Map reveal countdown teaser 1

My map quilt is done and it involves a real street. I wonder if anyone will guess the location from the clues I will give between now and reveal? All the clues are people connected to the street in various ways and I will get more obvious as time goes on!

First South African Photojournalist Sam Nzima

Potholder

Untitled, a photo by Umzavi on Flickr.

The fear of most every art quilter is that our precious artwork be mistaken for a potholder. Looking fear directly in the eye, I've created the potholder look on purpose.

Taking a Detour

You know how when you're traveling, you start out following the map, and then you take one side road and next thing you know, you're somewhere you never expected to be?

Well, on the way to my Map quilt for the May 1 challenge, I stumbled onto a reference to the "Hollywood Freeway Chickens."  That led me to the story of how, back in 1969, a poultry truck overturned on the Hollywood Freeway in Southern California, releasing over 200 live chickens onto the road.  Many escaped and fled into the roadside brush, and took up residence in the bushes growing along a nearby on-ramp.  They were even fed for years by a chicken-loving elderly lady, who sprinkled chicken feed through the chainlink fence so they wouldn't go hungry.

Who knew?

You can read all about them here.  

Moving Along

I'm quietly embroidering away on my towel and things are looking good. I'm taking my time and making sure I am happy with each stitch. It's moving very slowly, but this is the path I chose to take.

As I work, I'm visualizing the route ahead. I like to have a plan, but I also like to allow room to change direction, or allow for serendipity. In general, I'm not one of those quilters who can map everything out on the computer or graph paper and then follow that plan to completion. I get bored when the process doesn't need me. This piece is starting to bore me. Right now I'm thinking two things about this piece: one, it is very stitchy, but not quilty; and two, it's neat and tidy and lacks in emotion (partly due to my tidy stitching).

As I work, I think, and I think that I've come up with solutions to both issues. Normally, I wouldn't care too much about how quilty a piece is or isn't, but since this is an art quilt challenge, I'm going to give it some consideration. Quilting this will be the last step (usually is) and will reference other kitchen items beyond the souvenir tea towel. Adding a spark of personality will happen after the embroidery (not TO the embroidery, for anyone thinking that loosening up the tidy stitching was the answer). It won't have much to do with maps or kitchens. Not too much.

Career Mapping

Maps dominated my fifteen year career as a commercial and regulatory lawyer in the energy and infrastructure sectors. I met my future husband while advising on land title and transmission line easement issues for a proposed power station.  These days we only visit the region to go wine tasting but I can still map out the route and rattle off the names of the affected landowners.

A year long secondment to The Cabinet Office of New South Wales to advise on the rail restructuring involved hours of poring over network diagrams with tracks, turnouts and sidings in far flung places. It was fascinating to visit the rail property headquarters to see original maps in large velum books with copperplate script.  You could breathe colonial Australia in that place.  Did you know that the interstate network was only converted to a standard gauge after World War II. and that signigicant variations in rail gauge still exist across Australia? Crazy but true. I don't drink tea or coffee but this mug with a Sydney rail network diagram circa 1995 is a favourite souvenir of my lawyering days.

Another big project I worked on was the corporatisation of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority. I was closely involved with the transfer of the transmission line assets from the Authority to another government agency.  In a rare, out-of-the-office excursion, I actually spent a day in a helicopter flying along the 60 foot wide easements, landing at various power stations.  These pages will not mean much to you but just looking at them transports me to another time.

When a US client bid for broadcasting transmission towers around Australia, I become acquainted with various country high points with evocative names such as Mt Misery, Mt Warning, Mt Disappointment and Mt Buggery.  My knowledge of Australian geography was further expanded when the same client purchased hundreds of mobile telephone towers around the country. I would go to sleep listing the sites (and their legal issues) in my head like my own professional version of the classic Australian song I've Been Everywhere Man.*

With this rich resource of legal-geographical memories, I have many ideas for this challenge.  However, my quilt ended up going on a quite different tangent in a couple of days of studio time over Easter.  I'm looking forward to 1 May to show you.

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* Lisa Walton made Everywhere inspired by this song and this work features in the Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition that I curated.

looming, LoominG, LOOMING

The next reveal deadline is looming and will be here before I know it.  I'm not ready!!!  The "map" challenge has challenged me this round.  I need to figure out something and quick.

So far I've had two thoughts on the subject.  One, which I believe Karen touched on a bit in an early post, is mind mapping. 

Upon doing a little online research, I even stumbled upon a Mind Mapping blog.  Who knew??!!

And another idea I've been tossing around on this subject is treasure maps.

So I'm really hoping that something hits me soon and then hopefully I can figure out how to execute it. 

Note:  Photos are from Wikipedia.

Strange Maps

 
I just love the Map theme for our current challenge (stay tuned!  Reveal date is May 1!).  My problem this time is that I've always been drawn to maps, have the start of a series of large maps quilts going, and have TOO MANY IDEAS.  Not that I'm complaining -- but settling on one, and sorting out how best to use the 12 x 20 inch format, is proving harder than I thought it would be!

I thought I'd share one of  my favorite interesting map sites:  A blog called Strange Maps.  There are all sorts of cool things there, including the world's largest world atlas, a socket map of the world (so if you are traveling you know what kind of adapter you need), a taxonomy of city blocks, where French artist Armelle Caron deconstructed the maps of various cities to create charts of city blocks by size (and creating fascinating and beautiful patterns), map tattoos ... and more and more and more.

It's definitely interesting and inspirational and gets you thinking about the breadth of what a map is!

Twelve by Twelve Exhibition in Cincinnati

If you are attending the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati next week (12-15 April), be sure to stop by our special exhibit featuring all 288 art quilts from the Theme Series and the Colorplay Series. None of the Twelves can make it in person but we are grateful for sponsorship from the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection that means we can share our project with you "in the cloth".  There is so much more detail and texture to see when you get up close and personal! 

And don't forget that all the quilts from our first series are featured in our book:  Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge.

The Quest

Now that I've decided on a direction for my Maps piece, I need to find an appropriate tea towel to embroider on. I went to one likely store and they had nothing. Too many towels with chickens or olives and not enough plain ones.

Store two had flour sack towels which are exactly what the souvenir towels are printed on, but although authentic, don't exactly "read" as towel. I liked the waffle weave and subtle tan stripes on another towel, but once home and washed the waffle texture became a lot more pronounced. Nice for drying dishes, but too deep for embroidery. My best choice is the green stripe, but I'm not entirely convinced it won;t compete too much with the embroidery.

The next day it dawned on me that my blue checked towels might come in other colors, and sure enough, store three had a set in tan. Now I just need to decide which is towelier, the green stripe or the tan windowpane checks. And even if I decide, there's no guarantee I won't change my mind and switch towels half way through. It's part of my process. I'm also seeing that the lovely cross stitch "Home is Where..." from one of my other artworks, when scaled down is too fiddly. I will need to look for a simpler cross stitch font.

Mapping Tasmania

There's not much sewing happening as I explore with relatives visiting from the United States. First stop, Stewarts Bay lodge near Port Arthur in Tasmania, a very tranquil part of the world that Helen told me about. Now you know too.

Philadelphia

Karen and I attended the Studio Art Quilt Associates conference in Philadelphia last weekend. It's a good thing we snapped this picture because we only ran into each other briefly at a few of the galleries. Not much time to chat... so much art to absorb!

But it was so great to see her. A big hug is such a lovely reminder of the wonderful connections we "twelves" have created over the last several years of working together.

Kristin was in Philly too -- or at least her art work.

This is her War Sucks quilt in the Art Quilt Elements exhibit.

Where I've been, Where I'm going?

My family moves house. Not as much as some, but I think more than most. It's part of being in the military. While the Army often asks us where we'd like to go, when it comes down to it, they make the final decision of where my husband is needed. This makes mapping out future plans a bit difficult. But we've been fortunate enough to live in many very interesting places along the way. Where we've been and where we are going has been the focus of my pondering on the Twelve by Twelve map theme.



Usually, I ask myself if there are any textile references related to a given theme or subject I want to pursue. My first thoughts were of maps printed on the silk linings of some WWII era bomber jackets. According to Wikipedia,

Some jackets had a map of the mission area sewn into the lining, which could be used (in theory) for navigation if shot down. Some jackets (famously, those from the China Burma India Theater, and of the Flying Tigers) had a "Blood chit" sewn on the lining or outer back, printed on cloth, which promised certain rewards to civilians who aided a downed airman.

I liked that a map could signify the future, or a road out of danger. I wrote in my sketchbook that perhaps I could embroider on silk, but have it be a map of an inner journey. What do I want? Where do I want to go? Dead ends? Dangerous or unknown places? Rewarding places?

Then I got to thinking that all of that might be a bit obtuse, and considered souvenir state tea towels like these from the Sundance catalog. If nothing else the size and proportions are much closer to our 20x12" vertical format. Conceptually, this idea would be less "escape route," and more "banal life in general." And I'm OK with that.

So, I set about listing things I could incorporate. Thoughts on moving. Places we've lived. Icons of those places. The sense of criss-crossing the globe. Then I started drawing. With Google Maps to help I made drawings of neighborhoods in which we've lived. With tracing paper, I finessed placements.

My next step will be to transfer my drawing to a plain tea towel and get to embroidering. I'm liking where this is going, and it was fun reminiscing where I've been in the process.

Painted Map

In late 2010, I created this quilt for the Thread Tails and Vapor Trails traveling quilt exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of Naval aviation. Since my husband is a navy pilot and I am an art quilter, of course, I had to enter.

It's titled Orion Odyssey. ("Orion" is the nickname of the P-3 which my husband flew.)

You can see lots more pictures on my blog here.

Below you can see part of the map section of the quilt. You can read about creating that map here.

Creating this quilt was a real struggle. I rearranged, sliced, painted, re-stitched, re-cut, removed, layered and fussed with this quilt way too much. The quilt recently came back to me after more than a year of traveling around the country. I'm glad it have it home -- there are a lot of things I really like about it. (And some I don't.)

The map is one of the things I really like! The gold dots you see in the photo above are actually tiny gold beads that mark all the places Jeff has landed a P-3.

I recently pulled out some of the freezer paper stencils I cut to create the map. After all that work, I couldn't throw the away. Here's Africa.

Here's Europe and Asia. I think North and South America are curled up on the left.

I cut this entire map with an exacto knife. For the quilt, I used the opposite cut-outs which I guess I threw away. I could only find the positive shapes in my stencil files.

I've been thinking about what I'll create for this new map challenge. I'm thinking of cutting more freezer paper stencils. I need to add exacto blades to my shopping list.

I Love New Yorker Maps

I picked up last week's New Yorker and there was another map. The one above is the iconic New Yorker's view of the US which I have always loved. If you google New Yorker cover maps, you can see many of them.

Body Mapping

I've been thinking about maps and body images and came up with a few ideas for our next challenge.  I tried looking up some images to show you on some copyright free sites, but what I want to do is not on any of those sites.  Here's what I found for  brain mapping, which seems more like problem solving.

I tried heart mapping next, and this is what I got, which is really cool, but not what I'm looking for.

Whatever I decide to do, it will be abstract, so I am not worried about copyright infringement, and hopefully it will be a series.