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| They're Back! by Deb Plestid |
Enjoy a short preview of their book:
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| Fiddlehead Fern: A Blueprint for Spring (2022) by Deb Plestid w6"xh8" |
Fiddlehead Fern, A Blueprint for Spring is Deb Plestid's contribution to the 2022 SAQA Spotlight Auction. Deb is a SAQA Juried Artist from Tatamagouche Nova Scotia.
Technique: painted fabric, painted fern, applique & machine stitched.
See more of Deb Plestid's quilted artwork on her website, deb plestid fibre art.
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The SAQA Spotlight Auction is an opportunity for all SAQA members to showcase their artwork to a worldwide audience. Online entry forms must be completed by March 31, 2022. Check out the SAQA 2022 Spotlight Auction page for entry details.
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| Untitled, Fiona Oxford (2022) w6"xh8" |
F.O.: This is a somewhat abstract Hibiscus that I see out of my window in Florida.
Created with paint and geli plate. Free-motion stitching and embroidery stitches on muslin.
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The Spotlight Auction is an opportunity for all SAQA members to have their work showcased at the 2022 virtual SAQA Conference.
The Spotlight Auction is also an opportunity for SAQA Atlantic members to have their work featured on our blog, to be enjoyed by those of us not attending the annual conference. If you've contributed to the 2022 auction, please let us have a sneak peek at your piece!
Find out more about the 2022 Spotlight Auction here.
Here's a sneak peek at Hélène Blanchet's 2022 SAQA Spotlight Auction contribution.
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| Untitled. Hélène Blanchet 2022 w6"xh8" |
Hélène lives and makes art in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and is SAQA Atlantic's regional representative. She is also a SAQA juried artist. You can read about her work on the global SAQA site.
March 31 is the deadline for registering your own donation to the Spotlight Auction. Learn more about participating in the SAQA 2022 Spotlight Auction here.
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| Weather Bomb by Regina Marzlin (2022) w8"xh6" |
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| Susan Lapham, I Heart My Brothers 2021, 40"x40" |
Her contemporary quilts have been described as a lively
dance between steady geometry and sparkling movement. Her work has been exhibited
in Form, Not Function; Quilts=Art=Quilts; Visions Art Museum; and Quilt
National. Her award winning Playland
series has received Best of Show, First Place, and Piecing Awards.
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| Playland 1, 2020, 83"x82" |
Born in Jerusalem, Susan lived in the Middle East and North Africa for the first 12 years of her life. Her degrees in Cartography and Survey Statistics led her to work in the US government and non-profit organizations as a mapmaker, statistician, manager and senior executive for nearly 40 years. She is currently Principal Investigator on US National Institutes for Health grants focusing on behavioral health and is Director of a sixty-year longitudinal study of human development and aging.
Along the way, she taught herself to quilt and obviously brings the same level of energy and discipline to her art. When I asked Susan about artists who have inspired her work, her list included the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida, the Lebanese painter Saloua Raouda Choucair, and the Americans Karl Benjamin and Frank Stella. All of them are characterized by clean lines and bold use of colour.
Susan, could you describe your workspace?
My studio is a 24 by 40 foot addition at the back of our house overlooking our woods and garden. It is open and airy with lots of room to breathe. My design wall takes up one whole wall plus half of another – a total of about 38 feet by 8 feet tall. The room is empty except for the design wall, my sewing machine, and two large cutting tables forming an “L” in the middle of the room. I love spending time in the studio and find that I can be as creative as my imagination allows because there are no distractions.
It seems very well-lit. What are the light sources?
I have five large floor to ceiling windows and six skylights that let in a lot of natural light. There are 12 8-foot LED lights mounted on the ceiling which provide additional light on grey days. I also have Ott Creative Curve lamps beside my sewing machine and on the cutting table.
I don’t keep a lot of fabric – just enough to keep creating. Yardage is kept in a dark closet on open shelves organized by value and color. Scraps are kept in 3 baskets, also organized by color and value. I keep a small bin of leftover bits and units from previous pieces, and turn to it to start each subsequent project. If I need a small piece of fabric I’ll use my unsewn scraps next and only go to my yardage if I need a big chunk.
I bag the tiniest scraps for a friend to make dog beds or for garden mulch - nothing wasted!
I only keep a few spools of thread (Superior) which are organized on a rack on the wall. My philosophy is if I don’t use something for a year, it is donated, gifted or recycled.
Aside from the emptiness, which is rather unusual for a quilter, are there other unique features?
One unusual
aspect is that my husband does all my quilting on his
long arm machine. He has his own space at the other end of the house so when I
have a top ready for him to quilt, I just walk downstairs and hand it over to
him. I am more than blessed with this arrangement!
Another great aspect of my studio is that I can easily take it on the road – literally!
Every
summer for the past couple of decades, my husband and I hop into the RV and
head to Cape Breton where we spend several weeks at Broad Cove campground. I
use the same portable sew easy table that I use in my home studio and bring the
five small baskets of fabric scraps that I use daily. Since
I’m a minimalist it’s easy to schlep my tools back and forth. As I can’t bring
the huge design wall, I work on smaller pieces or I hang a sheet on the
clothesline and just deal with the constant breeze.
I can also
dye fabric there which I don’t often do at home. I actually learned to dye from
Anne Schroeder, another Cape Breton artist, several years ago.
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| Susan's portable studio... |
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| ...and her outdoor studio |
You mentioned that it's easy to bring your studio, but what about favourite gadgets?
I’m not
really a gadget person. I have a simple straight stitch sewing machine and the
tools I use can easily fit into one glass jelly jar that includes a seam
ripper, Karen K Buckley perfect scissors, a pair of large scissors, paper
scissors, tweezers, hera tool and "that purple thang" (a sort of stiletto). I have a second glass
jelly jar that includes the tools I need for the sewing machine – brush,
screwdriver, oil, machine needles, pipe cleaner, walking foot and quarter inch
foot.
Except for rotary cutters that are on the portable cutting tables, and a couple of rulers that I mostly use for trimming up finished quilts, I don’t keep much else. My goal is to keep the studio and my studio practice as minimal as possible.
Going back to your main studio, what does having this workspace mean for your processes, and how do you make the space work for you?
I love my
studio and spend every possible moment I can in it! Having lots of space to
move around, large cutting tables and a huge design wall give me the freedom I
need to translate what’s in my head to fabric. Being a minimalist and staying
organized allows me to be efficient which helps with deadlines!
If you had the chance, what change
would make it your ultimate creative space?
Taller
design walls. I tend to work very large – 8 feet by 8 feet.
I would love to work bigger at some point but my design walls are
currently 8 feet tall so it would be hard to create something larger.
Is there a project that you’re currently working on, or are excited about starting that you can tell us about?
While I love working with tiny bits of fabric to build enormous pieces, I also love spare work. I’m experimenting with some spare pieces and am excited to see where I can go with them.
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| Clothesline design wall |
More of Susan's work can be seen on her website at susanjlapham.net
Her husband, John Tsiaperas, who does the longarm quilting of her quilts, can be found here.
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| Englishtown Spill by Alison Cowitz (w27”xh54”) |
Location: 16080 Highway 19, Inverness Nova Scotia
Reception: 7-9pm, Saturday, November 6, music by
Cape Breton guitarist Brian Doyle.
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Sunday from 12-5pm.
Closing date: January 15, 2022.
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| Man Plays Guitar While his Wife Dances in the Big Saskatchewan Prairies by Helene Blanchet (w36 “x h12”) |
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| Moody Crush by Kristi Farrier |
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| O is for Ostritch by Anne Morrell Robinson (w43"xh54") |
AMR: Working in a series and exploring fabric collage allow me to just have fun playing with nature’s shapes and colours. Fun is something we all need in our lives as we adapt to the current changes in the world and our daily lives. Do the birds realize they are adapting to the changes or is it just instinct? Let’s find our place with as much joy as a bird soaring on the wind currents.
RM: In these works, I try to capture the beauty of the nature around me by using actual plant material to print on fabric. My colour choices, placement and paint layering are my responses to the astonishing beauty of even the humblest weed. These works convey a sense of place and an awe of the details in nature in a tactile medium that shows the hand of the maker.
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| Dandelion Dreams by Regina Marzlin (w21”xh18”) |
The Inverness County Centre for the Arts requires masking and proof of Covid-19 vaccination for all events.
