (but rarely if ever) your head clears out. Not mine. More light bulbs lighting up all over the place. I sat as long as I could (not very long) then leapt up and wrote down more notes. Pretty soon, I'm going to start using every free moment I can manage to squeeze out of the day working on this thing.

This is such a huge, added benefit of researching Quilting Art. What a privilege to get to spend so much time talking to artists, discussing form, function, process, inspiration, etc. And I just cannot wait to get cracking on the novel.

Quilting Art: Visiting Ai, and Joan and Joanie

[Joan Dreyer's Flag from the Homeland Series]

Last Friday evening, Warren and I hopped a plane from Austin to Newark for our latest round of interviews and photos for the Quilting Art book. On deck for Saturday was Ai Kajima, originally from Japan and now living in Brooklyn by way of Chicago. Sunday was designated for meeting with Joan Dreyer and Joanie San Chirico.

Let me say that, while the flight to Newark was excellent, the flight back was awful (stuck on the runway for three hours, two of those without air conditioning—really). And riding buses and trains and subways to and fro NY is hardly my idea of a good time—over at my other blog I bitch and moan incessantly about poor, woe is me in the city!

But as for actually meeting my goal of capturing great material for the book? Well that, despite all the logistical hurdles, was a smashing success.

Oh where to start? I want to not give away too much, since I am writing a book about all of these artists. Meeting Ai was really interesting because she is, as far as I can tell, very much a free agent, not especially connected to the quilting art community. Which is not to say she has a shunning attitude. It’s just that she went to art school in Chicago and then followed an art path and happens to be into working on her own. There’s a gallery that reps her in NY. And she spends much of her time working on these really interesting collage quilts, which often feature pop cult characters and images. One work-in-progress we saw was a huge montage centered by Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin embracing a buff and topless Bruce Lee.



[quilt by Ai Kajima]

Ai clips these characters from recycled fabric—kids’ bed sheets are a favorite—and fuses them together, usually without a back piece, just directly piece on top of piece. The quilting itself is fairly microscopic and, as it follows the images on the front, winds up looking like a thread painting on the back, which is typically black.

Next stop, back to NJ. Sunday morning Joan Dreyer picked us up at our hotel and immersed us in such a humongous pool of hospitality and art talk that I’m still processing the kindness and the education. I’m excited about every single artist that’s going to be in the book but I was really drooling for a chance to see Joan’s x-ray “quilts” up close. I’m not even sure I should put quotes around the word quilt there. Technically Joan uses layers and stitches and so, there you go, that’s a quilt. I suppose some critics might disagree but really, who cares?

In addition to Joan, we were lucky enough to get to meet Joanie San Chirico, who is a friend of Joan’s and who lives close enough that she volunteered to drive up. The four of us spent hours talking quilts, art, textiles, and history. Both artists explained their philosophies and also gave us super up close looks at the detail work. I came away feeling like my brain had grown some. Not only does it still sometimes surprise me that I’ve wound up writing about this world, but I’m also continually amazed at the education I’m receiving. The more I talk to the artists, the more I semi-joke that I’m going to go back to school to study the history of textiles.



[from Joanie San Chirico's Catacombs series]

I want to send out an enormous thank you to all of them. Warren and I are pushing it hard, packing in these weekend trips on a tight time/money budget, and Warren especially is pushing it, since he has traditional work hours to keep during the week. That all of the folks we’re meeting are being so generous with their time and knowledge and food and hospitality continues to make us increasingly excited about a project we were already thrilled to take on.