Fiber Work Art - Newsletter March 2019

Newsletter March 2019

Dear ALL

DATES TO DIARIZE:

30 March - Extra Images of work to be submitted to Helga for the National Quilt Festival in Gauteng. More on this later.

15 April submission of EDGE artworks details to Helga, if you are keen to exhibit in satellite exhibition in Gauteng. More on this later

31 May Friday Fibreworks meeting, 9 for 9:30am at Sarojani Naidoo. Address is 59A Pitlochry Rd, Westville.

9 August Friday - Edge art works to arrive at Jenny Hearn. Contact details: Postnet, Spar Arcade, Norwood, William Rd, Norwood, Johannesburg, 2192. Please add Jenny Hearn's phone no 011 483 1595. Her cell no is 083 263 6790. They will contact her when your parcel arrives so do not forget to add this in.

17-23 August 2019 National Quilt Exhibition in Gauteng. More on this later.

24 August festival knockdown. Return of work

MEETING ON 1 March AT HELGA BEAUMONT

Members present: J. Gilks, S. Naidoo, O.Tolksdorf, A. McMaster, L Malherbe, H. Beaumont, Sue Akerman

Apologies: C Lemmer, M Pretorius, M Stevens, K Arbeter, C Knox, G Niederhumer, M Letts, J Hearn, S Walwyn, R Dace, G Gerhard, C Zelenka.

It is with great sadness that we hear that Carolyn Kode has passed away after a short illness. Our thoughts are with her family and friends.

EXHIBITION NEWS

National Quilt Exhibition in Gauteng

Venue Heronbridge College, Fourways, Johannesburg

Fibreworks will be a satellite exhibition at the Festival in August, and we call upon any of our Johannesburg members to help with this exhibition if they are able and willing. Please contact Helga if you are willing.

Sandra de Wet is the chief coordinator of the show is happy to hang our work, thankfully. I know that a number of you will also be exhibiting work at the National Quilt Festival. Tilly de Harde has kindly agreed to seek a venue at the Heronbridge College for our third meeting of the year. The venue is still to be confirmed. This will be a great opportunity for the Gauteng and visiting members to attend the meeting and to put forward any new ideas and to share all their news.

I have been corresponding with Sandra about the Fibreworks dimensions of the National show and this is what we have decided, in order to keep things sleek and simple:

Because of space constraints, we have decided to limit the show to a predominantly Major Minors exhibition

However, in order to introduce some size variation to our show, we have an additional idea. If you are keen to do so, select another artwork that you submitted to the EDGE exhibition if it is between 30 X 50cm, and send an image of it to Helga by 30 March. Alternatively, if you have a recently made work that has not been exhibited in Gauteng, you may submit an image of that, provided it is no larger than 30 X 50 cm

If we are overwhelmed with submissions, we will have to select, unfortunately. Please be mindful of the fact that we do not have a fixed idea of the space available to us. This is not our show.

We will let you know via email which of the slightly large works you will need to ship to JHB, together with your Major Minor work, should your work be selected.

Please supply Helga with the following details of all the works you submit by 15 April or sooner.

Name

Title of work

Medium

A concise sentence or two about the work, if needs be

I hope this is clear.

We have decided that we will also include one or two of the 'Running Thoughts' community quilts for our show, since it was such a significant aspect of the KZNSA exhibition. We will submit a photographic documentary of this installation, together with a short description of the ideas that inspired it

MEMBER'S NEWS

Roy Starke

After a hair rising trip through an Economic Freedom Front rally in Pretoria, Jenny Hearn and Helga Beaumont finally picked up the quilts that Roy has bequeathed us. Thank you very much, Jenny and Helga, for the effort and time that both of you made to collect Roy's work. 63 in total!

Once they had arrived at Helga's after a somewhat hectic trip down from Gauteng, Odette and Helga and I proceeded to catalogue them into small, medium and large, taking note of any dates and titles, if there were any.

As we were processing the quilts, we came across one with the title 'With love to Mum'. Odette contacted Roy's sister who said her mother would be delighted to have the quilt! This artwork has gone to the person to whom it belongs…

A while ago Jutta Faulds had contacted Helga about Strauss and Company selecting art works for auctions. Helga then met up with Jutta and they went to the Tatham art gallery in Pietermaritzburg and spoke with the auctioneers. Helga took three of Roy's works, (Very Big, Big and Medium-Big were Roy's categories) and one of the works was selected to be auctioned in Johannesburg July! One of the Medium-Bigs ie about 1.5 x 1.5m.

Perhaps you know anyone who would be keen to buy it? Strauss suggested a reserve price of R18 000 on it and that they would be keen to sell more should this one prove to be appealing. We will have to wait and see. What a break for us! Thank You, Roy.

Enid Viljoen, a very good friend of Roy's and his protégé, is willing to assist us with the visual documentation of Roy's work. She is currently writing a book on Roy's work, and she is very willing to share images of Roy's work with us. Great. The KwaZulu Natal Quilters Guild have invited us to have a Roy Starke Exhibition at their August meeting and Enid has been invited to be the guest speaker. She may be possibly launching her book too. We will let you know more of these developments as they unroll.

At the meeting we agreed that we would select about thirty of his best wall hangings for exhibition and sale purposes. We are working on this.
Other artworks, sadly, are not in a very good condition. However, we all got very excited and enthusiastic when we decided to do something based on the following ideas. Details haven't been worked out, but let me share some of the conversations we had:

A number of Roy's works are in the region of 1,5 X 1,5 m and fall within the mixed media domain. What If we reworked On-Top-Of or Behind or Into, one of Roy's quilts? This is how it would work:

members who are keen to participate in this event, get sent one of Roy's 1,5 x1,5m art quilts

they work alongside Roy's work, in any manner they deem appropriate. They could extend the mixed media idea, or sew, or weave or print, whatever

for those who wanted to work in 2D, there would be a particular size specification, say 50 X 50 cm

people could use Roy's work with Interior Design and wearable art in mind too: reupholster an old chair, lampshade, make a bag or a hat. All manner of 3D possibilities!

this collaborative artwork, whatever it turns out to be, would then be submitted for our Fibreworks XI exhibition in 2020

the exhibition could become a giant installation to honour Roy, whilst we are also honoured

we were all sure Roy would approve of this plan, as it really does fully manifest his generous bequest to our Fibreworks group

If you don't get round to doing the collaborative artwork for wherever reason, fine, but then you send his work back to us, at your cost

There would be no obligation to participate as this would form only a part of the Fibreworks show.

These artworks would be yours, and should the work sell, the money would be yours, once the various additional costs have been deducted. All that, however, still in the distant future at this stage. We will elaborate in the next newsletter. Meanwhile let us know your thoughts.

Who is interested? Give us some feedback!

INTERESTING WEB SITES:

https://judys-journal.blogspot.com/
https://seths.blog/2019/03/i-dont-like-your-work/
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/02/colorful-quilts-by-bisa-butler/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Newsletter_March_2019_Week_2&utm_medium=email

CALL FOR ENTRIES

https://www.innibos.co.za/national-premier-craft-award-2019/
http://fiberartnowentry.net/
http://callforentriesarchitecture.com/

Best to you all
Jeanette and The Team