The juror speaks... part 1

Twenty years ago, I was one of a group of four quiltmaker/artists who helped start Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie, a juried show that has grown into one of the highly regarded venues in the US.  As a nod to old times, they asked me to serve as a juror again this year.

A lot has changed since those early years when we juried from slides, and then to digital images submitted on disk.  Now it's done through CaFE, an online platform that serves many of the big shows.  I've ranted several times in the past about my frustrations with CaFE as a show entrant, but never had a chance until now to be frustrated with it as a juror. 

Because I didn't wrestle with this particular setup as an entrant, I don't know what they did to confuse so many people, but apparently it worked.  At least a half dozen people were sufficiently confused as to enter two quilts on one entry form, one in the full view field and one in the detail field, and then a few went on to put one of the two into a separate entry form.  I hope nobody got lost in the shuffle with multiple entries (a fair amount of time was spent by jurors and show organizers trying to get those sorted out). 

In addition, many people attached their detail shot where they were supposed to put their full view, and vice versa.  I didn't count how many in the initial pool, but on our "short list" of 139 quilts, ten were switched around, which seems to point to some flaw in the system rather than just random user error.  

Arguably it is no big deal for jurors to see the full view and detail in the wrong order, but I noticed something that I have seen in many other of my jurying experiences:  I frequently liked the detail shot more than the full view!  And when that one came up first in the viewing window, I would think that was the whole quilt -- and then be a little disappointed to find that it wasn't. 

What does that mean?  Sometimes that wide borders and bindings and surrounds are putting too much boring space around the interesting part in the middle.  Sometimes that quilts composed of many versions of a recurring motif get carried away, with lots of smaller motifs distracting from the big, strong one that serves as the focal point.  (You knew that was the strongest part of the quilt, didn't you?  That's why you chose that for the detail shot....)  Sometimes it just means that less is more, that one strong, simple composition can pack a big whammy, especially if it's big. 

I was happy to find so many big quilts in the pool.  In our short list it is common to find quilts 6 feet square or even larger.  I don't remember how many years it's been since FNF did away with a maximum size, but I think the show has greatly benefited from that decision.  Many artists who want to play in the juried show ballpark have apparently decided that it's hard to make an impact with a medium-sized quilt.  I agree, and I found myself checking the sizes of the entries before assigning scores.  If an image looked great on screen (the same size as all the others) but turned out to be on the small side, it had to be really spectacular to get the highest ratings.

I was also happy to find that the artistic quality of realistic, representational quilts was pretty high. No rusty pickup trucks in this batch of entries, only one household pet.  I've always been biased against this genre of quilts, because the subject matter is so often kitschy and cliched, and because I don't think fabric is well suited to making realistic images.  But in this batch, many of the representational pieces had a distinctive artist sensibility, with a degree of abstraction and sophisticated composition that took them steps above the usual faithful rendering of a photograph into fabric; those were the ones that made it to the short list.   

I can't show you images of the quilts now, of course, because we're still jurying.  The show will open on May 11 and I promise to have lots of photos then to support my observations and opinions!  Stay tuned.  Meanwhile, because what's a blog post without a picture, here's Best in Show from FNF 2021.

Karen Schulz, Objects in This Mirror

Form, Not Function 6 -- not like the others

Sorry for the hiatus in blog posts -- I had a wonderful two-week visit from my sister, during which we saw friends, looked at art, ate in restaurants, bought art supplies and new furniture and tackled the huge job of reorganizing my studio.  No time for blogging with all that going on!

But she's home now, and I'm back to wind up my report on Form, Not Function, the juried quilt show at Carnegie Center for Art & History in New Albany IN.  The show has closed since my last post, but I have saved the fun stuff for last.  It seems that in every quilt show there's something completely different from the traditional quilt format.  Sometimes, like last year, it takes best in show; some years, like this time, the different one just sits there being delightfully different.

 

Elizabeth Morisette, Beak Mask

This weird contraption is made of zippers, opened to reveal the teeth, then coiled and stitched into a cone that morphs into a cylinder.  A clever riff on pandemic masks, with the patina of age and use on the old tapes.

But is it a quilt, you ask?  (Long-time readers know that I frequently ask this question when confronted with the different something at the quilt show.)  I say yes -- it has layers held together by stitching.    

I thought this one was witty and weighty at the same time.  Brava!

Form, Not Function 5 -- more people

More portraits of people at FNF, but not in the hyperrealistic style of those we looked at last week.

 

Clara Nartey, The Gele Skyscraper, detail below

The elaborate headdress looks like it's pieced from commercial striped and dotted fabrics, but it's actually digitally printed and then enhanced with thread painting, especially on the face.

Pamela Mick, Riders on the Storm, detail below

This quilt also looks pieced but isn't -- it's painted with dye and then quilted with multicolored thread painting. 

Holly Cole, Come and Go, detail below

Here the technique is raw-edge collage, with loose drawing and wash on pale fabric to sketch in the women carrying and wheeling their goods to and from the market.  Meander quilting gives texture in the background, perfectly complementing the loose drawn lines in the portraits,

Form, Not Function 4 -- realistic people

I was surprised at the number of representational works at FNF this year.  Of the representations, most were of people, and mostly faces.  Here are some of the more realistic treatments:

Linda Anderson, Remembering 

Linda was a prizewinner at last year's FNF, using the same technique of fabric painting plus intricate multicolor threadwork to make beautifully accurate portraits.

Deborah Hyde, Monkeys In My Hair (Evie), detail below

Deborah is another repeater, in both appearance and technique, having been in FNF in 2019, 2017 and 2016.  All of her quilts are pieced from tiny squares of fussy-cut print fabrics, about a half-inch apiece.  This year she's added little cartoony critters,  including monkeys, in and around the little girl's hair, emphasized with a bit of hand stitching.

Finally, my favorite of the realistic portraits is this tour-de-force of hand stitching.

Shin-hee Chin, The Evening Hour of a Hermit, details below

The painterly strokes of this stunning image are made from long strands of perle cotton, stitches that are interlaced in deep tangles of thread that only occasionally go through to the back layer of the quilt.

Faces also came in other varieties than super-realistic; I'll show you some of them in another post.

Form Not Function 3 -- bindings

Ingrid Lincoln left a comment on my last blog post: "I know these are photos so I may not be seeing everything, but it appears these quilts do not have the usual bindings.  Are bindings out for art quilts?"

Good eye, Ingrid!  You're right that none of the quilts I've shown so far have bindings.  And after I read the comment, I looked through all my photos and discovered that not a single quilt in FNF has a traditional binding.  Last year, only three out of 17 had bindings.  Not sure I'd say they're "out," but I think it's safe to say that bindings are not the standard finish for art quilts these days.   

Lee Sproull, Archilinea, detail

Why is that?  I've delivered many rants on this subject, so I have thought it through.  In my opinion, contemporary quilters who want their work to be seen as art feel a need to distance themselves from traditional quilts.  Although we love the format and the feel of quilts, we don't want people to immediately see our work as something their grandmother would have made and put on the bed.  One way to sever ties with tradition is to omit the binding.

In addition, omitting the binding mirrors a trend in contemporary painting in which traditional frames are no longer necessary.  Painters often feel that frames, especially the elaborate models that surround so many older works, are too constraining.  They hold the picture in, instead of letting it breathe freely and occupy its own space confidently.  Go to a gallery or contemporary museum and many, if not most of the paintings will be unframed.  

Bobbe Nolan, Flyover 10 -- Dancing in the Rainbow Mountains, detail

If you don't finish a quilt with a traditional binding, you can either leave the edges raw or overcast (don't shudder -- sometimes that looks just fine) or use a facing, a strip of fabric applied much like a binding but turned entirely to the back so it's invisible.  Facings are especially useful for quilts with jagged, irregular edges.  (Here's my tutorial on how to make perfect facings without lumpy corners, and how to face a curved edge.)

I'm a bit conflicted about bindings.  I usually go with facings because of wanting to look less like quilts, more like art.  But bindings are easier to do, way less fiddly, even with mitered corners.  They lie flatter because there's less bulk. In a few situations you want that crisp narrow contrast edge for artistic value. And in others, you can make the binding into a non-event by matching the color of the adjacent piecing.   (Here's my tutorial on how to make perfect bindings: part 1, cutting; part 2, sewing; part 3, folding and stitching.)

I advise my students to learn both methods of finishing, and choose the one that seems to work best for the situation.  

Form, Not Function 2 -- more abstraction

Three of the top four winners at this year's FNF were abstract quilts, and there were several more that caught my eye.

Margaret Black, Curb Appeal 20

Margaret has been a repeated winner in the big quilt shows, including best of show at Quilt National four years ago.  As you can tell by the title, she's played this tune before -- lots of black and white, especially in narrow "ladders" punctuating neighborhoods of various colors.  Intricate piecing of small bits, spots of brilliant color popping out from the overall picture.  I'm always intrigued by trying to note how and whether artists with long series try something new.  What I see new in piece #20 compared to #6 and #7 in past FNF shows are the long striped panels in neutrals, especially prominent in the northwest and southeast corners.  

Denise Roberts, MITOTE #12

Denise is another quilt all-star, a regular at all the big shows and having won the Quilts Japan Prize at Quilt National four years ago.  She's been using the same sinuous curve piecing for some time, but this year it's a much more complex composition than she has done before.  The different colored curves stay neatly in their layers, the palest colors on top and the darkest far away.

Daren Redman, Feel Like Dancing

Daren's is the cheeriest of the bunch, with large shapes in bright, clear colors.  It's a kind of sampler of different ways to pep up a skinny vertical rectangle with some sort of contrast pattern.  A very close look reveals that she apparently quilted the piece in sections, then invisibly joined the panels -- a beautifully executed trick.

I'll show more quilts from FNF in subsequent posts.  Meanwhile, the show is on display at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN through July 17, and I know you would like it if you were to visit. 

Form Not Function 1 -- the big winners

I missed the opening of Form, Not Function, the juried quilt show at the Carnegie Center in New Albany IN, but finally made it over to visit.  It's a striking show, nicely hung, with not a dud in the place.  Three of the four big winners were large abstract quilts, but in three quite different flavors of abstraction.

Best in Show: Karen Schulz, Objects in This Mirror 

Karen has been in the top tier of the art/quilt circuit for several years, winning best in show at Quilt National twice and jurying this year's QN.  Her spare and powerful composition uses a technique that always intrigues me, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated parts to make a surprisingly coherent whole.  Here her various techniques include piecing, couching and painting with both dye and acrylic.

 

Kerri Green, Graded Discourse

This cheerful quilt features bright solid colors, overlapping shapes and elegantly pieced curves in a Venn diagram sort of composition.  An arc of black and white gives a punch of pizzazz in the corner.

Sue Cortese, Kumo II -- Relationship  

The pale starburst in the top left quadrant of the quilt is shibori dyed; the striped arms of the larger, darker star are partly dyed and partly pieced.  The white background has subtle touches of pale blue and the occasional dark quilting thread.  It's dramatic but calm , enlivened by complex quilting lines that change direction as they encounter invisible tentacles radiating out from the center.

I liked all three of these a lot.  A whole lot!  I'll tell you about some of the other quilts in the show in later posts.  The show continues at the Carnegie through July 17, and as the old Michelin guides used to say, it's not only "worth a detour" but "worth a trip."

Yo-yo dress update

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the best in show winner at Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie.  It was a dress made of yo-yos, whose train merged into a rectangular yo-yo quilt, made by Marty Ornish.



I wondered in my blog post whether the yo-yos were recycled from old quilts or newly made from old fabrics or what.  This morning I was happy to find that Marty left a comment on my post that explains all.  She writes:

"These two circa WW2 quilts were made by three women.  The youngest, Joan Crone, is now 86, and she sewed these yo-yos 'to help pass the time during the war' and created the quilt with her mother and grandmother.  Her own grandchildren didn't want these quilts, and after she saw my other work at my solo show at Visions's Art Museum, she gifted the yo-yo quilts to me with the explicit wish that I would incorporate them into my art, and she is thrilled with the response.

"Many of the yo-yos had to be repaired, and I deconstructed one of the quilts to create the dress.

"Regarding the issue you raised as to whether or not the yo-yo quilt meets the strict definition of a 'quilt,' while, as you know, a traditional quilt has three layers stitched together, with the advent of art quilts many textile museums now accept two layers of a textile held together by stitching as qualifying as a quilt."

What a good story, especially the part about how the grandchildren didn't want the quilts (boo, hiss) but they were recycled into a lovely art installation.  Marty does this all the time, and is happy to receive donations of unwanted textiles to use in art.  Those of you whose children or grandchildren are as unappreciative as Mrs. Crone's might want to make note of Marty's address [ marty.ornish@gmail.com ] so your beloved stuff could also find a new home with someone who will treat it very well.

Here's an excellent interview in a San Diego paper in which Marty tells how she got into wearables and other fiber art. 

Regarding Marty's comment about the definition of a quilt, she's right that the art quilt world has generally discarded the requirement of three layers.  As one of the founders of the FNF exhibit, I was proudly responsible for writing its definition -- "layers held together by stitching" -- and participated in several discussions, both as juror and as installer, about whether a given entry met the test.

Once we received a quilt that had been accepted, but when we unwrapped it the lack of any stitching-through-layers was obvious.  We loved the piece and tried and tried to find a single stitch anywhere that went through.  Fortunately the artist had sent in her entry well before the deadline, and we decided to send it back to her and ask her to put in at least two or three stitches that would be clearly visible.  She did, without noticeably changing anything about the piece, and the quilt went on the wall and looked great in the show.

We accepted more than one entry over the year from a well-known fiber artist who did intricate hand-stitching.  It was obvious that the stitches went through multiple layers, because we could see that the back and front were different fabrics and the stitches went all the way through, so it clearly met the FNF definition -- even though the artist's website made a point of saying that she does NOT consider her work to be quilts.

I still think yo-yos are pushing the definition, because the stitching mainly goes between one yo-yo and another rather than holding the two layers of the yo-yo together, but faced with a beautiful piece like Marty's dress, you look for a reason to define it in rather than a reason to define it out.

Form, Not Function 5 -- something different

Every art/quilt show worth its salt has something a little different, something that doesn't follow the usual format of a flat-against-the-wall quilt.  This year's FNF, of course, chose one like this for its best in show; here are some more pieces that fell into this niche.

Shannon Conley, 33°20'N, 105°33'W, 64 x 34 x 6" (detail below)

It has been quilted and pierced, then scrunched and stiffened into a sconce-like form that opens toward the top.  The desert colors reflect the remote New Mexico location of its title (but I hope the actual terrain of the place isn't quite this wrinkled).

Katherine Gibson, Unwearable Cloak, 60 x 84" (detail below)

Gibson has neatly cut magazine pages into tabs, layered them and stitched everything to a fabric support.  I might have wished only for a bit more color to pep up the white expanse of the top half.  I hope the paper will hold up for this quilt to be shipped and seen at many more shows!

Form, Not Function 4 -- pictorial

This year's FNF had only a few pictorial quilts, two of which won awards.  One of those awards was the one given by my small quilt support group, River City Fiber Artists, which meant that I got to visit the museum early and choose. 

Longtime readers will recall that I generally dislike pictorial quilts as a genre, especially portraits.  I have long felt that fabric is not a good medium to depict photographically realistic images, but this year I had to admit that the quilt winning the RCFA award is perhaps the best portrait quilt I've ever seen.

Linda Anderson, Velvet Flowers, 31 x 51" (detail below)

For me, the challenge of portraiture in fabric is how to achieve the graded tones of facial features without the abrupt changes in switching from one fabric to another, the Photoshop-aided posterization process used by so many quilters to render photos into fabric.  I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of figuring out the process, but Anderson either painted or printed the faces, then quilted with a whole lot of threadwork, changing colors to enhance the realistic facial contours and skin tones.  Metallic thread made the image sparkle.

By contrast, look at this portrait:

Margaret Abramshe, Nan, 33 x 29" (detail below)

Here too the image is painted or printed, then quilted.  But here the quilting is all the same color, intended to highlight the contours rather than the gradations in skin tome, and is much sparser, giving a stylized look to the portrait.  The quilting line becomes an art element in itself.

Quite a different approach is seen in one of the honorable mention winners:

Kathy Nida, I can't Be Your Superwoman, 88 x 52" (details below)

Nida's work is instantaneously recognizable from across the room in any quilt show, with intricately rendered details in a sometimes-cartoony style.  A very different approach to figurative art in quilting.

Form, Not Function 3 -- because you asked...

I've had a few reader comments to the two posts I've made so far about Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie.  Wanted to respond to them before I go on with more discussion of the show.

About the Best in Show dress made entirely of yo-yos, Shasta wrote: "It reminds me that I have yo-yos I need to stitch together still." 

After I observed that I wished the jurors had not chosen three quilts with the same basic "recipe" -- big, improvisationally pieced, white, densely machine quilted -- Irene commented: "Maybe the jurors had nothing but that type of work to select from..."

Good point, but according to the Carnegie's web page, there were 265 quilts submitted by 110 artists, so I think they could have found something different if they had tried.  By the way, that web page has photos of every quilt in the show, not just the prizewinners, so you might find it interesting to spend a few minutes on a virtual visit.

Shannon commented:  "You could conceivably add Aryana Londir's piece to this list -- the color sense is different but the piecing approach looks somewhat similar.   After reading your post today I went back and looked at the show again to see if it felt too "heavy" in that particular approach.  After consideration, I'm not sure.  The overall show feels balances to me and there are several other additional (apparently) pieced pieces that don't have this style/approach.  I wonder to what extent this is a piecing style that is currently used by a large variety of artists?  I also wondered if it might be tied to the jurors.  I remember QN 19 when Nancy Crow was a juror the selected pieces felt enriched for those that had a Nancy-Crow-piecing style.  Not that that's necessarily bad, just perhaps an influence."

Shannon makes several points worth responding to.  First, Londir's quilt is definitely of the same character as the three I discussed in my last post: improvisationally pieced, machine quilted with parallel lines, the shapes predominantly right-angled.

Aryana Londir, What Day is Today?  41 x 24"

I like this quilt a lot -- how can you go wrong with the cheerful and dramatic German-flag color palette, plus just enough white to make it sparkle.  A nice balance of solids with commercial prints and what look to be discharged or dyed fabrics.

Shannon makes an excellent point about how the individual jurors and their own tastes can influence what's picked for a show.  Theoretically, having three jurors should make it more difficult for one to have a disproportionate say, but we all know that sometimes one voice is more equal than the others in the room.  I did not see the Quilt National show that Nancy Crow juried (it was QN 17, not 19) but I know that there were a lot of improvisationally pieced quilts in that show and many people suggested that Crow had mainly led the charge toward work in her own genre.  The fact that she, not the QN organizers, personally selected her two fellow jurors did nothing to dispel the faint aura of favoritism.

Longtime readers know that I am a huge fan and disciple of Nancy Crow.  I spent 16 weeks in her workshops over the years, taught at the Crow Barn, machine-quilted three pieces for her, and have credited her with turning me into a serious artist.  Probably because of her influence I love and teach improvisational piecing myself and I'm always happy to see that kind of quilt in a show.  But I confess that many times I find myself categorizing that kind of quilt as "look-mom-I-just-took-a-Nancy-Crow-workshop."

Longtime readers might recall that I was livid because QN 13 had only two quilts out of 85 that were pieced in the classic quilt format.  Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction, at least in this particular show.  This year's FNF isn't anywhere near as skewed in its selection as QN 13, and it's certainly a good show, with few if any duds and a bunch of solid, beautiful, well-made quilts.  I'll be talking more about several of them in the next few posts.  Meanwhile, thanks to Shannon, Irene and all my readers for your thoughtful comments.

PS -- Shannon has a very non-traditional quilt in the show, which I'll tell you more about.  Stay tuned!

Form, Not Function 2 -- improvisational piecing

There are only 19 pieces in this year's Form, Not Function show, so you can't help but notice when you seem to see the same one more than once.  Don't say to your friend, "Did you like that improvisationally pieced one, the really big one, with lots of white and all that machine quilting? It won a prize." -- because that only narrows it down to three.

Here's what won the second prize, in effect:

Susan Lapham, Playland #3, 85 x 82" (detail below)

It's densely machine quilted with horizontal lines barely an eighth-inch apart.  Yes, as the title suggests, there's a hint of playfulness but the subdued palette of off-colors gives a calm feeling despite the complex piecing, especially the tiny squares of black scattered on the large white areas. 

Honorable mention went to:

Margaret Black, Curb Appeal 7, 84 x 64" (detail below)

Black won a prize at last year's FNF for Curb Appeal 6, somewhat larger and more complicated than this year's entry.  (She also took best in show at Quilt National '17, before she embarked upon this series.) 

What's to say about this one -- it calls out to all of us who love to piece and cut and piece and cut and keep going forever.  Like Lapham's quilt, this one is densely machine quilted with parallel lines, except these go vertically.

And another honorable mention:

Susan Michael, All That You Dream, 75 x 64" (detail below)

It's the tiebreaker in the machine-quilting department, making two out of three with vertical lines.  The bold black-and-white palette gives a more assertive character and graphic quality than was seen in the other two quilts, with overtones of African prints and sparing accents of red and yellow.  Unlike the other two quilts discussed today, this one mixes fabrics, with canvas, ticking and some little shiny fabrics side-by-side with quilting-weight cottons. 

As one who does improvisational piecing with mostly right angles and dense machine quilting with parallel lines, I find it difficult to say anything bad about these quilts!  I'd be happy to have made any one of them.

All three of these quilts, especially the first two, suffered a bit from being displayed on white walls.  It was hard to tell where the quilt stopped and the wall started.  A gray or beige wall would have made them sparkle and sing.

More important, when one-sixth of the whole show consists of basically the same recipe, I have to wonder whether it might have been more interesting for viewers if the jurors had found a little more variety in approach and appearance.

Form, Not Function -- Best in Show

Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie is a show that has been at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN since 2004.  It has bounced around the calendar several times for various reasons, including bad weather (it used to be in the winter) and coordination with Quilt National (so people could catch both shows on a single road trip) and this year, coronavirus.  But it opened today, despite everything, and the museum is ready for masked visitors every day except Sunday.  The show will be up through October 31, a longer run than usual, so maybe you'll be able to see it in person.

Best in Show went to Marty Ornish for her 3-D installation "She gazed at the carousel through rose-colored glasses."

Yes, it's made of yo-yos, a slinky one-sleeve halter-top dress cascading into a train that extends up the wall.

Ornish's artist statement says she works in "salvaged textiles and found items" and the yo-yos all appear to be made from Depression-era prints.  I wish I knew more about the provenance -- did she find the yo-yos in somebody else's discarded stash, or make them herself?  Are the fabrics authentic Depression-era or reproductions?  In any case, the result is stunning, and the subdued pastel palette is calm and soothing from afar and endlessly interesting up close.

As I drove home from the museum it occurred to me to wonder whether this technically qualifies as a quilt under the FNF definition: layers held together by stitching.  I guess technically it does, because yo-yos have a front layer and a back layer, and though the layers aren't exactly stitched "together" (the back of a yo-yo is entirely free of thread), you can argue that each yo-yo is "held together" with its buddies via stitching.  (I have served as a juror in FNF several times, and it's this kind of nit-picking that you fall into ex officio.)  Anyhow, the yo-yo quilt is a time-honored niche, so I would give it a pass even though it's not the standard "quilt" format.

And I'm so glad this year's jurors did, because this is a wonderful tour de force and so much fun to look at.  When I was at the museum on Wednesday to choose the prizewinner for the River City Fiber Artists award, we agreed that this piece should be a no-brainer for the Viewer's Choice.  I still think so!

Form, Not Function 4 -- the Quilt National connection

When FNF was started, the show ran early in the year, but after a while the Carnegie Center decided to change the date.  Winter weather made faraway visitors think twice about driving, and the entry process was too close to the holidays.  So the show tried several different schedules -- February, March, April, July, May.  After visiting Quilt National several years ago, the museum director and curator thought it would be a good idea to overlap FNF's dates so people might be able to see both shows in a single road trip.

This year, there are many overlaps between the two shows, and not just in scheduling.

- Both shows opened on May 24. 

- Judy Kirpich, who was one of the QN jurors, won best in show at FNF.  (Judy also won a big prize at FNF in 2013.)



Judy Kirpich, Circles No. 6, FNF 2013

- Arturo Alonzo Sandoval's quilt Pattern Fusion No. 18: Motherboard 9, won a big prize at FNF.  Meanwhile, a quilt that looks like its twin brother, Pattern Fusion No. 16: Motherboard, won a big prize at QN.  (click here and scroll down a bit to see it)

- Margaret Black, whose quilt Curb Appeal 6 was a prizewinner at FNF, had the best in show quilt at the last QN two years ago, even though I wouldn't have known these two works came from the same artist had I simply seen them both on a wall.  (click here to see it)

I haven't had a chance to see Quilt National yet this year, although I hope to do so in July en route to a family reunion.  There may be other overlaps and cosmic coincidences yet to be discovered; if I find some, I'll let you know!

FNF is on display through July 20 at the Carnegie Center for Art and History, 201 E. Spring Street in New Albany IN, just across the river from Louisville.  Quilt National is on display through September 2 at the Dairy Barn in Athens OH.

Last week on Art With a Needle

After I wrote about the prizewinners at Form, Not Function, Vivien left a comment:  "Cool that you got to serve as a prize judge.  How did that compare to a time when you've been a juror?"

Good question, Vivien!  In the world of juried art/quilt shows, I've been all over the waterfront.  Several times I've been a juror, selecting which pieces get into the show, but not a judge, awarding prizes.  Once I've been a juror with others, and we all got together to see the quilts on the wall and agree on the prizes.  Once I've been a juror with others, but got to award the prizes all by myself.  Once I was the sole juror and also awarded the prizes.  Once I was the sole juror in a show with no prizes.  This year I got to award prizes in a show that I did not jury, and there may be one or two shows in there that I have forgotten.

The hardest part of jurying comes at the bottom end, the quilts that do or don't make the cut.  The top end is a no-brainer: the pieces that are really good and get chosen with hardly any discussion at all.  It's at the low end that the arguments and persuasion and horse-trading occur, either among your fellow jurors or with yourself if you're the only one.  It's hard to choose among three or a half-dozen pieces that are equally good, but you're limited to a certain number of quilts or a certain amount of wall space.

Sometimes the hard part of judging also comes at the bottom end, if the big winners are obvious but a half dozen seem equally almost-great, vying for three or four prizes.  Which one gets the money, which one gets the honorable mention?  But other times the hard part comes at the top end, when two or three are clearly the best of the bunch, but what order to rank them in?  As always, arguments and persuasion.

One important difference between jurying and judging is that jurying always happens from images, while judging often happens from the actual work on the wall.  I know some big shows, most notably Quilt National, select winners from images too, because they need the lead time to publish catalogs and summon winners to the opening, but I've always thought it's much better to be able to see the work in person.

So many times I've seen quilts on the wall after jurying them in, and been amazed at how they differ from my mental picture.  Perhaps one is much larger or much smaller than you thought (yes, you can read the dimensions, but the image up there on the screen has its own presence that is quite independent).  Perhaps one has sloppy craft or hangs wonky on the wall, qualities that weren't apparent from the great professional photo but greatly detract from its impression in the gallery.  Or the opposite, perhaps one didn't photograph well but is a knockout in person. 

On balance, I think it's harder to be a judge than a juror. Others may disagree.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week:

Form, Not Function 3 -- more prizes

Rounding out the list of money prizewinners at FNF:

Margaret Black, Curb Appeal 6, 89 x 82" 

If you like obsessive piecing, you'll love this quilt!  It kind of reminds me of my own fine-line piecing, with lots of small bits surrounded and joined by very skinny strips, but Black's is less controlled, more improvisational than my own.  I spent a lot of time in front of this quilt trying to discern a pattern to the color concentrations.  And as an obsessive piecer myself, I went into zen state trying to figure out the order in which she sewed it all together!  Almost everything in the quilt is solid color, except for one or two commercial prints and a couple of batiks that read as stripes. 

Kathy Nida, Womanscape, 82 x 54" (detail below)

Nida's work, familiar to anybody who has attended a major quilt show in the last decade, features her trademark angst-ridden women with visible innards, plus a host of tiny details that make total sense only to a surrealist mind.  Figuring out what this quilt is about is more difficult than I have found in many other Nida quilts; it seems to have many themes, including pollution, patriotism, rape, feminism, contraception, pregnancy and windbag politicians.  And I'm sure I missed some.

I didn't inspect every seam in the quilt, but it's largely if not entirely done with raw-edge applique, zigzag stitched with invisible thread.

Deborah Hyde, Persephone (Jenn), 48 x 77" (detail below)

The image is entirely made up of pieced squares of commercial fabrics, cut to one inch, stitched to a half inch.  She has carefully chosen colors to create a pixelated image, but it's even better than pixels -- when she needs a color change in the middle of a tiny square, she fussy-cuts one from a printed fabric to get, for instance, a red lip divided diagonally from a dark green shadow.  Everything is done in piecing except a bit of dark threadwork on the eyelashes, brows and very fine lines of the face.

But wait, there's more!  Under the picture is a traditional Around The World quilt pattern, executed subtly in different colors of the same value.  Having once composed a fussy-cut graphic quilt of half-inch squares myself, I can testify to the tedious difficulty of getting all those squares mapped out, cut and kept in the right position as they're sewed.  This is a tour de force of piecing.