Thursday, February 18, 2010

TEXTILE TWIST- Fiber Art Exhibit


If you are visiting or live in the Austin Area, the Austin Fiber Artists organization is having an exhibit called Textile Twist at the Tokyo Electron Company.
Over 30 pieces of fabulous fiber art (if I must say so myself) will be on display from February 24 to April 1st, 2010. The opening of the exhibit is on Feb 24, at 6pm. If you can't make it to the opening the exhibit can be seen from Monday to Friday, 9-5pm.
I have 2 pieces in this juried exhibit...one is called "Deconstruction I" and the other one is "New Beginnings"
For this exhibit I wanted to make something that still resembled a quilt from a distance (to honor my background as a traditional quilter) but up close you see how -deconstructed- it is.
I used the same method to create both of my pieces:
I started by making 2 quilts, quilting each one individually, and then cutting them up in random strips. I think this was the hardest part, cutting up a quilt! Imagine that! After the 2 quilts were cut up I put all the strips in the washing machine so they would unravel. After this process was done, I wove the strips to create one whole piece, or quilt per say... Then, the new piece (pinned to death to keep it together) was quilted with straight stitching, vertically and horizontally to keep the woven piece together.
I broke all the "rules" of traditional quilting, meaning that the quilting stitches are purposely uneven, the edges raw, no binding in sight and points that don't match. I had to struggle with "breaking the rules" and at the same time work in a way that the resulting piece would appeal to the viewer.
Most times I don't post before an exhibit but I will give you a sneak peak so you know what I have been talking about.

"Deconstructed I" (c.2010) 48"x70"


"New Beginning" (c.2010) 40"x 52"

4 comments:

Linda Teddlie Minton said...

Martha, congratulations on being in this show! Your two pieces are gorgeous ... I already knew your color-sense is wonderful. I hope to see the show sometime in March.

Martha Tsihlas said...

Thank you Linda, I had a lot of fun making those 2 pieces. The exhibit is very good...many things to look at.

shellysquilts said...

Martha, These are fantastic! Well done!

Quilt Inspiration said...

We love your fiber art work. Your deconstructed pieces are beautiful, and very unique. We just became Followers... we look forward to following your artwork and your blog!