At a recent Studio Art Quilt Associates Ohio meeting, I was
requested to give my thoughts on the symposium at the Quilt National opening in
late May (held at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio). At long last, here are those thoughts. Please keep in mind that this is my take on
the events of the day, and my recollections have gotten a little fuzzy in the
weeks since the symposium.
Juror’s Panel Discussion
To me, it sounded like the most important criteria that the
jurors were asking themselves was: do they want to come back to the quilt and
look more at it? They were looking for
quilts that hold a viewer’s attention, ones that they would want to revisit
more than once. I imagine that the revisit
factor could come about by different means – how did the artist do something
(technique) or a message the artist wanted to convey.
Another important juror factor was connecting the artist’s
statement about the work to the work itself.
I thought that the jurors were looking at images without any
accompanying information or identification, so this was intriguing to me. Personally, I don’t go for art of any media
that has to be explained to me.
There was an active discussion about the size of works accepted
to Quilt National. The jurors
acknowledge that there were small art quilts that were “little gems,” but for
the venue of the show, they wanted works that took advantage of the spacious
exhibit hall. To me, that still wasn’t a
good reason why small works were consistently absent from Quilt National. Good art is good art, regardless of
size. So, what I took from that
discussion was at least at Quilt National, size matters!
Marvin Fletcher lecture – I skipped his talk, I wanted to
spend more time looking at the show.
Selected Artists’ Panel – Four artists discussed their work
and thoughts on their process, to some extent.
It was sort of interesting to hear their thoughts, but I didn’t really
get anything out of the lectures. I
didn’t take any notes during the panel.
I feel like I should ask myself what I would want to get out of an
artists’ panel discussion, or out of the symposium as a whole.
My overall thoughts on Quilt National:
Innovation is always claimed as a crucial criteria of
acceptance into Quilt National, after viewing this edition of the show, I am
wondering if the art quilt world has reached a plateau on innovation. In my opinion, there were thirteen quilts out
of eighty-four that were strongly influenced by the same artist/instructor. Is that innovation? Yes, those thirteen quilts had strong design
merit, but the overall similarity left me a bit befuddled. This was only my second Quilt National, and I
noticed a couple repeat artists that had very similar works in the show in 2013
and this year. I would expect any
individual artist to continually grow and evolve, not stagnate. There is a difference between having a
distinct, identifiable style and essentially repeating oneself over and over. Yes, the jurors are different each edition of
Quilt National. My point is that some
things are no longer innovative. There
were other repeat entrants that clearly evolved from two years ago, just enough
that it took a while to make the connection between their previous Quilt National
entry and this year’s entry. That’s what
I like to see.
I’m certainly not disappointed that I went. I most enjoyed the camaraderie with art
quilters from around the world, most of whom I did not know. It was refreshing to not have to explain or
defend my chosen art medium. I left the
symposium feeling that I am on the right track with the things I am making, and
I feel like I could hold my own at this level in a short time as I get better
with technique.
