Susan (Lucky) Shie and James Acord
"The Fridge / Emperor: Card #4 in The Kitchen Tarot."
82" h x 55" w.
Fabric, paint, mixed media embellishments. Mostly hand sewn and quilted. Hand pieced and appliqued. Airbrushed and brush painted. Two tooled and painted leather pies. Eleven painted tomato pincushions. Dishtowel. Polymer clay faces and eyes. Italian metal cross. Beads and shells. Buttons, Gemstones. Thimbles. Love Whammies. Two Chinese purses. Many pockets and shisha holes.
This quilt had three beginnings, which isn't like us! We like to think of ourselves as using what happens, and going with it. But the problem was deadlines for two earlier shows, and the quilt kept turning into other quilts for those obligations! Two nice pieces, but that didn't help the Dishtowel quilt!!!!!
So it wasn't til January 12, 1999, that the piece we finally made for The Dishtowel Quilt Project actually began to come together, as The Fridge / Emperor! Some of the pieces we used in it came back out of a cupboard, where we had put them, when the last robbery of the quilt took place. And some parts were from things in progress, sitting around the studio and house, being enlisted, as happens when a deadline is approaching too fast! But most of this quilt was made all new, starting in mid January. So it still took four months to finish, after starting it in January, 1998, when I issued the challenge to 35 artists, to make a quilt with this ugly, but loveable calendar dishtowel, "Mom's Kitchen," as its base.
Now you would think that if ever we would make a quilt about our mothers, this would be it. We have used this theme often, Jimmy and I! But the next Kitchen Tarot card quilt it was time to make was The Emperor, who in our deck, is the Fridge. It's a very masculine card. That is why the little painting of Jimmy is at the very top center. He is MY Emperor! Solid and cool, like the Fridge! And his manly cat, Willy Pendejo, is the lime green cat, standing in front of the red and pink fridge, with his 13 "Ring Tailed Galoot" rings on his tail. Jimmy has counted them.
There are four St. Quilta the Comforter quiltlets in the borders of this piece, and there are glitter painted tomato pincushions, spelling out "Mom's Kitchen," beside the refrigerator. Where there is a tomato pincushion, St. Quilta can spontaneously manifest, or so they say! (I invented St. Quilta, so I can say anything about her, when I want to!!)
There is one panel which is directly about my mother, Marie Shie. It is over halfway down the left side border panel. It's a green hand image, which I began last July, in 1998, when we thought Mom was dying of pneumonia. It is a small blessing panel for her, which I began work on, during that vigil.
The tiger backgrounds on the calendar month pockets are a reference to 1998 being the Year of the Tiger, which is my own year, in Chinese astrology. There are two heart panels which tell about what the tiger and its year stand for.
The actual refrigerator was begun as a painting demo at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in March, 99. We put the quilt in-progress up on a work wall there, and made starts of more panels for it, all that week. I had pictured a pink fridge, but got heavy handed while painting it, and it insisted on being red. All my hand embroidery was supposed to lighten it to pink, but the red is pretty persistent! So it reminds me of the old red beer fridge Kerr Grabowski had at Peters Valley's fiber studio on Thunder Mountain. And the shape of this fridge is modelled after my parents' faithful old Frigidaire, made in 1948, and still running fine, when they moved in with us in 1993! It weighed a ton, and you had to defrost it, so we didn't keep it. But now I really wish we had! Coulda at least used it to store paints or something! You had to close the door quietly and with the handle raised just so, or Dad would yell at you. Wonder if he remembers.
Jimmy made two beautiful exact replicas of the funky apple pie on the dishtowel, for this quilt, out of leather. And where the writing that I did is in cursive, Jimmy has sewn over my writing with freehand machine work, which is tricky to do. I surely can't do it! My hand work over the printed words takes so much longer, that any time Jimmy is willing to sew over my writing, I'll gladly do it in cursive! It is best to have some of both though, to make them set each other off. So we each sew some of the stories.
What else can I tell you? The tiny clay faces are ones I made of Cernit and Fimo, polymer clay. Haven't had time to make real ceramic stuff since starting the web site, almost two years ago! Want to get back to the mud clay tho! What a joy it is to work with, and it's way less polluting.
Oh, the two little apples, on either side of the number "4," below the Jimmy portrait, were sent early on, in this project, to me from Patricia Ciricillo. She used some in her own quilt and sent me three. One is at large right now, coz the cats took them all to play with! They're made of PolarTec. So that is a connection to another Dishtowel artist, and there is a very small patch of handwoven pink wool, a scrap of a vest made by Cynthia Litchfield, also in the Dishtowel group. Another connection! And a white gemstone heart sewn on, is from Anita Corum!
I have felt very, very connected to many of the artists I invited to be in this show, as we worked and I communicated with them, to prepare for the show at Mansfield Art Center and the online show I have been making. The diaries have trickled in to me, along with the photos, slides, statements, resumes, etc. Every one of these artists really worked hard and did wonderful work, with such a humble dishtowel calendar on gauzy cotton as the spark for their creation. I am so amazed and grateful to all of them!
I hope you will have time to really LOOK at these pieces, and read the statements, and look through the diaries. There were people whose memories were so tender or raw, in digging into their personal relationships with moms or kitchens that they almost couldn't do it. there were artists whose mothers had died, and this quilt became the first art creation to express their grief.
Jimmy's mom, Wanda or Mama Wanda, as I call her, is young and vital. She now listens to two reggae tapes, which she bought from the band who played on the carribean cruise she went on this Spring. She has begun to share our twilight walks with us and our dog Hattie. We are so lucky to have her near us and in good health! We will be putting Mama Wanda in quilts for a long time to come!
My mother sits or lays where the nurses put her, in her Alzheimer's stupor at West View Manor, a nursing home in Wooster. Dad lives there, too. He's much more clear, tho fading. I feel I only can have the strength to deal with my mother's disease and situation, because I feel that her soul knows exactly what's going on. She can come over here, to my house, and be with me, as she sits there in her wheelchair, and watches me work. And when I am with her, I feel she knows it and is made happier.
I have so many good memories of my mother and her kitchen, I could make quilts and art about it the rest of my life. Memories entwining Mom, me, our daughter Gretchen, Mama Wanda, our sisters, and our nieces, in all our kitchens. With all our nurturing. And with Saint Quilta the Comforter. And that is what I intend to do, with The Kitchen Tarot.
--Lucky Magnolia
© 1999 Susan Shie and James Acord. Turtle Moon Studios. 2612 Armstrong Dr, Wooster, OH. 44691-1806. 330-317-2167. susan@turtlemoon.com.
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