Sue Lewis Art

Getting ready to sell items at the Apex Senior Center on Wadsworth, November 2 and 3.  I will have quilts, pillows, fiber bowls and lots more to sell.

This is the title of the next book written by Andra Stanton about artists making art to express extremes of emotions.  I have submitted 3 quilts for her consideration.

Above is “Tracings”, expressing losing my short term memory.  I went for a walk in my neighborhood and became disoriented.  I told myself to just keep walking till something looked familiar.  The quilting here shows some definite meandering and getting nowhere!  It is an expression of fear and loss.

Above is “Solace” as a way of dealing with grief in the loss of a family member.  I have used rice paper, organza, hand-dyed fabric and commercial fabric.  I have melted the organza to symbolize my hope of her survival melting away and leaving holes.

“Grandfather’s Poems” shows regret in not getting to know my grandfather, who was a published poet.  Some of his poems make my cry and I am reminded of simpler times.  I have added some of my own poems to this quilt.  I like to think I am honoring him by creating a poetic quilt!

My art quilt sold.  It has been traveling in New Mexico and I was notified that my quilt was sold.  It’s traveling days are over!

My grandfather wrote the following words about dreams:

“May we have dreams in abundance

Dreams old and new of sweet, vague half-forgotten

memories running backward like milestones along the

road of time.

Dreams of golden promises and supreme triumphs lying

just around the corner.

May the curtain never go down on the quaint

old-fashioned play of fancy until the lights fade out.

Dreams are the vanguard of human progress. They go

before and the world follows.”

John Randolph Stidman

Spent the day visiting the Lincoln Art Center in Fort Collins.  It has a wonderful art quilt exhibit on display currently.  Some very unusual quilts there. Some were displayed on the wall with plexiglass covering them, some 3-dimensional and a couple that we could not figure out how it was made.  Very intresting and lots of wonderful color combinations!  Eye candy and food for thought.  Had lunch at Lucille’s with Carol Eaton.

I have finished quilting “Tracings” , as you can see below:

I have also added painted branches as embellishment.  This was easy to quilt because I just traced all the organic marks left on the fabric by eco dyeing, monoprinting, painting and sun printing.

I have now added a piece of found rust to the branches to update this one a bit.

This shows painted, eco dyed, discharged and sun printed fabric and some hand stitching on a new quilt called “Tracings”.  I quilted it by tracing all the marking made by the paint, salt and leaves applied to the fabric.  Sorry, I did not get a photo yet of the quilting.

In the middle is a Gelli print on black fabric with metallic paint. The pale oval shapes are sun printed money plant disks, which produced a very sharp image.

Here is “Aspen Shadows” in progress.  I need to quilt it and bind it up to finish this one.  Still deciding how to quilt.  I have used flour resist for the packground on canvas, added the aspen trees and further defined the black squiggles with a marker.  I added the black border fabric and used oil paint stix to do the aspen trees on the sides.  Somehow I deleted the full photo when uploading them from my phone, but here is a detail shot.

This is called “Beyond Measures”.  It has an old pattern, a ruler and a measuring tape on it.

Trying out some mixed media ideas. Yes, I found a fork in the road and turned it into a fork in a tree! It is titled “Found: Sustenance”.  The tree is made out of melted Tyvek.

In taking a workshop with Wen Redmond, I had time to make some samples of various techniques, using printed photos.  We printed on different substrates like cotton, canvas, silk, tissue paper, stabilizer and even foil lined tea bag wrappers.  If you are using non-porous surfaces, you need to apply InkAid (digital grounds) to it and let it dry.  We also used molding paste or modeling paste on stabilizer and stamped into it to add texture.  So much fun!  My printer was not working quite right, so I skipped on to creating collages using the small printed samples I got.

The one above had black lava and ceiling glitter added to it.  We printed on organza, linen, Joss paper and cheesecloth.  Loved every minute.  Wen Redmond is fearless and over the top creative!

My quilt called “Ripples on the Rio Grande” is appearing in the book called “Life Along the Rio Grande”.  It is now available at Amazon!  There are 34 other artists with quilts accepted into the exhibit which will travel in New Mexico, Colorado and in Wyoming.