1. NudeHoldingAFlower_TheMET(1), 2. inside1, 3. Love Letters to a Sailor (detail), 4. For Purple Mountain Majesties

Unrelated photos today - picked purely because I love their colour. 

This week, it's all about research...




Because sometimes, you have to read and study the oddest things before you can make a quilt...

If I quilt fast enough, does it count as aerobics?

I'm still working on my magnum opus, but I'm not done yet.  I'll show you the same sneek peak I showed when I first began working on the quilt because I'm not willing to show you anymore!




But watch this space!


P.S.  Yay Canada!

:)

I'm a INFJ - some of you will know what that means, some of you won't.  It's short hand for "I like people, but I prefer to not be around them."  *laughs*

I do like people, I'm gregarious and outgoing, but what feeds that is alone time, and LOTS of it. 

So, because I like people, I'm a joiner.  I like being a part of something bigger than myself, but once I'm in, I don't like it, because there's, you know - people, and they want stuff from you, but even worse, they expect stuff from you, and what if you can't (cuz you probably can't!) meet their expectations??!??   *eep* 



Given my druthers, I'd really much rather be with a book in a forest glade with nothing around me but the wind soughing through the trees, or better yet - in my sewing room, deep inside my head.

So, when 3 Creative Studios offered a quilt challenge, it seemed tailor-made for me. I get to participate in a group, but there aren't any real demands on me, other than a timetable that I can fudge a bit, because no one's actually waiting for me to show up with a product. Hurray! And, there's a challenge portion of the game - somethng that will help me grow.

In real life, it didn't work that way.  *s*  I became so intimidated at the idea of producing something that I would have to show to other quilters, some of whom were artists, that I froze. 





Our first challenge was to produce, by the end of February, a quilt on the theme "puzzle". I was stumped. I mean everyone knows what a “puzzle” is – and I didn’t want to do that - i.e. no jigsaws, no rubiks cubes, no labyrinths with a Minotaur hiding somewhere… (well actually, I'd love to do a labyrinth with a Minotaur hiding in it, I just don't have the skill to produce such a thing yet!) So, I was trying to think of something that would connote “puzzle” without being too literal. And I came up with... bupkus. *le sigh*



I'm looking forward to the next challenge!



*When BSP and I married, I had two cats, and BSP had two, one of whom passed away.  We later fostered two four week old kittens, and then couldn't bear to give them up, so ended up with FIVE cats.   The craziest thing about that is not that we have five cats, but that we're DOG people.  But that's a whole other story.  ;)

Is not the one pictured below.  *s*

I am continuing work on "A Sparrow in the Rain".  I had hoped it would be ready for a reveal today, but I had to spend hours yesterday unpicking a portion that I had quilted.  It was beautiful quilting (even if I do say so myself !) - along the lines of my previous "magnum opus" (pictured here)


but it just didn't suit this quilt.  While unpicking it however, I came up with the perfect quilting pattern for another quilt top I've had made for a few months.  I just couldn't figure out how to quilt it.  Now I know.  (Sometimes mistakes are good.)

I also spent some time making the whole darn family pajamas on Saturday.  BSP requested a pair, and then I made myself a pair  (the top is too big, but I'm hoping it will shirnk down ).  When I modelled it for BSP I also wore my "domestic goddess" rubber gloves [complete with "diamond" accents], announcing upon my arrival in our bedroom that I was in my "evening wear". *hee*

Mimesis



1. TheTerrace_TheMET (27), 2. TheValleyoftheNervia_TheMET(1), 3. The Forest at Pontaubert, 1881, 4. Dover Fantasy3

Back in my undergrad days, in my first year classical English lit class we studied Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn.  The discussion about the poem was wide ranging, but strangely, a couple of throw away comments the Professor made - in total - four or five sentences, are the things I remember most clearly  - the way he looked framed against the pale winter light, the clothes he wore, even the sweater another student he was engaged with was wearing.

He said something like "The poem is an example of 'mimesis'* and is also ut pictura poesis  - poetry inspired by art." 

From there, the conversation was wide ranging as we discussed themes, but over the years, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about mimesis (the imitative representation of nature or human behaviour) - in fact I couldn't begin to tell you how often I have turned these two concepts over and over  - in circumstances where one might expect it (visting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example); or in more prosaic circumstances - staring out the window of the streetcar as I go to work.

The idea that ALL art is a representation of nature or human behaviour is arguable of course (but it is one I agree with); but what fascinates me constantly is how many different kinds of ways we find to make those represenations.

And I often think that quilts - not only "art" quilts, but even the humble Sunbonnet Sues or the sunflower quilt that someone tried to commission from me recently - are yet another form of mimesis.

There's no question that the quilt I'm working on now is the most direct translation of mimesis in quilts that I have yet to make (more on that when I make the reveal.)

But what I have spent a suprisingly vast amount of time thinking about in those intervening years is whether ut pictura poesis might not be broadened to include any art form, inspired by another art form. Because when I look at these paintings: all I can think of is how I would interpret them in quilt form As an imitation of an imitation, it's a poor form of mimesis; but it may very well be ut pictura poesis.

If you would indulge me in the pleasant fiction that a "poem" can also be  - a quilt.