Weighted and Statements

I posted this unfinished earlier this year. It's now officially done. It's called Weighted. It has a binding. (don't tell...but the binding is not sewn down yet, but I don't do that until it gets into a show because I HATE doing it.) That's my official notice that a quilt is done...I've bound it...Anyway...I don't know if I like it or not...and I don't know what it means either :-). No, that's not true.

Here's a detail...


A couple of people asked me for a statement or more info on the symbols in Portrait of an Ex. My first impulse when people say, but what does it all MEEEEAAAAN is...well...what does it mean to YOU? I guess I look at what I do as communicating with the viewer, and that doesn't mean that what I was thinking when I made it is particularly relevant to the viewer. That said, I do write statements (5 or 6 sentences max) for many of my quilts, but only because those damn shows WANT them. And my recent dilemma was trying to write a statement for a quilt I had finished a year ago, from a drawing I had done 3 years ago, and even I didn't remember what I was thinking when I did it, so I thought about what I was thinking about it now and wrote it from there. I'm trying to be better about keeping a weekly journal of art-related blabbiness (what did I do THIS week). It helps me keep track of what I am (and am not) doing and I have seen progress because of that effort. I guess what the art is...it's a changeable moveable adjustable thing. My ex would see something in this piece. My mom would see something. If you have been through a bad divorce, you would see something. If you haven't, you would see something. None of those are wrong...they are just different (and that may be my philosophy of life right there).

Portrait of an Ex does not yet have a statement, and sitting here staring at it, I'm not sure what I'd write if someone required one. I'm divorced. It was a rough haul. I have two kids. My ex is Welsh (that is the Welsh flag with the dragon on it). That's it. This is one of the divorce quilts. It is one of the quilts that I have not shown to my children...I have been very careful to only work on it when they were in bed, and to photograph it after they went to sleep. They can see it when they're old enough to understand. And I don't know if that's when they're 15 or 50. We'll just have to see.

I do have another couple of quilts I finished this week. One I can't post yet in case it gets into a show. The other one I will post later this week. No really. I will.