Do You Like A Challenge?

     Do you ever make art as a result of a challenge? One of the things my art group, ArtsEtc, does periodically is set a challenge for ourselves. At our January meeting, we went on a field trip to a local park and we walked and took photos. Our challenge was to make an art piece 8 inches by 8 inches as a result of our inspiration from our visit and our photos. It's due at our March meeting. The park is a really cool place. Not only does it have amazing plants, but also has ruins from a sugar mill, dinosaur sculptures about 10 feet tall, a few cement ponds, some buildings here and there, and lots of pathways. Here are some of the photos I took.

lots of Spanish moss

from the old sugar mill

from the old sugar mill

I like circles and use them a lot in my art so I wanted to incorporate the shape of the bowls somehow and definitely wanted to use green and capture the texture of the Spanish moss. There were also several rusted remains there, too. As I wandered the pathways and took and took my many photos, I immersed myself in the feeling of the place.
     At home, I tried several arrangements of fabrics and in the end I used two of my monoprinted fabrics, a commercial fabric, a sheer that a friend hand dyed, a cotton that I had rusted, a piece of a dryer sheet that I had painted, and some cheesecloth that I had dyed. I even used a car part (I think) that I found in a parking lot a long time ago. The circles I embroidered represent the many pathways and also represent a stack of rocks (which, to me, represents reaching a goal). I embroidered stitches around the rust marks of the washers in the lower left and that also represents pathways. The archway is an open passage to somewhere. The piece is called "Passages".

Passages

     This kind of challenge is a good one for me in that it makes me put together images in a meaningful way. It's a small piece so it doesn't take a lot of time. And perhaps it could lead to a larger, even more meaningful piece in the future. We will probably take another local field trip later this year that will lead to another challenge if the group likes how this one turned out for our members. 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.

Be Happy

I found out today that my second prayer flag quilt was also not accepted into a showing in which I had hoped to be selected. It was for QuiltingArts Magazine's "Text Me" challenge. I'm trying to be upbeat in spite of that. Here is my entry:

Spread Peace 2

You can see similarities and differences between this quilt and Spread Peace 1 quilt (which I still need to change in the area of the monk to make a better design).

I'm very happy with the fabrics that I created for these quilts and will continue to make some quilts with fabrics like them. I feel like I'm onto a worthwhile series. I'm also hoping to make some more quilts with prayer flags as the theme. Once I fix up Spread Peace 1, I'll enter it into another exhibit.
     I must say that I'm not used to getting rejected. When I was a science teacher (which I was for 23 years), I worked hard and strived to be the best teacher I could and my work was always evaluated objectively (as it should be in science). I could therefore know ahead of time if I was performing up to par or not since I knew what the criteria was. But with art, my works are evaluated subjectively (as they should) so I can't tell how I'm doing when I enter a piece into a show or a challenge. I have to get used to that.
And, I think, the bottom line is that I make my art to please me. I hope others like it and I want it to be exhibited (and sold to those who like it), but that isn't my main purpose. I'm very lucky that I'm retired from my other career and now I can pursue a passion just for me.