Year Long Challenge

This challenge was proposed to our small art quilt group, Women of Artistic Vision, by member Kathy Lichtendahl. The plan was to make four quilts over the course of the year. Participants were to choose a noun or concept and represent it in the quilts using different interpretations to communicate the concept or word.

THEMATICAL
Theme - a subject or topic or artistic representation. This was to be the most realistic of the quilts.

My theme word is Baby, since the arrival of my first grandchild has been a most earth shattering event for me. For this piece, I used images of my grandparents, mother, daughters, grandson, nephews and nieces to create this photo collage of babies. All the images in this collage have personal significance for me - including the Alice in Wonderland Duchess at the center. She is to represent me - the reluctant grandmother / babysitter.

ALLEGORICAL
Allegory - A story in which people, things, etc. have a hidden or symbolic meaning.

This piece is not very allegorical, but I did use manipulated images of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of a fetus in the womb to create the screenprint. I screened onto hand dyed organza, which was stitched in place over hand dyed cotton. Then I overscreened in metallics.















CANONICAL
Canon - Any law or decree/ an established rule or principle / a body of rules, principles, criteria.

For this piece, the object was to come up with several rules based on the theme word and then follow those rules in the development of the quilt.

My rules were to use only materials associated with a baby for the construction of the quilt. For this piece, I painted babywipes with yellow and red Setacolor, then overpainted strokes of blue in a style to indicate writing or language.

I call this one Babywipe Grafitti.







COMBINATION
This piece was to be a combination of the three previous concepts.


I decided to use the painted babywipes again, and I decided to stick with the colors orange and blue. Blue to represent the liquid state of the embryonic fluid. Orange to represent the life giving and spiritual force of the mother. The quilting stitches were done in small circles to represent cells. The orange was too bright, so I toned it down by rubbing the surface of the quilt with a copper metallic paint stick.