Studio Art Quilters Association is having an exhibit titled "I'm Not Crazy" which explores mental health issues. I think the title is offensive but whatever. It is the perspective or someone with mental illness, a caretaker or friend or family member of someone with mental illness. I have a very close friend who is Bipolar and is medicated to have balance in her life. This quilt is my interpretation of being bipolar-one minute she is happy, hyper bouncing off the wall and the next sad, depressed and angered. I used muted sad, dull colors to represent being depressed and, of course, the frustrated facial expression. I used bright colored fabrics with lots of chaos for the manic side's clothing, make up and jewelry. Her hair is out of control and her facial expression shouts "manic." I used lots of desciptive words on both sides of the personality in a subtle way in the background. I purposely went subtle because in society we don't want to talk about mental health issues and they are subtle and quiet in our discussions. I found there is a two sided smiley face which symbolizes Bipolar Disorder and I added it to the quilt in the lower center of the quilt.
This photo is a closeup of the depressed personality.
And this is a photo of the manic personality. She's kind of "out there!" Her expression deminds me of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!!
Cloeup of the Bipolar symbol and a few of the background words.I embellished the manic side with hand made Sculpey clay beads, a beaded earring, rhinestones for pierced earrings, orange lame' in the hair to symbolize being wired, and some fabric paint. The intent was for excess and chaos in hair, make up, clothing and jewelry. The depressed side has a necklace made to buttons made from leather (pretty cool from a quilt show!), a few beads for the necklace and a rhinestone for the nose piercing. Both have a little fabric paint for details.The exhibit aplication is online at SAQA's website the month of May and during the summer we find out if we made the cut then the selected quilts will travel for 2 years to the various Mancuso Quilt Shows.
This quilt is not meant to represent beauty but a social issue. I was thinking of entering it in the local community art show at my library which runs through the summer but I'm not sure if the social issue would offend people. I guess art can do that sometimes...
Well I am having a month of rejections!! I applied for an article in Quilting Arts Magazine and was rejected earlier in June. My piece for the "I'm Not Crazy" for SAQA was not selected. They had 128 entries and only chose 20. I'm very bummed about this one because this subject is very personal to me and I put alot of emotion into that piece. Then I entered the Quilting Arts Magazine's Reader Challenge on Signature Color and there were over 150 entries and only 15 were chosen. I had a blast on this little 8" x 8" project including the beading around the binding. This will be a cute addition to my studio and it makes me smile. I'm just a bit unsure if I want to participate in these things for a while. It seems abstract art is trendy at the moment and representational art is on the back burner. I still love to made art and will continue.
We know it's going to be a great night with some amazing bloggers who love (love!) sewing. But wait... there's more!
I am embracing the Modern Quilt Movement since learning what it meant and am now aware!! I received one of many e-mail notices about a quilt related subject. There was an upcoming block of the month using 16 12" star blocks with a celtic central design, more borders and a purple background. I loved the blocks and after checking to see if it came in any other colorways (black background) I decided to draft my own blocks and use black as the background. When I began I did not really know what I wanted in the center so I just made the blocks. I used the same color scheme as the BOM which was challenging without orange but I still like the colors. The four corner blocks are the same and a bi*%# to make. I did those first. I am not a fan of Thangles and used the easy method of adding 7/8" to the measurement of the finished size to each square to make the many triangles. I found this info free on the internet. This is much easier, cheaper and no paper mess like Thangles!! A few of the blocks had very small piecing and was challenging but it was an enjoyable process. The center is 36" x 36" and I eliminated flowers, leaves, stems etc. because that is too traditional for me. I had used four of these hairstyle silhouettes in another project and added four more and did one in each color I used in the outer blocks.
I have a short spiky, a bob, a pompadour, a ponytail, an updo, an afro poof, a mohawk, and a pageboy for the eight hairstyles. This was fun, fun, fun to design!! I added swirly "pieces of hair" between the silhouettes to fill in the area and added a flower in the middle. I thought about adding more applique such as combs, curlers, etc. but stopped because I didn't want it to be too busy-the positive/negiative space concept!!