Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

I’ve just been notified that I’ve been juried in as a participating artist in the 2010 Artfest put on by the McLean Project for the Arts. The event will be held Sunday, October 3, 2010 from 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM. I’m very gratified that this is the third year I’ve been accepted to this show. At right is my booth from last year’s Artfest, taken just after I set up before the show opened.  The majority of the pieces shown in this photograph have sold, so I’ll be spending the rest of the summer creating new work!

This event is incredibly well managed by the McLean Project for the Arts and it’s a fun day full of art, artists, music and food. It’s a fine art show, so you’ll find top quality painting, photography and sculpture, in addition to fine artists in ceramics, jewelry and of course, fiber.

Mark your calendars–I hope to see you there in October!

The green fabric is here, my son is graduated from high school and I’m ready to get back to work on this piece. I took a break from the studio for about a week while the graduation festivities went on and we had family in for the celebration, and I think that was a good thing. I have more energy to do the design work now.

Creating these pieces is intriguing for me, because it’s all about the process. There’s no pattern to follow, no instructions to guide me. I have to get with the flow of the process and let the color and design choices I make dictate what comes next. It’s exhausting sometimes and I’m full of doubts about whether I’m on the right track. But ultimately I think this is the path I want to explore right now.

I don’t have a name for this one yet and obviously it’s in the very early stage of design–the green chunks of fabric are just pinned in place and the blocks probably aren’t finished. I really like the curved piece in the central block and I think I need to repeat that shape somewhere else. I got a little stuck on this one before I took my break because I started thinking about how I would quilt it and nothing came to me. While it’s important to think about the quilting while the piece is in progress, it shouldn’t overtake the design. So I’m not going to worry about that until the piecing is finished. I also like the idea of using several different greens in the background to liven up the plain areas–the quilting will be important here. My thought was to expand on the idea I used for Amber Harvest and put three improvisational blocks in the design instead of just one. Perhaps there will be another small block in one of the lower corners as well.

The lesson learned here is important to take breaks every now and again to let the ideas percolate in my head without forcing them. Stay tuned!

I was thrilled to get a “thick email” last night notifying me that two of my quilts, Amber Harvest and Beach House, have been juried into Art Quilts Lowell 2010 in Lowell, Mass. The show runs from August 7 through September 11, 2010 at the Brush Art Gallery and Studios at 256 Lowell St., with an artist reception on Saturday, August 14 from 1-3 PM.

Amber Harvest, at right, is part of my Color Block series exploring improvisational piecing and solid colors. This was the first piece I used only one large improv block set onto an asymmetrical background. I really like the combination of warm colors with clear cool accents. I also tried a new quilting idea on this one. I quilted echoing curved lines over most of the piece, then offset them with a round pebble motif in the upper right corner. Right click on the image to get a better view of the quilting.

Beach House is also part of my Color Block series. I created a horizontal band of improv piecing in this one, sort of like a landscape. The name came from the small house shape in the center and I quilted waves and pebbles in the lower section and a cloudlike motif in the upper portion.

I’m really enjoying the process on these pieces and I’m excited that they are going to this show. There’s more to explore with this idea and I have a couple of more pieces in the works. Creating the compositions is intriguing–almost like putting together a puzzle–only I don’t have the completed picture to guide me! It’s also interesting to come up with quilting motifs to complement the design. For each piece I challenge myself to come up with at least two or three different motifs that work well together and add interest to the whole.

I hope I’ll be able to get up there to see it!

This piece, just begun and as yet unnamed, has been in the idea stage for months. I had the idea, I knew what I wanted to do, yet I couldn’t seem to get started on it. Then I read a blog post from a site I visit regularly about productivity. Here’s the link: http://fineartviews.com/blog/19916/how-to-be-more-productive-part-2

Basically the point is that it’s OK to switch between multiple tasks in your life as an artist, because the artist is usually wearing many hats, from creating art, to marketing, to preparing exhibit submissions, to photography or framing, to writing a blog post, and so on–you get the idea. I always felt it was somehow cheating if you didn’t start one task and finish it before starting another, but I’ve discovered that’s not the way I work best.

In order to get started on this piece, I began cutting strips for something completely different. That’s important work to get done, but it’s fairly mindless, so I was free to think about my other project. After being in the studio cutting for a few hours, the idea I really wanted to work on began to crystallize and I was able to put the other work aside to start putting it together. I made the initial improvisational block and it went well, but then something happened.  For a piece like this one, I have a basic idea of what I want to convey, but once I start working a dialogue starts between me and the design that sometimes ends up going off in another direction from my initial plan. When that happens, I need to walk away from it a bit and do something else–like write a blog post, maybe. I realized that I need to make two or three additional improv blocks and that I want to use the green solid as a background, but I don’t have enough of it, so it must be ordered and I’ll have to wait until it arrives to proceed. That’s a good time to take a couple of recently finished small pieces to the framer’s to be mounted on stretcher bars.

So I’ve gotten a start on two new pieces, I’ve written a blog post, and I’ve taken two pieces to the framer’s, all because I was procrastinating on getting started on the first idea.  That’s not a bad set of accomplishments. Thanks to Luann Udell and FineArtViews.com for the inspiration!

What do you do when you’re stuck?

“Beach House” is another new piece I’ve finished just in time for summer. I tried something different with the improvisational piecing for this one, creating just one band of color set against a yellow and orange background. When it was finished, a small house shape appeared almost in the center–a blue body with a green roof. So I quilted a pebble and wave motif in the lower portion which reminded me of sand and ocean, and a wind or cloud motif in the upper portion. The whole composition reminded me of a great day at the beach–thus the name. If you double-click on the image at right you will be able to see the quilting details.

This piece was actually inspired by my previous work with Color Blocks–see Amber Harvest and Jazz Rhythms on my website. “Jazz” was the first piece and it is designed with a very busy combination of seemingly random improvisational blocks tied together with wonky stripes.  “Harvest” was next and explored the idea of using just one larger improv block set in an asymmetrical style with strong quilting lines. “Beach House” looks at the improv piece as a band, rather than a block. I’m intrigued with the concept of using solid fabrics and experimenting with various quilting lines to give the work character. Looking back at my body of work, my strengths appear to be bold color combinations and an interesting quilting line, so I’ve decided to concentrate on those two areas and see where the road takes me.

If you visit my website at www.cindygrisdela.com I’ve added some new work to the galleries and done some rearranging so the newest work is at the top of the page. Stop by and take a look!