Talking about Tracks

 I know that I have spoken about this series of quilts before and showed you some of them too. I need to reflect on them and why they have been a part of my life for a few years and the progress I have made following them. I am showing you some of them in the progression of the series. As most of you probably know I went off to Ballarat  Fibre Arts event in July 2016 for a 5 day workshop with Lisa Call called Working In a Series.  Feeling I knew very little about Art and thought I knew a bit about quilting, gave me the courage to sign up for this workshop. Imagine my trepidation on arrival to find out some of the other class members were some very well known Australian Quilting tutors, one of them commented that this was a class where the tutors go to learn from a well known international tutor and that was why she was there. I had started this work in October 2015 after I had signed up for the course, wanting to be prepared for it but not really understanding what I was doing. I had seen a project by Odile Texier in a book and I was fascinated by that, so I thought I could use that technique and make quilts full of personal meaning to me. By the time July came around I think I had made at least 4 of these as my potential series for the class. I think it was about day 2 of the class that I plucked up the courage to actually show Lisa  the quilts that I had with me, that I had made beforehand as the feelings of trepidation had lessened a bit by then.  In the class I was working on landscapes inspired by a photo of storm clouds over Longreach and we were working on adding movement to that photo. Mind you the small pieces I made then are still unquilted.

  

This is Tracks 1- New Zealand, I spent a week in NZ North Island with my husband and son ( as a 4 month old) in 1990. The colours just remind me of the place. In 2020, we went back ( not with the now 30 yr old son though) to the South Island and we were hoping to hop over the Tasman again last July to spend a weekend in the snow but Covid came along preventing us from travelling. Imagine us Queenslanders used to shorts/thongs and very little winter gear spending time in the snow!

Design wise, this has a 2 way curved flip ( I can't think of a better way to describe it) creating the horizon. The view is abstracted by the use of the contrasting colours as if you are viewing the world through a shuttered window.

This is Tracks 2- Africa. This is how I imagine the sunsets in Africa to be. Maybe one day I might be fortunate to travel there to see it for myself. I had always dreamed of going there to work for a few months helping out with malaria diagnoses but at present and firmly stuck in my job here in Australia.

Design wise- similar to tracks 1 but I quilted this one more heavily.

This is Tracks 3- Pt Vernon Beach. I spent quite a few childhood holidays ( actually the best time spent with cousins and grandparents ) at a tiny house in Long St, Pt Vernon, Hervey Bay. This was  where my grandmother taught me how to sew, mend clothes, crochet and also knit a bit. She made endless bed coverings from scraps from her gingham stuffed toys she made for all of us 14 grandchildren. It was her principles of making do that instilled in my sister and I a love for patchwork, quilting. Every day included a trip to the beach ( unless it was pouring rain) and I can remember sobbing in the back of the car when it was time to go home to go back to school.

Design wise- similar to 1 and 2 but I tried to create the horizon between the water and the sky.

This is Tracks 5- Mount Perry. Again this was a special place, I moved there when I got married and raised our 3 children there in the hilly country. I must admit it was also sometimes green but quite often was in drought.

Design wise- I have added sets of the flips to create an image of mountains.

This is Tracks 7- Mundubbera. My home town and growing up on a citrus orchard , a quilt about that had to be made. This time I used the colours, and the single straight row to represent the many straight rows of trees to be found in the Mundubbera area.

This is Tracks 12- Desert Skies. My first job as a Medical Scientist outside of the Brisbane area was as a country reliever. I was rapidly sent to Charleville  on Boxing Day 1980 as they had a staffing crisis. I spent 3 months out there and had a great time. The heat there was pretty fierce and I was still hours away from the Simpson Desert, just walking from the Laboratory across to the hospital was hot.

Design wise- I progressed to using 2 different colours for the "blades". 

This is Tracks 13- Sunrise over Vietnam.  A work colleague went off to Vietnam and posted a photo on FB. With his permission I made this quilt from his photo. I have since traveled to Indonesia to make batik fabrics and there are similar sunrises/sunsets there also. 

Design wise, I used straight lines above the horizon with only the tracks evident in the foreground.

This is Tracks 14- Wildflowers,  that is what it was meant to be , but I also think it could be a Canola paddock with the tractor tracks through it. When I think about it, I learnt to drive a tractor when I was 5 yrs old and spent many a day slashing, spraying, picking fruit in the orchard so maybe I should change the title to reflect my farming origins.

Design wise- this was a technologically challenging piece to make as the 2 way flips meet at a central line. 

This is Tracks 15- Artic, this was made as a test piece for a larger project called Visibility. I will do a separate post about it in this series of blogposts. Up to this piece most of the series were medium/dark values relying on the colour, form to create the meaning. This time I changed the values so the blades disappeared. I also did not use a border to create the sense of a never ending vista.

I hope now that I have told my story about theses few pieces you have gained a better understanding of some of them. 

I have spent the first part of the Incubator and Mastermind Course with Lisa Call documenting and making an inventory of my artwork so have been pretty busy but hope to keep this up to finally become a habit.

New Year, New Directions

 A New Year always seems to be full of new beginnings and hopes to change habits and directions. 2020 seemed to be a bad year for the world with this Sars-CoV 2 virus emerging from whatever source it came from. Being in rural Queensland, we haven't been greatly affected with lockdowns, limits on our personal freedoms. My work place has had major changes due to the pandemic with an increase in swab testing, new test procedures on our Genexpert for stat testing to determine whether full Covid isolation occurs for new inpatients and all of this without an increase in staff.

Farm wise, we have proceeded along with better prices for beef cattle due to the easing of the drought with some relief rain but still insufficient to fill all of the water storages in our area and Covid procedures have not greatly affected the farm.

I mentioned I was doing the  Finding Meaning/ Voice course  with Lisa Call from October to January 2021.This coincided with my first solo exhibition in Wondai Regional Art Gallery and I had organised time off from work to prepare for this. It also ended up being quite a stressful time family wise as 2 of our ageing parents had some major health issues in November. I sold 4 pieces at the Gallery during the 4 weeks so that was some good news. I managed to keep up with my assignments for the course and developed a deeper understanding of my art and maybe some new directions to follow. 

The New Year started with the passing of my Father In Law who had just turned 91 at the end of 2020. 

These are photos of 3 of my sold pieces. 

Desert Lace.

Purple Night.

Joyful

During September, along with my daughter I attended an alcohol inks workshop. She has gone onto to create quite a few more. With very limited art tutoring, this is one of my favourite pieces to date. I am thinking in time, maybe a joint exhibition if she continues using them.

The Finding Meaning/Voice course has come to a close, and I signed up for Lisa Call's 6 month Incubator and MasterMind Program. This is a self paced project with accountability check ins,coaching calls and online group support from the other 5 participants. I am really looking forward to working out my project. This mainly involves organising my body of work, finding other places to exhibit my work and making new work. I need to set realistic monthly goals and attempt to stick to them as much as I can. As part of the Finding Meaning course I needed to remake an existing piece with new meaning from the areas we studied which add meaning to your art. The original " Detritus" made as part of the Remnants theme.

This is the remake, still a work in progress, as my stitching time has been limited lately. I was trying to add more of my context into this piece, coming from within, I spend a lot of time peering down a microscope, hence the circular overlays. I am thinking there could be more of this in the future, along with a few more landscapes.

The final assignment was to make a Heart demonstrating your Voice. The Voice I want to try to follow is making art recognizable as your style. This is my  heart using Derwent Intense Blocks on paper. I find these more appealing in a sketchbook than coloured pencils.

The course involves writing, speaking about your art and this is where blogging about it comes in. One of my goals is to increase my blogging and instagram posts so I am thinking more short posts about a specific piece. Well, I can only try. Hope to keep it happening a bit more frequent than I have been. Time will show as always.