New items @ Blue Jacaranda

I have just added some new items to my Blue Jacaranda shop on Etsy. Apart from the Dutch Houses, the Hippo Calligram is my most popular fabric design at Spoonflower and I finally had it made into a thermofax screen.



The Elephant and Bicycle Calligrams also continue to be favourites on Spoonflower so they are now available as Art Cards as well. Stretched prints will follow soon.



I tried something new - screen printing with three colours ink. It worked very well! I will definitely do that more often.



And last but not least, I have added this art quilt, Art in Motion, to the shop (find it here). Much as I love it, I really do not have enough walls to hang all my quilts in our house!

Back from Adelaide

Yesterday hubby and I came back from our 5-day stay in Adelaide. Together we visited the Art Gallery, the South Australia Museum and the Botanic Gardens, and we went on a wine-tasting tour in the Barossa Valley. On my own, when hubby was at his conference, I explored the city and made lots of photos. I love public art!



Very close to our apartment, in Hindley Street, was this transformer station. I used Picasa to transfer the picture to black and white. Love how it looks! (thermofax screen?)



More architecture photos on my photo blog, and more public art photos will be added in the next few days. Here is one more, a detail of a glass house in the Botanic Gardens:



This week is going to be very busy with work, PhD and family - my middle son has his 7th birthday next Monday (Halloween!) and his party is on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon I will be at Inspired with my shop Blue Jacaranda - but more about that later this week.

Next week I really hope to make a start on a new quilt...!

Great news!

Here I am again - today I received the SAQA Newsletter and was thrilled to read that Speed 2, which I submitted for SAQA's travelling trunk show This is a Quilt! has been selected to become part of the permanent collection at the Michigan State University Museum. Woohoo!

Here is what gallerist Michael Solomon, who did the selection, wrote:

"When Kris Sazaki first asked me to be the juror for a collection to go to the Michigan State University Museum, I willingly accepted, thinking it would be a piece of cake. After all, I had owned a fine art gallery in Sacramento for over 10 years, and I had certainly chosen art and artists for many gallery exhibits. I faced a slightly greater challenge with group shows as opposed to solo exhibits, but I felt I had a pretty good grasp of the contemporary painting and sculpture we exhibited. I have also juried shows outside of my gallery, as well as my own photography exhibits.

For the SAQA show, I came to realize that my mandate would limit and challenge me when I faced the prospect of selecting just 50 pieces out of 268 submissions. I have spent many hours in art museums around the world, I am an avid collector, and I have formulated some ideas as to what constitutes "great art." While the quality of art may be subjective, great art is simply that which compels one to look at it, again and again and again. This is the truth, if not a truism. And that's the reason museums full of art that visitors repeatedly visit, contain great art. I can't stop looking at and admiring the art on my walls and pedestals; if I do, I end up replacing it with something better, and then repeat the process.

In jurying this show, I looked for aesthetic design, shapes, color, composition, texture, and subject matter. I am somewhat partial to figurative subject matter, so that may have affected my judgment in some respects. All of the work I viewed exhibited high artistic quality, and I found myself initially choosing way more than my allotment of 50. I then faced the agonizing task of deselecting many pieces I appreciated. In any event, I hope you enjoy my selections."

And here is the list of artists whose pieces were chosen:

1. Affolter, Regula
2. Branjord, Sandra
3. Bruvry, Patricia
4. Carrigan, Sherry
5. Chen, Yeu-Chiu
6. Chuang, Huei-Lan
7. Clover, Jette
8. David-Cohen, Yael
9. Drucker, Tamar
10. Ecob, Aileyn
11. Filatoff, Julie
12. Fingal, Jamie
13. Fitzsimmons, Micaela
14. Fricke, Rebecca
15. Henry, Susan Elaine
16. Horne, Connie
17. Huang, Ming-Mei
18. Jensen, Jill
19. Jurgenson, Jean Renli
20. Lachman, Mary F.
21. Law, Catharina Breedyk
22. Limmer, Andrea
23. Lin, Hsin-Chen
24. Lin, Mei-Mu
25. McClean, Sarah Louise
26. McLaughlin, Linda
27. Milholen, Vivian
28. Miller, Linda
29. Ortelle, Cathy
30. Owoc, Pat
31. Pal, Mary
32. Phillips, Margaret A.
33. Pixeladies
34. Puetz, Casey
35. Read, Priscilla
36. Robertson, Ruan
37. Robertus, Linda
38. Rushbrooke, Rose
39. Simpson, Gayle
40. Smith, Catherine Whall
41. Smith, Lura Schwarz
42. Stegmiller, Terri
43. Stoltz, Heather G.
44. Tateo, Tiziana
45. Themel, Kate
46. Thomas, Rosalind
47. Tunnell, Karen Reese
48. Wambaugh, Debbie
49. Wanner , Dwayne
50. Watler, Barbara

My work in a museum!!! I can hardly believe it!

:-))

What's new?

Well... not much. With the grandparents here I haven't really done any quilting/printing/sewing since the last posting. So all I have to show you is this small decoupage box that I made a while ago, using Australian stamps from letters we have received in the last four and a half years.



I really like decoupage and have a few more boxes to embellish! I'm thinking Dutch stamps (which we have a lot of, obviously), stamps from other countries, music scores, atlases...



On Tuesday hubby and I are flying to Adelaide , where we will be for five days, while the grandparents stay here with the boys. I'm looking forward to discovering a new city, shopping, going to museums, wine-tasting...

I will probably not post here before we leave, so see you all in 10 days or so!

Here's looking at you, again

Here is one of yesterday's prints stretched around an artist's canvas. I love how this looks! I have put it up for sale in my Etsy shop.

The boys' grandparents (my in-laws) are in Brisbane at the moment which is lovely but does not leave a lot of time for making new quilts. In the next few weeks these small items for Blue Jacaranda will probably be all that I can manage. Also, a friend has taught me to crochet - one of the few needle skills that I did not possess! I covet these gorgeous crocheted stones and really want to make some... I'll keep you posted!

New thermofax screens

Yesterday I received three new thermofax screens from Linda Stokes - I had my Dolphin and Walrus Calligrams made into screens:



And also the Zebra design. I printed it in white ink on black fabric, like I did with the original design...



... and got a sleeping zebra! Hahaha. Using black ink on white fabric it looks better:



What about a pink zebra?



Since I was screen printing anyway I made some Kookaburra and Robot prints as well:



Here is the first Dolphin Calligram Card, now for sale in my Etsy shop:




I have also added some Dutch Houses ATCs (ACEOs) to the shop, so if you've always wanted one but do not make ATCs yourself here is your chance!



If you do make ATCs I'm still happy to trade, just leave a comment or send me an email!

Good news

Coming back from our holiday I was very happy to find an email telling me that my Tuberculosis quilt is a finalist in the Political and Social Art Exhibit at the Infinite Art Gallery. It will be displayed on the website for the remainder of the year. You can read more about my quilt here and here.



We had a lovely holiday at our caravan at Wooyung Beach, but came home one day early because it rained so much. The photo above was taken yesterday afternoon at Hastings Point, a few kilometres north of Wooyung, on our way home. You can see the rain more or less above our caravan!



This is my favourite photo from this holiday. I am reading The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman, a great book about composition and design. I'm trying to apply what I read to my photography. More photos will be posted on my photography blog in the next few days.