Houston Quilt Festival - the Experience
Between the election and the after convention "hang-over", it has taken me a few days to put this post together. I have been recovering from intense lack of sleep and my annual post-Houston illness which involves the respiratory crud (that in all fairness started in Austin), and losing my voice. I had a difficult time sleeping while at the quilt festival because of the huge amounts of adrenaline, powered by a year of hard work alone in my studio (or mostly alone) and then a giant onslaught of good times with old friends and new and then winning awards and my special exhibit!!!!! To say that it is too much, is an understatement; but like a moth to the flame, I am drawn there.
Highlights of the show include winning two awards this year:
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| i Quilt wins an Honorable Mention!! |
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| One Earth wins a Second Place!! |
Dinner@Eight exhibit, Patterns:
Cover girl! Mistyfuse has added my face to the cover of the package for 10 yards of Mistyfuse! Thanks Iris!
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| Iris and I at the Dinner@Eight dinner |
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| Posing with Jamie Fingal and our cover girl packages on Mistyfuse! |
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The opening of Turmoil & Tranquility, a new exhibit from SAQA.
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| The Deep End |
My special exhibit:
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| My hand made guest book with the color pens. My sweet wonderful amazing guests filled 20 blank pages full of wonderful comments and messages to me. Absolutely fabulous! Thank you so much!!!! |
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| Falling, Vertigo, Doors Across Austin, Park Place |
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| Park Place, Planned Obsolescence, Windows |
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| Windows, A Few of My Favorite Things, Urban Tree |
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| Out of the Box, Just Around the Corner, Bridge |
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| Bridge, Dot, Suburbs |
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| Central Park, Home |
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| Self Portrait '08, Blue Towers |
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| Community Gardens, Winter to Spring, Gift |
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| Urban Daisy, Building UP |
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| Duck and Cover, High Rise |
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| High Rise, You Are What You Eat |
And, one of my biggest highlights was having my mother come to see my exhibit!
After I got home, a dear friend forwarded me a newsletter from The Quilt Show. Surprise!! They made a beautiful slide show of my exhibit and you can see it
here.
I also found out on the last day of the show, that my exhibit, Inspired by Color will be traveling to
INTERNATIONAL QUILT FESTIVAL/CHICAGO, April 6-8, 2017. Whoo hoo!!
And, if that is not enough, there were a total of 49 different quilt exhibits in Houston this year. Only one of them is the
World of Beauty. I could spend weeks looking at all the quilts, but I didn't have that much time! My favorites were the Modern Quilt Exhibit (sorry I didn't get photos!),
Quilt National,
Viewpoints 9,
Dinner@Eight Patterns,
SAQA Turmoil and Tranquility, and the Susan Carlson exhibit. There was also a number of other fascinating exhibits like the quilts made to honor the moon and the missions to the moon, the Dear Jane exhibit, and Tactile Architecture.
Many, many, wonderful times with friends, and so happy to have gotten photos of some of them, and sad I forgot to get photos with others....such is the nature of a highly distracted and adrenaline fueled experience!
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| Deborah Boschert, Suzan Engler |
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| Kristen La Flamme, Deborah Boschert |
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| Heather Pregger |
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| Jamie Fingal |
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| Becky Navarro and me |
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| Selfie with Helen Godden and her quilt! |
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| Selfie with Judy Coates Perez |
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| Me and Paula Kovarik |
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| Me and Sue Bleiweiss |
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| Selfie with Lisa Chin |
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| Sherri McCauley and me |
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| Heidi Proffetty and Victoria Findlay Wolfe |
The beautiful view from the Hilton:
A rather frequent view from the escalators at the George Brown Convention Center:
Behind the scenes, take down of the exhibits. Love the tables. Love the attention to detail in quality care of our quilts!! Look at all those white gloves! Thanks!
At home, cherishing my guest book!
The most frequently asked question:
How long did it take you to make all of these quilts?
I still don't know. It took a lifetime to find my artist voice and get the skills I needed. I am a professional artist. I work full time at making my art, just like other people who work their full time jobs. If you think these art quilts take a long time to make, you are right, but hey, it's what I do. And, I would like to thank those of you who make it possible by supporting the arts! Whether you donate to our organizations or buy our work directly, we couldn't do it without you!!!
Outtakes:
Getting a little silly with no food, exhaustion, and adrenaline, the night I dropped and fatally cracked the screen of my iphone. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting, but the techs at the Apple Store came to my rescue and finished the repair even though they worked past closing time! Kudos!
Spending a very brief amount of time each night doodling with watercolors to amuse with texts to my daughter back at home:
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| dedicated to the raccoon (or other animal of the night) who made a tasty meal from her Jack-O-Lantern |
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3 comments:
It was wonderful seeing you, Kathy! And I love your answer to "how long did it take to make this/these quilts?" Along with "how many pieces are in this?", I get asked it a lot.
Thanks Heather! It was wonderful to hang out with you at the SAQA booth. You are doing great work there! And, obviously your quilts are AMAZING, or as they say in the modern community, AMAZE BALLS!! or perhaps that is one word? Regardless, you can consider me one of your biggest fans! Cheers!
I saw all of your quilts at Houston and was just blown away by them!! I love bright colors and it was hard to choose a favorite because they were all fantastic and inspiring! Truly inspiring and so enjoyable to view!!
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