NTAQ Meeting

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” 
― Edgar Degas 
     This past Monday, my most favorite art group met.  And as usual we had a great time! Our challenge for this month, presented to us by Michelle, was to choose one of the artists of the School of Bauhaus and create a quilt with one's choice as inspiration. The Bauhaus was the most influential schools of art and design in the 20th century...in Dessau, Germany from 1919-1933.  The school was populated with many  well known artists on the faculty...Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Paul Klee and others.  Josef Albers' wife Anni was one of the prominent artists who started there.
     After researching several of the  artists' I chose Otti Berger.  Otti, as well as many of the others was a weaver.  She was very talented and innovative; but unfortunately she was living in very dangerous times.  Many of the school left Germany for England then on to  America when Germany fell under the spell of Nazism.  Being of Jewish ancestors, Otti did go to England, but being unable to  get a job...not being able to speak the language and being hearing impaired...she returned to her home and there in 1944 with her family she was arrested and taken to  Auschwitz where she died. If she had been able to stay in England, if it had been a year later, her story would have ended differently!

Her story as well as her talent is why I chose her as my artist for the challenge.

    I decided to make a quilt to honor Otti.  The first thing I did was to write her story, then to print it off on fabric.  This is accomplished by ironing fabric to freezer paper, cutting it to the size of computer paper and run it through the printer.

Step one

Step two

     Then I printed off a picture of one of her weavings on fabric, and added her picture onto the fabric by running it through the printer a second time.

Step three

    I then began to sew together strips of fabric, somewhat emulating the weaving I had printed off. And step four was to put it all together.  It is approximately 14" x 33"  in size.

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Step four

       Here are some of my NTAQ buddies' challenges:

Heather's

Wendy's

Michelle's

Kay's

Rhonda's

     And here is a picture of all of them together.  Most chose Anni Albers for their inspiration. Heather  chose Gunta Stolzl and my choice of Otti Berger were some of  the other artists at the Bauhaus as well as many others.

The Bauhaus inspired quilts by NTAQ


     We usually have some activity when we meet...sharing new techniques, etc.  so in keeping with the idea that many of the students/artists at the Bauhaus were weavers, I got some little cardboard looms, yarn,  needles, together to do a small weaving project.  We plan to bring them back to our next meeting to show what we did with our weaving!

Rhonda, Heather and Kay working on their weaving!