Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A Day At The Museum with Romare Bearden

Yesterday I spent a good part of my day at the Taft Museum (http://www.taftmuseum.org/?page_id=196) in downtown Cincinnati. The Taft's current exhibit is "IMPRESSIONS AND IMPROVISATIONS: The Prints of Romare Bearden". For all you that didn't know Romare Beaden is my absolute favorite artist! I have been very much influenced by his work. My improvisational collage quilts are my interpretation of that influence.

My friend Lynn invited me to go with her to take a class given in conjunction with the exhibit. The class, "Bearden's Collage: An Introduction to Collage Technique", was taught by one of Cincinnati's noted artist Cedric Michael Cox. The class started with a white piece of poster board which we painted to get rid of all the "white". While our boards were drying, Cedric took us on a very educational and informative guided tour of the exhibit. He explained in detail all of Bearden's print making techniques and collage history. After we returned to our class room to begin to work. First we were showed many of the various collages Cedric had created and examples from some of his students. Next we were supplied with various fabrics, trims, papers, magazine images and glue and spent the next hour and a half "collaging" our little hearts out!  Below are a few some photos from the class.

My collage had a orange/red back ground, I stamped a face on green card stock which was my starting point and I just went from there.
My collage, it is a work in progress

                                         

Cedric Michael Cox
Lynn with her collage


Thursday, March 1, 2012

Goal Met - Kinda.....

My quilt " Chillin" has been accepted for inclusion in the first SAQA Ohio art quilt exhibit "Creative Statements: Ohio Art Quilts 2012" at the Zanesville Museum of Art. The exhibit run April 21 - July 6, 2012.
This piece was completed in November of 2011. It is an improvisational collage piece that just came to me. I didn't create it for any particular reason, however it was completed many months before the submission deadline date which was February 7th, therefore it counts as a goal met! Congratulations to me!


Chillin - detail

Chillin