I had a lovely email from a student explaining how much she enjoyed my class. Dear Helen
Thank you for the great class on Saturday. It was truly inspirational ,funny and creative. I feel privileged to have been to one of your classes and seen your work close up. I felt like I had gone from one master to the others as I gazed at the Paris masterpieces in the Art gallery. We had to wait for 1hr 15 in the queue but it was worth it.
I cant wait to do another class and have been madly trying to stipple and zebra stripe any calico squares that I can.
I would love you to send a photo of your Starry Night quilt whenever you have a spare moment .
thanks again
regards Sandi
So I sent Sandi the image of my Starry Night quilt and a story about the significance of the image to me. Note to Self in my Diary – Must go to Masters at Gallery this week! I just can't miss out on seeing the Masterpiece exhibition in Canberra. Based on the record breaking attendance to the Gallery, the exhibition from France is absolutely fantastic. The collection has never been seen outside of France before and Canberra is having visitors from OS and all over to see the collection....I just gotta go! ..All my favourite artists from the most exciting time in modern Art history are there......Vincent Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne artists truly expressing themselves with art for art sake. No longer was the artist relied upon for capturing moments of historical significance or portraits of the famous for prosperity. ...that was up to the camera. The artist was able to work and play in their medium expressing their own choice of subject, interests, emotions, doing it their own way., in a different way to the camera. The lens could now captured single moments but the artist could capture message, meaning, mood, moments and more. Here is a favourite quilt from 2006.....Starry Night...130cm square, raw edge strip mosaic style where every single brush stroke is represented with a small curve of fabric. There are about 25 different colours, quite a few with a subtle star print or swirl print. The chosen fabric palette were ironed onto iron-on webbing and the backing paper removed before using the rotary cutter to freely cut a slight curve, each piece about 2" long by 1cm wide. Onto a motley blue/grey base spread across the lounge room floor, every piece was carefully position and when I was happy with one area I would iron them down. My knees and back sure took a hiding as I was sitting on the floor for 3 days leaning over placing pieces, but I loved every second of it. My dog, Kosci did not enjoy it as much as he had to stay outside, as he has a tendency to want to help by sitting amongst the action. Once all the pieces were ironed down, I sandwiched the piece with backing batting and a piece of very fine black bridal veil over the top. This does a few magic things...holds all the raw edges securely and means I can stitch wherever I please not having to secure every edge of raw fabric This also, gives the quilt longevity as the raw edges will not gradually rough up. The bridal veil also helps merge the colours together a little and soften them. The lemon yellow was certainly helped by the fine black layer. Its the equivalent of adding the vasilene to a camera lens to soften an ageing Hollywood star. Due to the nylon nature of the bridal veil, it adds a shiny sparkle to the work making it look like it is Vincent's oil painting. The free motion stitching is all spirals and swirling with extra stars and spirals in the sky and lots of movement.
Detail...see my dragonfly! Just as a note on copyright...I did email MOMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) as they are the owners of the original Starry Night. They said it was quite ok to create a piece like Starry Night so long as I was not digitally printing the exact image in a publication. As the artist has been dead more than 70 years and an image so well known is considered public domain anyway, so making my own version was quite ok so long as it was not offensive. I said I was hoping for aesthetically pleasing not offensive! I am happy with the results. With copyright, usually if you do the right thing and ask, people are usually happy for you to use their image as a starting point of inspiration ...it is polite to ask and acknowledge your reference source.
Those that know me, know I have a fondness for all things Dutch and seem to have so many references to Dutchness in my life...I do believe I must have been Dutch in a previous life and had known Vincent...so....Why have you not been to the exhibition as yet??? I hear you ask.
Well, there was school holidays and then teaching away from home and then a quilt deadline or two and then the crowds were too ridiculous and then there is the uncontrollable weeping woman, howling, crying, thing I do.....I get very emotional when I see his work in the real and twice now, once in Melbourne 20 years ago and once in Washington DC 3 years ago, viewing Vincent's work, I go from visually excited to happy to overwhelming sorrow and I have crazy outbursts of embarrassing waterworks..........is kinda weird and I really can't explain it, so I am waiting till my PMT has passed before I go later in the week to the exhibition...hopefully minus a teary outburst of irrational emotion. I shall let u know how it goes!
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