Turtle Trax
Diary. Page 49 - Page Two
November 30, 2005
Autumn 2005....
by Susan Shie
At left are my daughter Gretchen and her daughter Eva on the Merry-Go-Round at the Wayne County Fair in September. This was Eva's first Merry-Go-Round ride. I love seeing her "firsts."
Topics in this diary: Lots of artwork, including: "Kitschy Fet Fish"; "Ode to Julia Child"; "Quilts for Change 06 raffle quilt and poster image"; "Katrina Blues"; "Higher Ground"; "Old Bags for Peace"; "Peace Brew for Jimmy"; "Rainforest Goddess"; "Sally Green's Aquarius Blessings"; "Wilma (Peace Voodoo); "Love Birds"; and "Studio Blessings"; as well as these events: Quilts for Change, the event; the Fair; my birthday; Eva's first birthday; The Box Show; Thanksgiving; Jimmy's birthday; and our Autumn trip to Mohican.
Continuing from Page One.
"Higher Ground" is again, about Hurricane
Katrina. 26"h x 36"w, it's brush and airpen painted, with mostly
machine crazy grid quilting. Price is $3,750, only I am planning to send
this piece to the fundraiser exhibitions that Laura Cater-Woods is organizing,
in which the quilts will be auctioned. She's orchestrated two other stages
to this project, which have already raised a lot of money for the Red Cross
re Katrina. Pretty amazing. I hope my piece can contribute drastically
needed money to the cause! Laura's site for the quilt donations to Red
Cross project's three phases is called Art Doing Good.http://www.artdoinggood.com.
j
This is
a detail shot of "Higher Ground."
I got the title for this piece, "Higher Ground" from a five hour concert to benefit survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Was it the concert Kayne West gave his impromptu talk on? I can't remember, but maybe. I would watch a little of the concert, then go down to my studio and write more with my airpen on the piece.
The name comes both from the idea of escaping a flood and also from Peter Gabriel's song of the same name. He wasn't on the concert, but it was still really good. There's also a coffee house in Lowell, MA, with that name, near the New England Quilt Museum.
Here's when the autumn
leaf color was at its best in Wooster, and Jimmy and Hattie and I took
a stroll around our back yard. This is the back corner of our yard, where
it meets Olga's back yard, just above the ravine. Jimmy's pine trees, which
he planted tons of, back in 1992, are now big enough to walk under, since
he prunes off a few more bottom branches each year. Since they don't change
colors for Fall, it's great that our yard and ravine both have plenty of
Maples, Oaks, Ashes, etc, to keep us experiencing the beauty of the seasons
in Ohio. How I love being at home!
This is "Old Bags for Peace," a painting
I made for the New England Quilt
Museum's Bag Auction this October.
If you bought this piece at the auction, or know who bought it, please let me know. I really like to keep track, just for my archives, of who owns my work and how much they paid for it. That helps me know if I did much good in donating paintings to auctions.
I guess I should email the museum and just ask them!
This is "Peace Brew for Jimmy," a
piece I started last September, when the Shelby Girls (Frances Holliday
Alford and her sisters and niece) were at our house for Turtle Art Camp.
Finished it this Fall. It's 23"h x 22"w, mostly machine quilted,
and its price is $3,000.
This is one of my favorite pieces, and it's going to the "Take Cover" exhibition at Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA, along with "Wilma (Peace Voodoo)" (shown below) and "Lazy Susan/Wheel of Fortune: Card #10 in The Kitchen Tarot," (shown in the last diary I made.)
Wish we artists could just beam ourselves to all these shows all over the place!
"Rainforest Goddess" is a piece I
finished up as a commission for my friend Enid Silvestry. This quilt had
hung in limbo for years, partly machine quilted, but Enid saw it on this
site and had me hand quilt and bead it, so it really changed. "La
Diosa de la Sylva" now lives in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. She's 10.5"h
x 8.25"w. She began as a painting on heavy painter's canvas, which
is a real challenge to hand sew through! But I'm glad I did!
"Sally Green's Aquarius Blessings"
was a commission... for Sally Green! This piece is 12"h x 8.5"w,
fully hand stitched. I made two more base paintings in the same studio
sessions as this piece, and they don't have any writing on them yet, so
I can still make them into something for someone. Let me know if you're
interested in seeing them as images-only stage paintings which I can work
on for you.
At this size, a piece I'd do all the writing about just for you would cost $1,600. plus shipping, and that would include a $75. design fee, since I would only be doing writing for you, not making images for you.
We went to Jimmy's mom Mama Wanda's place for Thanksgiving, along
with Jimmy's siblings and his Aunt Mae and Uncle Gene.
Here are Mae and Mom, with me showing them slide shows on my laptop iSally. We went through a bunch of pictures from Eva's birthday, Mama Wanda's birthday, and more.
But I need to learn to put photos onto Olive, my iPod, so I don't have to drag Sally all around like that.
The other things we did while Mae and Gene were in town were going out to celebrate Jimmy's birthday and going to see "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash movie. That was all a lot of good family fun time!
So all the Acord family went with us to the Oak Park Tavern at
Charles Mill Reservoir near Mansfield, OH, for Jimmy's birthday dinner.
Here are, from left: Karlie, Tazia, and Lisa. Karlie is brother Freddie's
daughter and Tazia is Lisa's daughter, and Lisa is Jimmy's sister Karen's
daughter. Karlie and Tazia are my two Bowling Owlies champion players.
And by the way, Jimmy and Floyd installed the NEW patio owl lights I got
this year. They were so very hard to find, that for several years I just
couldn't find any. So the 30 owl lights on the porch were really ready
to bite the dust, and some really did crumble when replaced!
These are from a company online called Christmas Lights Etc... but when I googled them just now, I couldn't find the owl lights on the site! I bought them about a year ago and they sat all year til now! Ratz! Shoulda bought MORE! They are a more transluscent plastic owl, and the colors are only bright yellow, bright green, and bright orange. The old, vintage ones were pastel opaque plastic, and they had a blue owl, too. No blue owls in the 35 or so we have up now. These are Rasta Owls, I guess! Anyhow, we think we can salvage a few of the old owl light bodies for Bowling Owlies, the game. You getting the drift of why this game is played so rarely? Nobody has old owls to spare, since they can't find new ones!
Here's Jimmy with his 52nd birthday cake, at his party at Oak
Park. We had enough cake to treat the waitresses, cooks, etc, and everybody
had great fun!
For his birthday, I got Jimmy his wonderful new comfort mountain bike by Giant, as the barter for the painting you'll see below ("Love Birds"). Our friends at Cycle Path brought up the bike and its accessories in October, and it was nice to have them at our house finally, since we got to visit them at their house in Athens two times ago at Quilt National.
I also got Jimmy a new fedora, but he had to order that himself. He's pretty picky! And they are very hard to find!
This was the first loose gathering of some
semblance of the Wooster Women's Culture Club in many years. My first and
only attendance of it was in 1995, at Michelle Massaro's parents' house
on N. Walnut Street.
Michelle herself is sitting on the right here, next to Carolyn Robinson, who was home on break from her current job in Aman, Jordon, where she's training middle-eastern journalists. Next to her is her friend Marilyn Hyde, and at left is Petra Soesemann, their high school friend and a prof at the Cleveland Institute of Art and a quilt artist. I met her and Marilyn through Carolyn and met Carolyn through Michelle....at the first meeting of the Wooster Women's Culture Club that I attended in 1994. So there you are.
You may remember Carolyn for my mentions of her living in East Timor, working there with the UN after they got independence. And before that, working in Hong Kong before the handover. Carolyn gets around and knows TV journalism inside out!
Michelle is one of the longest-running massage therapists in Wooster, is a poet, lived in our little commune in the 70s, and is now a recorded Blues singer with a local band called Two Bit Jam.
We shall try to reconvene the Club at Christmas, or maybe the next time Carolyn gets home again.
Here is my newest, most huge quilt in a long time: "Wilma (Peace Voodoo)" is 66.5"h x 66.5"w, brush and airpen painted and then mostly machine crazy grid quilted. I began her on October 20th and finished her on November 26 (having added a tiny detail after her initial November 7th finishing.)
"Wilma" is about Hurricane Wilma, of course, but also tells stories about four generations of women in my family: Mom, me, Gretchen, and Eva, and we are shown kinds stacked up behind each other, like Russian barrel dolls. I made us have these squarish hats, and they became saucepans... I guess because we all like to cook. Well, not yet for Eva, but she DOES like to eat, so she'll be a good cook, too!
There's a giant St Quilta the Comforter on the right side, in those sexy red shoes, balancing out the pile of Shie women on the left. St Q has two heads where her breasts go, and these turned into my friend and co-YaYa Pat and her mom Mary. They are both amazing matriarchs, always helping everyone else feel better, and they were both very sick at the same time. So of course, they deserve some special TLC from my healing goddess.
The quilt also contains tons of writing about my life, stuff going on around me, and current events, which includes some feisty political commentary. Big problems in the world call for big responses, I figure. Hurricanes, government scams and coverups, terrible natural and unnatural disasters and lack of help to the people affected by them, THE WAR, our standing as a country in the world, Rosa Parks' death and funeral, Eva's first birthday and her having the croup....and THE WAR. See why I have to work so big now???? There is a lot that needs to be talked about, but many people are afraid to talk, or just too overwhelmed by it all to even want to think about how to fix it. But I think if you love your country and YOUR FAMILY, it's your duty to talk about it and to try to figure out ways to fix this country up again.
We used to be the GOOD GUYS in the world. Remember?
If you are in Richmond, VA between Jan 6 and Feb 25, I hope you can go see the show "Take Cover," at Quirk Gallery, at 311 West Broad Street, which "Wilma" and two other of my art quilts will be in. Shawn Quinlan, Eleanor McCain, Amy Orr, Bonnie Peterson, Julia Pfaff, Bean Gilsdorf, Fulvia Luciano, Mary Swezey and Carol Taylor will have work in it, too.
Back on October 29, Jimmy, Mike, Gretchen,
Eva, and I went down to Mohican State Park, which is Jimmy's Ohio spot
for trout fishing and our favorite place to walk around, enjoying the autumn
colors on the trees.
It was Eva's first time there.
Here are Mike and Jimmy with one of Jimmy's bamboo fishing rods, made by one of his amazing rodmaker friends.
They had just spent a little time down at the river, casting, and you can see the look of joy on Jimmy's face, since he was in HIS spot! How that man loves to fly fish.
Jimmy took this picture of us, just after we
got to Mohican that day. It was a very cool, crispy day, and this was just
before Eva came down with the Croup, when she was a year and a week old!
We walked out to the lookout over the gorge and the guys climbed the fire tower, which is just reopened this year. I used to love to climb it, when we were young, but this time too many people were on it at once, so I stayed down on the ground and found leaves for Eva to play with.
We also walked around by the covered bridge and the picnic area, near the primitive campground where Jimmy and I used to camp together. Which is near where he carved our initials into a young tree in 1977. We need to go find our tree again, but it's gotten really hard to find. Sounds like a good adventure for next Spring to me!
I just finished "Love Birds" this week,
as a great barter deal for our friends Maxine Diamond and John Lefelhocz
in Athens, Ohio. They co-own and operate Cycle
Path Bicycle Shop of Athens, and on the store's site, you can also
see a lot of John's amazing artwork. Max and he have all the birds you
see here, as well as the tandem bike, only the real bike has more mechanical
parts than the one I put here into the painting.
I made their astrology charts before doing the painting, because I wanted to know more about them. I later realized I could make the bike tires into the charts.
This piece is 21.75"h x 16.25"w.
A piece like this one would cost you $960. plus shipping, and would include making the painting this size, with a $150. design fee, and $50 for each astrology chart, which I only set up and send to you, without me interpreting it for you. I have a set of prices for doing charts with varying levels of interpretation, too, if you're interested. This is the first time I've done astrology charts actually in a commission.
You can look at my price formulas (and framing suggestions, too) to figure out what size of commission you'd like to have me make, and then email me about it. I'm willing to work as small as 8" x 10", but no smaller. And as big as you want. Thanks!
I just finished four new "Studio Blessings"
paintings to sell. I've made the start of my new 2005 Gallery with
the four of them, and #2 has just sold.
So you can still buy #1, 3, or 4.
Each is 15.75"h x 12.5"w and sells for $400. plus shipping.
There are much larger images of them in the gallery.
See my framing suggestions, but of course, you can quilt them, too, or have me quilt them.
I leave you with this tender picture of my
daughter and granddaughter at Mohican in the sunlight. This is the best
picture I've ever taken of these two girls of mine, and to me it is the
epitome of Mother Love.
Peace to all the world, for the sake of all our children.
With prayers to fix all the damage done.
Love, Susan, back with another diary by sometime in April, because I'm super busy now! Yikes!
Go to Page One of this diary.
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Susan Shie and James Acord
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