Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Twelves


Good friends are like shooting stars....You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.

When Terry announced this theme, I just knew that I had to do the twelve of us, a remarkable group of artists from around the world. When Diane asked me to be part of this group, I had no idea that I would garner a close group of virtual friends that I love and admire. After 12 challenges, we know a lot about each other. We collaborate well. We work out our differences in a most civilized manner. What can I say, but, I love you all.

I wanted to do 12 little Picasso style portraits of each of us. Life got in my way. I realized that would never happen, this time around. I started thinking of other ways to put us into my art and came up with the idea of a thermofax screen for each person.

Now, I have to ask your permission to use your photo. As there are 3 attorneys among us, I hope I am not in trouble. Anyway, I found photos of the 11 of you and photoshopped them to create black and white images. I will share on my personal blog the mess I created in doing this.

I screened images on to a rainbow of fabrics and cut each into a block and pieced them together. I decided to do some seed stitching around each image and just took a few stitches to tack the faces in place. Here is a detail:

Working on this made me happy because I love the friendship that I have with each of you.

12 comments:

Diane Perin said...

Gerrie! What a fabulous response to this challenge! And I can't believe you pulled this out in one day. It's amazing. Look at all that hand stitching!

The colors are strong and the black ink and repeating faces are so unifying. And of course I recognize all of my cherished Twelves! It's really wonderful.

Karen said...

Gerrie, you and I were thinking alike on this one! This is so great, and I love the colors. What a terrific reminder of our group.

Françoise said...

Wonderful!
I'm off to your blog to see the mess you are talking about.
BTW, of course, you have my permission... but I would love to see the "à la Picasso" version one day!

Terry Grant said...

Well, I am getting quite emotional looking at all these pieces. The faces are wonderful. I think we need to make a small print of this piece for each of us to have as a souvenir of the past two years.

Kristin L said...

This would be a great "logo" for our group. I love seeing all the happy faces of my new friends too. Time may not have been on your side, but I think you made great use of what you had and produced a fun and meaningful piece.

Terri Stegmiller said...

I agree it would make a great logo. This is just great and I can't believe you made it in one day...with all that stitching too. Oh and YES, you have my permission!

Deborah Boschert said...

I love you too Gerrie!

And I love this quilt.

kirsten said...

BIG kisses to you, dear Gerrie! I agree with Kristin. You have made our logo and a beautiful memento of this fantastic experience.
How wonderful!

Brenda said...

With the hints you were dropping in the lead up to the "Identity" reveal, I thought you might be doing an Andy Warholesque portrait piece then but this is an even more appropriate time. What fun!

PS: Can I be lime green when I grow up?

Jeannie said...

Amazing. Even more amazing is how quickly you created it. I love it.

Nikki said...

I think I might cry seeing all of my dear friends in this quilt. I would love to have a print! Thank you Gerrie for capturing the spirit of our wonderful group. And to think you did it all in one day -- I'm in awe!

Unknown said...

now you will all be known worldwide but because Helen has lost so much weight recently I hardly recognised her.!