Mourning My Quilts

Some of you may have heard…. A group of 8 different traveling loan exhibits went missing from the Mancuso Quiltfest Oasis show in early October  and were never hung. They included two exhibits from Quilts On The Wall Fiber Artists, one from the Southern California region of SAQA and five others. I had pieces in both of the QOTW shows – Maps and Shadows. 

All 8 of the individual exhibits were shipped via UPS to the Mancuso’s decorating company in California and were delivered and signed for. It is believed that all 8 were put on the same pallet to be trucked to the Palm Springs Convention Center for the Show which opened on October 10, 2015. They never arrived. 

My husband and I drove from LA to Palm Springs to see the show and my pieces in it, and we were very disappointed to find the photos above. I visited again the following day, but still no quilts. By the end of the weekend, the quilts – approximately 100-120 of them were still not hung. Four of the shows were to be sent north to the Mancuso’s Pacific International Quilt Festival, but were not hung there either. 

"Nightshadows", 2014  - Ribbons of hand dyed gray to black along with accents of opalescent organza, quilted with silver thread. Traveling in the Quilts On The Wall exhibit "Shadows". Disappeared from Quiltfest Oasis, October, 2015

"A La Carte",  2013  - Printed imagery of Le Chateau de Vaux Le Vicomte  over a plan of Le Notre's famous garden. Fused applique with sewn embellishments and three dimensional leaves.

Disappeared from Quiltfest Oasis, October, 2015

To date, none of the 100 + quilts have been found.  Warehouses , trucks,  freight  terminals and the Convention Center have been searched.  Security footage has been scoured. The Mancuso organization has offered a $5000 reward to the employees of the decorating company and the freight terminal  in hopes they will turn up. So far, nothing. It now seems that no system of bar coding was used, making an electronic search impossible.  We have been told that all 8 boxes still had their original UPS labels and tracking numbers intact, so if someone finds any of them they might get back to their owners. 

Meanwhile the Mancuso organization is beginning the insurance process, though at this point I’m not sure what that will mean to individual artists. They also suggest that artists search Ebay and Etsy and post their quilts on websites devoted to finding lost and stolen quilt websites.  

I am rather surprised that there has not been more discussion of this issue on the net. No one involved has posted to the SAQA group or to Quiltart that I have seen… The safety of all our artist’s work  is of utmost importance and I thought might have started a lot of dialog.

To say that I am disappointed, heartbroken and angry is, of course, an understatement.  I am mourning my lost quilts, but hoping beyond hope that they will still be found. Whenever I send an art quilt – a piece of myself  - off to a show or exhibit, my heart is always in my mouth until I know that it has arrived. As artists, we have to trust the organizations to which we send our pieces to use all care and diligence in safeguarding them. What happened in this case, after the pieces arrived at their destination is unknown, but it certainly makes me think about to whom I will trust my work in the future

"Urban Graffiti" ... My view.

I  conceived this small quilt recently as my response to a Quilts On The Wall Fiber Artists call for entry "Urban Graffiti" but unfortunately it didn't make the cut.... However, it did crystallize my own feelings about graffiti in the urban landscape. I remember traveling to New York in the 1970s and feeling so smug that at least the cityscape of my native city of LA was not scarred with graffiti. Alas, of course, this is no longer true. My feelings might have been further cemented later on when our place of business was tagged - not by gang members or serious graffiti artists, but by local wannabes from the surrounding upscale neighborhood.  I spent hours scrubbing it away from a painted brick wall.

≈

I know that in today's art world graffiti artists are subjects of study and veneration and I can certainly see that is valid in some cases, but my appreciation cannot help but be colored by my own experience and the feeling that what I've always thought of as a beautiful city is being diminished by what is painted all over its buildings and infrastructure. Certainly most of the artists that offered up work for the QOTW exhibit "Urban Graffiti" explored this artistic view of the subject and I applaud them for seeing beauty and meaning in the ugliness that I see around me.

For those interested, the quilt was constructed using a fused raw edge technique. The individual bricks were cut and fused on to a printed mottled gray fabric that served as the mortar. The letters were from a "graffiti" font I found online. The bricks were dabbed with textile paint for an aging effect and free motion quilted in various small fill patterns with silk thread. If you are wondering about the two white objects on the quilt in front of my machine, they are pieces of rubber shelf lining which I find helpful in guiding the quilt sandwich during quilting. Much better than gloves, or hoops, etc. I hate having to put on and take off gloves!

My congratulations to those QOTW members whose works were juried in to "Urban Graffiti" There are some remarkable images in the quilts that were included in the exhibit that will debut at Road to California in January 2016. I'm looking forward to seeing all of them together!

In the meantime, this quilt will soon be added to my website at www.sallywrightquilts.com and will be added for sale in my Etsy Shop

See this and other great blogs at  Off The Wall Fridays with Nina Marie Sayre

Home from Long Beach

Home late last night from International Quilt Festival Long Beach feeling pretty exhausted but inspired and happily remembering all the wonderful quilts and the friends I connected with while there.

"Bridges" a special exhibit at Festival put together by Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists was very well received and included my quilt "Rainy Day San Francisco, October 2010". It's great to finally be able to include it on my blog. It was turned in early last spring for the jurying process  and we were asked not to show any of the quilts in the show until after the debut this weekend in Long Beach.

Mine was based on a cell phone photograph I took at an intersection on the Embardcadero last October as we arrived in the city for the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. it was interesting to interpret the weather conditions of that dreary wet morning in fabric, textile paint, couched yarns and a few digital images using a very limited grisaille pallette with just a minor splash of bright red.

Over the weekend i was often asked the question why "I'm Sorry" was the license plate.  The only answer is that I searched the internet for a plate that would be make the viewer wonder and maybe make up a story to match it.  It worked!

The next stop for Bridges is a quilt show in Pennsylvania and then we hope on to Road to California next January in Ontario. The show will travel for one to two years.  

The vendor side of the long Beach Festival is always a huge magnet - and along with aisle after aisle of the the normal fabric, notions and embellishments there were some interesting new stands. Among them a company selling casual and dress shows made from the colorful mola applique's of central America, a software developer with a program to organize all your quilts and their information on your computer (had to have that one - www.QuiltAlbum.com) and some jewelry pieces made from rolled and stiffened filigree fabric.  A whole stand selling Derwent Intense colored pencils - my new favorite surface design tool and a lady demonstrating everything you can do with them on fabric was another winner.

All that and three great full day classes in three days with Esterita Austin, Pam Holland and Judy Coates Perez! Again it was a great, but exhausting weekend. Can't wait for next year!                                    

Three of my quilts and some smaller pieces are part of "Quilting is Art" a show sponsored by Quilts on The Wall Fiber Artists opening running October 6 - 30 at The Framery and Fine Art Gallery in Whittier. Address: 13105 Whittier Blvd., Whittier, CA 90602. The opening reception is this Saturday, October 9 from 3-6. Would love to see you there!

Just Some Random Notes.....

Just some random notes on what's happening in my quilting world.... Great news this week! Fossil Fueled, my quilt based on fossils from my son's childhood collection, has been named a Finalist at International quilt Festival's "Quilts - A World of Beauty" which will open in October. I'm extremely humbled to have a quilt shown at Houston the second year in a row. Scroll down the posts for a photos of the quilt.

As I'm writing, my quilts Forrest's Flowers and Up At the Villa With Michael are being shown as part of "Becoming Art at the Seams" at the American Quilt Society's show in Knoxville, Tennessee. This wonderful show highlighting the work of Southern California art quilters was organized and curated by Ariane Karakalos at the Museum of Ventura County and is now traveling around the country.

Lastly, I've finally sent off 2009 - A Space Odyssey to the SAQA Show "Art Meets Science" which will debut at the Festival of Quilts, 2010 in Birmingham, UK next month. We've all recently learned that this is only the beginning of the travel for this show. After the UK it will travel to the national headquarters of Pfizer, Inc. in New York City from September, 2010 to March 2011 , the Visions Art Quilt Gallery, San Diego, CA from January 2012 - April 2012 and to the Global Health Odyssey Museum at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA from June to September, 2012. The quilts won't be back to the artists for two years. I'm especially happy about Visions - I'll be able to see the show for myself!

Currently I'm in the first stages of designing a quilt based on a photograph I took at Chaco in New Mexico several years ago for a Quilts on the Wall show entitled "Discovery". It's due in September so I'd better get back to work. If I get somewhere on this one I'll post some photos next month. In the meantime I'm off to International Quilt Festival Long Beach next week. I'm taking classes from Karen McTavish and Noriko Endo. Can't wait.....