My work has always been about printing, painting and stitching, yet everywhere I go people ask me about my quilting, which is not at all what my work is about.
I am not a quilter. I am an artist who works in mixed media. The quilting has been a distraction, so bye-bye quilting. I've decided that I'm not going to be quilting any of my work this year. Hopefully people will eventually ask me about my art instead of my quilting.
I'm not planning on changing my imagery or my inspiration. Just the finished product. Last week I experimented with attaching new printed/painted/stitched fabric to cradled artists' boards. I really like how it looks, and I've gotten good feedback and suggestions from art friends.
I'm also playing with attaching my work to stretched canvas. I'm not liking it how it looks when attached to the canvas as much as the artists' boards, so I'm going to work on the presentation some more. It might be because of how the fabric attaches to the boards vs the canvas. I don't know. I may decide to only attach my 12 x 12 x 12 pieces to canvas this year, because the first three years of the series are already attached to canvas.
It's not at all obvious that my new work is made of fabric once it's attached to the boards. I'm hoping that maybe I can (finally) get attention from art consultants and some more galleries now that the distraction of quilting is not going to be there.
I am not sure how I'm going to finish my larger work. I have four 24" x 48" pieces that are printed and painted, that are ready for stitching. I am investigating how to exhibit them. I'm considering stretching them on canvas after they're stitched, or maybe just painting matt medium or fabric stiffener on them afterward so they are more like stiff paper. Those are two very different options that need to be thought out.
