Transitional Pieces
Transitional Pieces
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The next group of work shows how I began to transition from painting to piecing and quilting, employing the techniques I had used earlier and combining them in non- traditional ways.
The 1980s and 1990s were a time of networking, entering art shows, joining art organizations, and participating on their boards: Wintonbury Art League; Connecticut Women Artists; Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; Canton Gallery on the Green; and New Britain Museum Friends Exhibition, to name a few.
I took a few quilting classes and fell in love with fabric. It was soft and forgiving, colorful (instant palette), and not messy at all. I had no paints or glue to clean up, and could leave my work out for hours or days without extra cleanup or prep time.
In 1999, I was invited to join an art critique group. There were twelve artists working in different media, but all interested in elevating their art. We met faithfully every month and brought works in progress or finished pieces for critique. We gave each other constructive criticism and feedback, and we motivated each other to do our best work. We discussed our compositions, what was going on in the art world, the galleries here, in NYC, and Boston, the museums, and upcoming shows to enter or visit. This nurturing group was very important to my growth as an artist, and we still meet or call one another to this day.
Naz Dar
Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
1985. 48 x 25 inches
You can see the repetition of shapes—the basics of traditional quilt design—in this piece and the next two.
Variation V
Collagraph
1990. 20 x 25 inches
A collagraph is a print made by using a collage as an ink plate.
On the Line
Mixed media, paper, collage, photos, machine and hand stitching
2002. 19 x 22 inches
Fenced Stars
Cotton quilt, hand quilted 1998. 36 x 43 inches
I learned a lot from making this, my first quilt. I followed a pattern, but not knowing how the quilt would go together, I did not choose the colors wisely. The star pattern would show up a lot better with higher contrast between star points and background. It took many years to learn when I wanted the pattern to be bold or when I wanted more subtle blending.
Tiger Lily
Cotton quilt, hand quilted
2004. 50 x 50 inches
This is a watercolor quilt, so named because the little two-inch squares are blended to make a picture as if they were bits of paint. It was a popular technique when I started quilting.
quilt back
When I discovered quilting, I was still enjoying entering local art shows and working together with my art friends. At that time, quilts were not considered fine art and there was no category for fiber art in those art shows. I had the idea to sew together paper (some of my handmade paper and other handmade and commercial papers). I treated the paper quilts as if they were fabric, sewing a batting between the top and bottom layers, and I was able to enter them for many years as mixed media. Since then, of course, with the influence of the Gee’s Bend quilters of Alabama and others, quilts have become accepted in all those fine art shows in the category of fiber art.
Back to Square One
Paper quilt, machine quilted with cotton batting
1999. 36 x 46 inches
Salmon en Papillote
Paper quilt, tied with cotton batting
1999. 36 x 36 inches
I was experimenting with this technique when a show opportunity came up. I happened upon the old Brown & Sharpe case, and arranged the pieces in it, reminiscent of Joseph Cornell and Jean Roberts assemblages.
Brown & Sharpe
Cotton hand quilted onto felt with found objects and stitched sandpaper displayed in an old Brown & Sharpe instrument case
2015. 11 x 11 x 6 inches (open)
Paint Chip Challenge
Cotton and Tyvek quilt, machine quilted
2011. 20 x 21 inches
The Tyvek in this quilt is painted with house paint. This was a guild challenge: we were to use three paint chip colors in our quilts that represented the initials of our names. My initials are P. E. S. (Pinking Shears, English Elegance, and Snapdragon) for Phyllis Ellen Small.
label
Cow Patch
Fiberglass, approx. 100 pounds, painted with fabric triangles collaged with acrylic medium, and then overpainted
2000. 7 x 4 x 21⁄2 feet
I was fortunate enough to have been chosen to paint a cow for the New York CowParade 2000. The life-sized fiberglass cow arrived just before my wonderful month-long vacation in India and Nepal. I had six weeks to work on the cow when I returned home before the Connecticut cows were herded to NYC, so I was quite worried about finishing it in time. However, there were so many wonderful cows on the trip to inspire my design that I was soon filled with ideas and excitement.
The cover of the guide book I carried with me across India and Nepal had a purple cow on it, and I knew that the base of my cow would have to be purple. I also knew it was going to be a quilted design. I couldn’t wait to get started when I got home.
Cow Patch finally emerged just in time. She grazed in front of the New York Hilton for the summer of 2000, and then was auctioned off for charity (breast cancer research). Cow Patch was purchased by a Yahoo executive in California and his wife, a world-traveling field biologist. Purple is the corporate color of Yahoo, so it seemed like a perfect match.
May I take the space to relay the delivery story? The cow was delivered by Moishe’s Delivery Service. The driver was a tall Israeli youth barely 20 years old with dreadlocks and a verrry long truck. He said, “I came to the US to be a cowboy, and figured I may as well start out this way.”
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