Adventures in Lancaster

Yesterday, the Laundry King, my sister-in-law, her husband and I ventured out onto the Pennsylvanian Turnpike in the 1997 Buick, aka the land yacht or moving sofa. Destination Lancaster County.

First stop was Hershey, home of chocolate kisses and other sweet things. Even the street lamps are shaped like chocolate kisses:

The free tour was a hoot - just the right amount of factual information about how chocolate is produced combined with singing cows with fluttering eyelashes.

I was on the lookout for things blue and white with a dash of black for the next Twelve by Twelve colourplay challenge and found a matching cadillac in the Antique Automobile Museum:

We didn’t stop for lunch so were looking forward to some refreshments and dinner when we checked into our hotel, a fairly substantial establishment ten miles out of Lancaster. Imagine our surprise when we entered the foyer at 5pm to find an envelope with our keys and a message to let ourselves in. Aside from a handful of guests, who we did not sight until much later in the evening, we had the entire place to ourselves. We decided to make ourselves at home. Our driver, in particular, needed rehydrating and declared the bar open. I’d show pictures but they might be incriminating…

Christmas Preparations

Whenever we arrive at my mother-in-law’s place in Pittsburgh, she presents us with a lengthy “to do” list and is astonished at how quickly we cross things off. We also had a list of our own. At the top was to get a Christmas tree. Mimi always protests that she has an artificial tree that would be perfectly adequate but secretly she loves the real thing and to see it tall and trimmed in her living room. Next on the list was grocery shopping. In this Italian household it is catastrophic if the holidays are not accompanied by food and lots of it.

We bundled up Mimi in her wheelchair and whisked her off to the markets in the Strip District. Of course half of Pittsburgh had the same idea but, aside from the hour+ “take a number” line for the cheese counter at Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, it didn’t take us too long to gather our provisions. So my sister-in-law and I checked out the Contemporary Craft Gallery and really enjoyed these metal cabinets by Jim Rose that were apparently inspired by the quilts of Gees Bend.

Jet Puffed

Jet puffed - this could describe what happens to us after several weeks in America enjoying festive fare and warm hospitality. Check out the ingredients in Fantasy Fudge that I made with Jen this afternoon - jet puffed marshmallow creme? Only in America!

Colorado Colours

As you will have noticed, I like to take photos especially when I travel. Even if the resulting photos are not great compositions, a camera is a great tool for capturing shapes, mood and colour. Over on Art and Quilts, cogitations thereon, Elizabeth has an interesting post showing how you can use your computer to reduce the resolution on your photos as to distil the basic colours and the proportions that they are used.

I went through a similar exercise (but without the aid of a computer) when creating one of my few hexagon quilts as part of my online City & Guilds course:

This weekend I will be back in Denver, Colorado. Let’s see if the winter colours yield new inspiration.

Aquatic Inspiration

After weeks of “thinking pink”, I was naturally drawn to this unusual anenome at the aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences yesterday:

but I found some blue and white (with a dash of black) jellies too. This is the new challenge palette for Twelve by Twelve:

You can’t got past some colour combinations found in nature. For example, yellow and blue:

Visions of Pink

While others may have visions of the Sugar Plum Fairy after watching The Nutcracker ballet, yesterday our attention was firmly focussed on the mice as the Laundry King’s granddaughter (all of 4 1/2 years of age!) scurried backwards and forwards across the stage and battled with the soldiers:

Yesterday was also 12/12 (the 12th of December) in the United States bringing with it the unveiling of the Pink quilts in the inaugural “colour play” challenge by the Twelve by Twelve Collaborative Art Quilt project:

Dripping in diamonds

As soon as Diane announced pink as the first palette for the new Twelve by Twelve Colourplay challenge, I knew that I wanted to focus on pink diamonds that are found in the Argyle mine in Western Australia. Here’s a detail from my piece:
Check out the Twelve by Twelve blog to see the complete piece and the pink contributions from the other Twelves. (The Twelve by Twelve website will be updated when I next have access to broadband.)

Caren Lorber Assemblages

Caren Lorber is another artist at the California Street studios where I visited Joe Cunningham earlier this week. Caren makes fun, whimsical and quirky assemblages that you can view in her website gallery. I particularly enjoyed some of her “Girls” works that were hanging in the gallery.

Amish Abstractions & other quilty distractions

On another of our cross-city hikes, the Laundry King and I took in the current exhibition at the De Young fine arts museum in San Francisco: Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown. The exhibition runs until 6 June 2010 and features approximately 48 quilts dating from the 1880s to the 1940s that have been made in Amish communities in Pennsylvania and the Midwest.

As you can see from the promo image, the collection includes a spectacular feathered star with a nine-patch border that looks remarkably like 21st century pixels. Other pieces featured classic patterns such as Center Diamond, Bars, and Sunshine and Shadow. Roman Stripe, Ocean Waves, Bowtie, and Tumbling Blocks. I was especially moved to see several crib quilts. Exhibitions often display large quilts but there was something poignant about these smaller pieces designed to keep babies snug and warm.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 128 page, hardcover catalogue which includes essays by contributions by three quilt experts: Joe Cunningham, a well-known quilt artist, author, and lecturer; Robert Shaw, a former curator at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont; and Janneken Smucker, a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware specializing in quilts from the Amish and Mennonite traditions. Needless to say, my suitcase is now a little heavier.

I confess that I had never heard of Joe Cunningham and only stumbled across his blog when I was trying to find out what happened with my favourite SFO quilt store (Black Cat Quilts) which is no more. Anyway, when I read one of Joe’s blog posts ahead of the Amish Abstractions exhibition, I left a comment and that turned into an e-mail exchange and an invitation to meet up his studio during my current visit. What a treat!

Joe shared a selection of quilts that incorporate wonderfully expressive lines made out of bias. You can see some of them in his online gallery including Bend in the River which features freeform Baptist fan hand quilting. Joe embraces the blanket origins of quilts and prefers to work on a “human scale” so that his quilts can wrap a person. His studio is big enough to store these larger works hanging but, despite this space, I was intrigued by the absence of any design wall (he prefers to work horizontally and, indeed, not to know what the final piece is going to look like!)

Anyway, more than two hours passed very quickly and Joe was very generous with his time and insights. He also gave me a gift of a copy of his Joe the Quilter musical DVD and one of his Sunrays quilt kits.

The quilt kit has 7 yards of fabric, acrylic templates and comprehensive instructions to make a queen size quilt and Joe mentioned that he will be reducing the price from $89.95 to $49.95 (plus shipping and handling). Contact Joe for more details.

See what can happen when you leave a comment on someone’s blog!

Visiting with Joe the Quilter

Yesterday the Laundry King and I separated - a strategy I heartily recommend when you are travelling and otherwise in each other’s company 24/7. He went shopping and met up with some former work colleagues for lunch and I caught the 1 California bus to vist Joe the Quilter at his lower Pacific Heights studio.

I’ll write more about the visit when I next have access to broadband. Today I’m off to the de Young to take in the Amish Abstractions quilt exhibition (for which Joe wrote a catalogue essay). A feast for the eyes I’m sure!