Gayle A. Pritchard's Blog, page 9

The months seem to be flying by already this year. The c...

The months seem to be flying by already this year. The calendar says it's late April already, and yet, as I look outside today, the trees on the horizon have not yet achieved their lime green spring glow. The weather is cold and rainy. Only the daffodils know it is spring.

Detail of I Hear Voices In My Head by Gayle Pritchard

I have been accomplishing a lot in the studio as of late, and at least spring activity, bringing me out and about, is heating up.
I had a great time when I made my presentation to the East Cuyahoga Genealogical Society last month. Tomorrow night, I will be presenting a lecture and book signing for the Willoughby Hills Quilt Guild. On May 19th, I will be in Medina for a lecture at the public library, and June 23 at the Akron Art Museum. I am so pleased that interest in my book continues, and love having the opportunity to speak with large groups about the amazing treasure trove of fiber art that exists in Ohio.

The struggle of balancing paper work and household responsibilities with studio time continues. Luckily, I still have the energy to work 14 hour days! Have a great week, and hope to see some of you at my upcoming lectures.

The Art of Collage Opening, Part Deux

I wanted to post the rest of the pix I have from opening night of Piecing It All Together: The Art of Collage. As at most openings, pictures standing in front your own artwork is a prerequisite : ) As I mentioned previously, there were a lot of artists represented in the exhibit, and a lot of great work. Hope you enjoy seeing a few more pieces here.
Me, standing in front of one of my larger pieces, Beauty Queen. On the wall to my left are works from Opie and Linda O'Brien, one called Sorry, and, above that, Unlock the Magic.

Two black and white collages by Jeff Kallet, being studied. These were very interesting, and almost assemblage in their dimension.

I love the stitched details in Shirley Ende Saxe's work.

More typical of Gail's work historically, here is This is What a Feminist Looks Like

These two collages, Her Cocoon, by Shirley Ende-Saxe, and Aujourd by Jeff Kallet, complement each other perfectly, and are both warrant study.

Hope you enjoyed your vicarious visit to the exhibition. Now, get back to work : )

I am honored to be presenting a program about the long a...

I am honored to be presenting a program about the long and illustrious history of Ohio quilts this evening. Hope to see you there : )

Art of Collage Exhibit Opening: Crowded and Fun

Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage exhibition opening was last night, and it felt like old home week for me. It always fun to see old friends, but even more fun to be in an exhibition together. If you are an artist, you know how isolating it can be to stay in your studio all the time, working. Heading out to see an art show gets you out of your own head, and exposes you to new work being created, alone, by other artists who have been in their studios. Very invigorating!

It was serendipity that this photo could catch the four of us standing in a spot where all of our work happened to be hung side by side. Gail Crum, Gayle Pritchard, Linda and Opie O'Brien, all old friends.
As often happens at openings, I never get a chance to spend a lot of time talking with everyone I want to chat with. This opening was crowded, always a good sign, and several artworks sold right away. I am posting lots of pictures from the show, but didn't get a chance to talk to all of the makers. I hope you will enjoy your vicarious visit anyway.

Nitro by Jeff Kallet, left and French Rope Dancers by Linda and Opie O'Brien, right

The Coronation of the Infant Antonym by Shirley Ende-Saxe

Bridget and her staff did an amazing job hanging the show, and displaying the various forms of artwork. Here, her daughters served as docents for my collage book, For Sadie Jane. Both daughters took turns, and seemed to delight in turning the pages for visitors to the opening.

I love the fact that, regardless of whether or not they ever become artists, these two young women will always love and appreciate art, thanks to their life-long exposure to art and art-makers. Hurrah!

Pieces by Jeff Kallet, Opie and Linda and Gail Crum looked great hung together. Sorry my flash blew out the beauty of Bliss, the piece top center.

Here are the two collages I wrote about finishing the past few weeks here on my blog. I loved how they looked hung with Martha Germano's piece. The butterscotch wall color is an exact match to my dining room color.

That's all for now. I have more pix to post in a few days. If you live in or are soon visiting Northeastern Ohio, stop by the gallery to see the show in person. You won't regret it. Work from all of these terrific artists is included: Clare Murray Adams, Gretchen Bierbaum, Suzette F. Cohen, Gail Crum, Shirley Ende-Saxe, Martha L. Germano, Mel Grunau, Kathleen Harrington, Susan Jacobs, Jeff Kallet, Kim Mettee, Linda and Opie O'Brien, Gayle Pritchard, Joan Rusek and Patricia Schroeder. Each artist has at least half a dozen artworks on display. You are sure to see something you love.

Oh, and thanks for driving me to the show, my sweet husband, for stopping to pick up fellow artist Lois, and for collaborating with me on two of the artworks I displayed. xxoo

The Art of Collage Opening

Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage opens Friday night, April 1 at the Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I will have seven artworks on exhibition. This is a curated, invitational exhibition with several wonderful artists included: Clare Murray Adams, Linda and Opie O'Brien, Jeff Kallet, Gretchen Bierbaum and Gail Crum, among others. Hope you can make it! For those of you long-distance exhibition gawkers, I will post pictures after the opening. I can't wait!

Getting ready for the exhibition, as mentioned in previous posts, inspired me to finish some new work. On the day I delivered my artwork, as I was gathering up and packaging my work, I spied an unfinished work I had begun a few months ago.

My piece on the postcard here, I Hear Voices, was made about my husband, and was inspired by one of his songs. The piece utilizes the song lyrics, and imagery from his childhood. The unfinished work I pulled out last week, and shown below, was a small collage I made after I Hear Voices. It is also about my husband, and uses the song lyric Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Now I just need to complete the assemblage. Here it is still in progress.

This is just a quick snapshot (and not a very good one!), taken to capture my instantaneous idea as I pulled the rest of my art together to deliver to the show. I'm excited to finish it. Step one, always my way of beginning, is to write the story on the background. I will do that while adding paint and drawings, then begin the assembly process. More to come!

Handmadeology Top 10 Vote: I'm nominated, so vote today

Just a quick note to those of you who read my blog, like my work, and have time to vote for me.
My art quilt, Prayers for the Dead, is nominated in the Handmadeology Top 10 list for Art on etsy today. Click the link to vote for me today, and thanks : )

I love this piece; it was a very meaningful one for me in a meaningful series:

Mounting Collages to Stretched Canvas

In my last post, I showed how I prepped my fiber collages for display, in this case, stitching them onto some beautiful paper. The reason for that step is twofold: first of all, I knew I was going to adhere the paper to a pre-stretched canvas, and I didn't want the acrylic medium to touch the collages directly. Secondly, I wanted the mounting process to be reversible, something I learned from my framer. Sometimes, I stitch the collage directly on the canvas, if the stretcher bars are not in the way. I did that with my collage By the Numbers, shown in progress below:

Gayle Pritchard's By the Numbers, in progress  In the case of By the Numbers, the pre-stretched canvas was larger, although I still had some difficulty stitching and embellishing along the edges.

For my current pieces, I am adhering them to two upcycled pre-stretched canvases that I found in a discount store. I used acrylic gel medium applied directly to the canvas, and stretched and smoothed the paper over the top, as shown in the photos below.




Adding gel medium to an upcycled pre-stretched canvas 
Each edge and the back stretcher bar are coated with gel medium, then the paper stretched in place. This works with fabric, too!

I miter the corners as I go, using very sharp scissors.

I trimmed around the existing hanging hardware along the top, then separately wired the piece for hanging after it dried. All done! Here, I am drying the mounted collage overnight. The rubber bands hold it tight, while the scrap paper inserts protect the edges of the collage and paper from the rubber bands. I had one other piece to prepare, and now I am ready to wrap and drop off my work at the gallery tomorrow. Hurrah! Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage opens in Chagrin Falls on April 1st, and will be on display at the Valley Art Center until May 19.

The Art of Collage

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the collages I was finishing up. Today I thought I would show you some of the steps involved in preparing for the final presentation of a few of my collages. As serendipity would have it, shortly after my blog post, I received an invitation to exhibit a number of my artworks in Piecing it All Together: The Art of Collage. The show opens on April 1st, so I am pleased to have some brand new pieces to add to the ones the curator selected from my website.

My now beat up travel portfolio, on the far left Those of you who know me or who have studied with me know that I never go anywhere without a journal or one of my collage travel portfolio. In the little square portfolio shown here, I keep collage papers and the like, but also squares of canvas,  matboard and other materials, all the same size. They fit neatly in the back of the portfolio, and provide a ready-made working surface for a small, quick work when I'm on the road.

That is exactly where these new collages came from: the back of my travel portfolio. These are two same-sized pieces of raw canvas which I have built collages on the surface of, beginning with journal writing. That was covered with drawing and image transfers, then layers of sheers fabrics and papers, even metal screening, were added on top. I want to mount them onto pre-stretched canvas, but first I have cut some beautiful unryu paper to stitch them onto.

This wonderful paper has just the right amount of body for stitching.I love the weight and body of this paper! It provides a great working surface, and here, a nice background. It is also easier to sew through than pre-stretched canvas. Before I stitch the second collage down, I need to remove the edges of the Tear-away on the back of the collage. I am also never without Tear-away. I use it as a background for most everything I do, including wall pieces I am designing. If I am making a quilt, I remove it prior to hand stitching, but for these collages, it provides something to hold on to while stitching.
 I am trimming the Tear-Away from the collage on the left, prior to stitching it onto that beautiful blue paper.So....tonight I will finish stitching the second collage in place. Later in the week, I will show you how I attached it to the canvas.

The Passing of a Legend

  Tom's Quilt by Jean Ray Laury, from 1956

This past week, we lost a quilting pioneer, Jean Ray Laury. I invite you to read Karen Alexander's blog tribute to her life and work. You can see it here: http://thequiltershalloffame.blogspot.com/2011/03/passing-of-jean-ray-laury.html

Although my book is about Ohio's art quilt pioneers, Jean Ray Laury, from California, had to be mentioned. Working in her quirky style as early as the 1950s, she was also an early writer of books and articles, which were few and far between in those days. She will be missed.

Uncommon Threads: Relevant

 My book on display in Athens, Ohio  I was honored to appear on the Diane Rehm show  live in Washington, D.C. One sister-in-law came with me, we stayed with another sister-in-law, and I got to visit my half brother right before he passed away.I was invited to present a lecture on my book last night, one program of half a dozen on my schedule for this spring. When Uncommon Threads: Ohio's Art Quilt Revolution came out five years ago, I never dreamed that there would still be so much interest in the story of the contribution Ohio artists made to the emergence and evolution of the art quilt.
 At the local Barnes and Noble bookstore, my tArty artist group friends all came out to support me. The fabulous Susan Shie , part of my tArts group, was one of the artists featured in my book.  re-read my book yesterday in preparation for my lecture, and when I was finished I thought, "I am so glad I wrote this book." If I hadn't written it, I would want to read it. I am so glad I wrote it, so privileged to tell the story of the amazing artists I interviewed, and happy that I put in writing the revolution that occurred right here in Ohio back in the day. In Cincinnati, after a radio interview, I arrived to a large crowd, and was happy to see some friendly faces in the audience, such as old friends Susan and Dave Voegtly and David Walker , also featured in my book.  I must admit it bothers me that new practioners in my field do not seem familiar with the pioneers in their chosen art medium. I look at the magazines out there today, what still exists in our new media world, and I wonder if many of the young artists featured are aware that what they are doing has already been created? I wonder if they have done their homework, have studied what came before as artists should do?
 At the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., I actually got to speak at one of my favorite museums. Of all the lectures I have given, this audience had the best questions.
The famous Malaprops bookstore in Asheville, NC was the last stop on a swing of several book signings from Cleveland to Dayton to Quilt National, the Kennedy Museum and several others. Bonus: I got to visit my daughter , and one of the artists in my book, Jane Reeves .
Back home, a lecture for the Textile Art Alliance , a fabulous organization focused on the fiber arts.