Art Quilts

Every once in a while something awesome happens along that is all kinds of sources for inspiration. Last night was that night.

All afternoon I had been day dreaming about wedding reception decor and taking an art trip down to Denver for my birthday weekend. I wanted to go thrifting after work for wedding decorations, or at least to get some ideas. I got a flat tire as I was leaving the parking lot. It was definitely not the highlight of my day. Luckily, I could walk to get the boy to fix the tire. Then I found out that his mom was going to a talk given by an art quilter to the Cheyenne Artist Guild. Apparently, they have completely revamped their website since the last time that I saw it. I'm not exactly a member, I've been dragging my feet a little bit. I'm so happy that I went to this talk though.

Do Palma was presenting on her work kind of in general. Her work is fabulous, and deep! She really gets into researching all the different aspects of the stories that she works on and she isn't shy about tackling political subjects. She also does stitching and beading is a lot of her pieces! The picture that I posted is of a work about child soldiers being recruited in Sierra Leone. It's called "Children in Arms: Prayer for Sierra Leone". I love her use of color and patch working pattern mixed with other fiber techniques. The best thing, is that she's a really nice person and I'm hoping to learn a lot of techniques from her in the future. Especially, silk screening, dying, applique, transfers...just all those things that I've been a little afraid of tackling for so long.

The other amazing thing is that she is apart of an art quilt group called Front Range Contemporary Quilters. They've got some amazing pieces on their website and some nationally known members. They meet in Westminster so maybe I'll get to go down some times. They also have critique sessions. I've really been wishing for other artists to critique my work since college. At least one of these sessions is in Ft. Collins, I'm really itching to go down for that. Hopefully, this will open up some new doors to meeting more artists and creating some interesting work.