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So I went to Houston, home of the International Quilt Festival ... gathering place of 1500+ quilts, 500-some vendors, and an estimated 55,000 attendees. And with this post, I will certainly begin to make up for the recent dry spell on the blog.
The catalog for the quilt show
was nearly 100 pages, with only the briefest of descriptions such as this synopsis of the special exhibits
This is why I've been daunted by the Houston show in the past. How do you even begin to take in something on this scale? But Judy Martin's post about Mended World drew me in
and the possibility of meeting Glennis Dolce at the Shibori Girl booth sealed the deal.
I took pictures, of course, following the guidelines that they be used only on a personal level with credit to both the artists (to follow) and the festival (see above).
These, then, are the things that prompted me to raise the camera, beginning with Mended World ...
which was close enough to see this ...
And really, I could have just stopped there. But the SAQA exhibit included other quilts that spoke to me ...
and may perhaps speak to you as well, if you follow the directions on the exhibit label (though I have no idea how long these will work) ...
Wandering into another exhibit I found quilts about New Mexico ...
Another exhibit held an array of intriguing digital collages by Wen Redmond, who I later heard speaking in an open lecture ...
A piece in the Silent Auction drew my eye with its hand-dyed cloth ...
that I later connected to the Fiber on a Whim folks in the vendor hall
Their cloth (including linen) is made with commercial dyes, but they look like natural dyes. I resisted temptation and haven't bought any ... yet. They also have a blog which has been added to the Kindred Spirits.
I took a picture of this massive collaborative quilt thinking it was of New Mexico towns that I could decipher later ...
only to discover my error ...
And while there were so many incredible quilts I didn't photograph, there was something about Yoko Saito's that drew me in ...
this one, so incredibly intricate ...
with this description of how it was constructed ...
so different from this more structured take ...
Yep, this is what draws my eye ...
titled, aptly enough ...
A metaphor on more than one level.
This echo of the peace, love and rock and roll of my youth ...
was followed by this echo of my own recent return to activism ...
Then I found a quilt that affirmed the vision I have for my peace shawl project ...
And another that whispered in response to the pennon I am stitching for Mo ...
Seriously
folks, you can't make this stuff up ... I'm blown away as I write this
about how these images spoke to me as they appeared one by one today.
Then there was a renewal of a call I had heard before, but which is now speaking too loudly and clearly to be ignored ...
This is but one ...
of many ...
Until
finally, I returned to where I had begun, just in time to record a
video of the docent speaking about pieces in the SAQA exhibit (this is
not an active link, btw) ...
As I waited for folks to move on so I could get one last picture or two, I took a shot of the piece next to Judy Martin's ...
"Dead letter box" chuckled a voice to my left ...
"Yes, quite literally," I replied quietly (having read the exhibit label earlier) ...
And so I ended the day, standing in awe of a creation ...
but realizing that some small part of it was within my reach ...
