Trip to Abilene

For me, the gallery legitimates the art production and helps build collections. - Anonymous

     In Abilene, Texas there is a lovely art gallery which hosts a variety of art mediums.  Last weekend, my friend Heather and I drove there for the reception being held at The Center for Contemporary Art for the art quilt exhibit "Today's Quilts: Art in Stitch". 

    Gay Young, a member of the Caprock SAQA Circle is responsible for getting this juried show together.  And she made arrangements for those of us who could come to the reception to have dinner together at Copper Creek Restaurant.

Copper Creek, Abilene, Texas where we dined before the
reception..thenwalked just down the block to the Gallery

We both had art quilts on display there as did many of our friends from North Texas SAQA Circle. I had already posted a few pictures on Facebook about the show as well as a slide show which one of the husbands made of the whole show. Thanks to Clif Dahl for this great presentation. Click on my link here to see his album he made with all our artwork and the little bios by what we did. 

                              Because you can see all the art from Clif's link, I'm just going to show a few.

My art "This One Is for the Girls"

I was working on this one when a friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer. The individual squares reminded me of boobs and stitched into some of the bare areas are the "missing" boobs. Maybe if you enlarge this you can see them.

Heather actually had two in the show...this is one from her "Tuning Fork" series.

Another NTSAQA member, Carolyn Skei

Barbara Hartman also from NTSAQA

A closeup of the quilt below

The lady who made this one was not at the reception nor
 from NTSAQA butI loved her work..
the hand stitching is really something to see!

     On our way out to Abilene, Heather and I stopped for lunch at the famous Smokestack Cafe at Thurber...population 5 (but at its height a hundred years ago was a metropolis of 10,000 people. Known for coal mines and a brick refinery.)

Here is the original Smoke stack, now a historical marker.
The signs warn you to not get too close ...falling bricks!

In the round windows at the top, the letters "SMOKE" are in neon
...I bet they show up well at night!

    We spent the night in Abilene then on the way home we went by Abilene Christian University.  At the reception there was a couple there from Abilene.  She taught art at the high school and he was an art teacher at ACU.  They were telling us of this statue he had made for the University and from their description, we knew we wanted to see it! The title is "Jacob's Dream" by Jack Maxwell.  I found a Youtube presentation of it that is pretty cool.

Path to the Statue

Jacob's Dream

Jacob's Dream against the sky

A fountain at Jacob's Dream

The statue is in a beautiful setting surrounded by many limestone blocks with biblical scripture carved on them and a garden full of all kinds of flowers  It sits on the ACU Campus and just celebrated its tenth anniversary last year.  It is worth taking the time to see it....very impressive! I am glad we ran into this couple there. 

     One of the reasons SAQA tries to promote our art quilts in a gallery setting is because so many people have no idea what Fiber Arts or Art Quilts are.  To point, Jack Maxwell, a well-known artist was dragged to our reception by his wife and sister in law thinking he was going to a quilt show. As he said, he had no idea that this kind of art even exists.  Needless to say, he was impressed so we now have one more fan who won't say "oh, my grandmother makes/made quilts"!

     So if you get a chance go to Abilene and visit our art work!  I think the show will be there through November then will go to another venue for awhile!

Today's Quilts: Art in Stitch