Cindy Grisdela ~ art quilter

I’m pleased to announce I’ll be the guest speaker at the Textile Museum’s Rug and Textile Appreciation morning this Saturday, July 24, 2010 from 10:30 AM-12 PM. I’ll bring lots of quilts to show and talk about how I use color and fabric to create eye-catching designs, like Playing With Crayons at right. I always enjoy giving these talks and sharing my work with a new audience. The museum is located at 2320 S. St., NW in Washington, DC and the program is free and open to the public. For more information about the museum, click on the link above. If you’re in the area on Saturday morning, please stop by, I’d love to see you!

Playing With Crayons is one of my favorite pieces, because it is a great example of my fascination with colors and the way they interact. I had the idea to create diagonal bands of color across the surface of the quilt, so I pulled out as many different fabrics as I could in each of the color families and started making wonky log cabin blocks and putting them up on the design wall. It was so much fun to see the design emerge and  the fabrics “talk” to one another. There must be over 100 different fabrics in this piece and it’s quilted in an allover spiral design, which you can see better if you double-click on the image. Crayons is a bright, cheerful design that makes me smile every time I see it. I hope to be able to revisit this design soon in a more muted color scheme to see how it translates in earth tones. What do you think?

I was in Richmond earlier this week taking my son to his college orientation, and visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for an inspiration day.  I’d never been there before, and it was just what I needed to jumpstart my creativity. I  started with the special exhibit “Tiffany: Color and Light,” which was a visual treat, and then moved through the museum to see the other offerings. There were some fine examples of modern painting that really spoke to me, including work by Mark Rothko and Morris Louis. I had my sketchbook with me and whenever an idea struck, I jotted it down so I would have a record for future reference. I have four or five ideas for new work just from this one visit!

I’ve been just showing up in my studio every day this summer and working on several projects, including the color study detail at right, which is my latest. These pieces are great fun, but the progress doesn’t move in a straight line. Often I need to leave the piece for a few days to let the idea percolate in my brain, so I have more than one project in the works and I can switch off between them. For a while, nothing was coming together and I was frustrated, more so because I have a number of shows coming up in the fall and I want to have a good portfolio of new work. But last week, the stars aligned and the inspiration began flowing again–Yippee! I do think that it’s a direct result of persevering and showing up every day that did it–along with a dose of artistic inspiration from the museum.

I’ll be showing my work at the Great Falls Farmer’s Market on Saturday, July 17, from 9 AM – 1 PM. I always enjoy these events–it’s a great opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones, so please stop by and say hello if you’re in the area!

I’m also excited to report that my quilt “Amber Harvest” was chosen as one of two pieces that were put on the Brush Gallery website to advertise the “Art Quilts Lowell 2010″ exhibit. Click on the link and scroll down to the exhibit information for August 11-September 11, 2010.

In honor of summer, I’m working on a new beach scene—tentatively titled “Afternoon at the Beach.” This one has an appliqued adirondack chair in it and I tried a new process to get the image. Although I don’t normally do much applique, I like these beach pieces and they seem to need applique and beads. For this image, I took a picture of an adirondack chair on my back porch and printed it out so I could use it as a guide to draw the simplified image onto interfacing. Then it was a matter of choosing the fabric and using the needle turn method to applique the pieces onto the interfacing. You can see a little bit of the interfacing still showing in the space under the arm on the left. I know it would have been quicker to use a fusible web and eliminate the hand sewing part, but I actually like hand sewing and I don’t care for the stiffness the fusible sometimes adds to the piece. I admire the artistry others get using fusible techniques, but it just doesn’t seem right for my work. I also did a little bit of thread sketching on the back and seat of the chair to add texture. The whole piece is created separately and then appliqued in place onto the design after it’s quilted. That gives me flexibility to move the applique around on the background to find the best place for it to go.

I know you’re thinking that sounds a lot like work and you would be right. That’s one reason I don’t do a lot of applique. But my work is rooted in the traditions of the past, since that’s how I learned my craft–even the contemporary abstract pieces. Fiber art appeals to me because of its tactile nature. I want the work to be dimensional–that’s why I spend so much time on the quilting part. The stitching sinks down into the batting and creates wonderful ridges and lines and shapes in the unstitched areas. Applying the applique and beading to these pieces by hand is all part of the process.

For some reason this photo isn’t as crisp as I would like, but I wanted to share these thoughts and the piece is at the framer’s being mounted onto stretcher bars. When it’s all finished, I’ll show it again.

You can see last year’s beach piece here–it’s called “Sunrise on the Beach” and it has been sold and gone to a new home.