Sharing Art About Town

     I'm in the process of hand quilting these days and taking apart a marionette that I bought in Burma in 1984 to redo her clothes that have slowly disintegrated over the years. I thought it wouldn't be too interesting to show those photos of the puppet redo in the blog, so I decided to take a few photos of art in my town instead and share those with you instead. Our town, DeLand, Florida, has become quite a mecca for sculpture and murals. Here are two of my favorites which are both located in in Chess Park.

A Conversation Over Chess in 1929
by Jill Cannady

This mural was painted by Jill Cannady from her imagination and I love how she captured the lights and shadows and the movements and expressions of the people. Sitting in front of it is a lovely bronze sculpture.

Peace by Joan Baliker

We have sculptures installed all over town but they only stay a year or two and then are replaced by new ones. There is an artist reception to celebrate the installation of the new ones followed by a sculpture walk around the town to introduce them. Peace, however, was so popular, that a movement germinated to purchase her and it succeeded. So she is now a permanent part of DeLand. 

     And here is how my stitching is progressing on The Puppeteer. I decided to do some echo quilting in the top right section in a thread the same color as the background.

partially quilted

It's difficult to see from the photo, but the quilting is helping the layers to lay flat. Since I used scrim for the background fabric and it has so much texture, the quilting stitches don't add much texture, themselves, like quilting usually does so the quilting won't be much of a feature. It will serve mostly for structure in this piece.

     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Does Life Ever Settle Down?

     Is it a good thing if life settles down? I'm not sure that it is. Then, it might get too boring. I've neglected my blog lately because I got called back to my home town suddenly for not such a good thing that I won't go into here. Life got interrupted (or maybe I should say plans got interrupted).  But in the process, old relationships got refreshed and renewed and old places got revisited. So, in the end, the trip was a blessing.
     When I got back home, I had a birthday. My husband usually never knows what to get me for gifts so I started a wish list on Amazon to make it easier for him. I started the list a long time ago and forgot about it so when I unwrapped the gifts, I was genuinely surprised. He got my this travel sized water color kit which is perfect for my Tuesdays when I get together with friends in the coffee shop or parks to sketch and paint. It is also perfect for on airplanes. Koi Watercolors and Brush

Watercolor set with Opus playing with brush

The brush unscrews to fill with water so that you don't need to carry water with you. And the plastic palette can be attached to the top, bottom, left, or right side. Pretty Cool!

The box 

And then, for inspiration, he also gave me this wonderful book written by Martha Sielman. Masters: Art Quilts Volume 1 (I already have Volume 2).

Wonderful book

     Once home, I met with my group ArtsEtc and showed them the small quilt I had begun but didn't know how to finish. The group consensus was that the figure of the girl wasn't showing up enough and to fix that I needed to mask the dark blue rectangle a little. Also, I needed to add some more blue to the right and frame it in blue. Here it is, with the changes. I put a white sheer on top of the blue rectangle, sewed on blue edges, and added a small blue rectangle to the right. I also painted the girl to make her darker. Then I added batting and made a pillowcase finish. Now I need to do some hand quilting to finish it off.

before

The Puppeteer

So the ups and downs of life keep us on our toes. The downs tend to dampen the creative spirit and make us wonder why but by wondering and questioning I think it leads us to new pathways and discoveries and new adventures. It's a good thing to not settle down... at least not for me.
I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.