"Guenveur and Madeleine: 5 of Potholders (coins) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Guenveur and Madeleine: 5 of Potholders (coins) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2022. 60"h x 63"w. inventory #523. Peace Cozy #86.
chose tarot card 4-30-22, made sketches on paper 5-2 to 6-11-22, quilt made 6-9 to 8-3-22.
Many large detail images follow the artist's statement below.
I am a social activist painter and fiber artist.
I airbrush whole cloth works which I then sew. My artwork and writing
are all spontaneous first drafts on the cloth.
Materials:
white kona-like cotton from Test Fabrics, airbrush paint, Posca
paint markers, Aurifil cotton machine
thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread,
one
Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Pellon bamboo and organic cotton batting.
Lunn Fabrics hand-made batiks on backing and border.
Techniques:
Whole cloth painting. Black line freehand drawing and color areas painted with
Aztek double-action airbrush and airbrush paint. Smaller writing done with Posca
paint markers, because my wrists were both broken over time, and I no longer have the strength to
use my airpen. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching of perle
cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
My statement about this art quilt:
Susan Shie. Turtle Moon Studios.
2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, OH 44691 susanshie@gmail.com 330-317-2167 www.turtlemoon.com
Guenveur
Burnell and Madeleine Albright died four days apart in March, 2022 (Madeleine
on March 23 and Guenveur on March 27) and I wish they had known each
other. Humanitarians, who had both lived long, productive lives, they cared so much
for all people to live in peace and harmony.
On
April 30, 2022, I pulled the Tarot card, the 5 of Coins, which is Potholders in my Kitchen Tarot deck, for this quilt’s
making. In the Tarot deck, Fives are
fast-changing energy and Potholders (Coins) are the suit of love and kindness,
as well as money. I’m not very good at interpreting Tarot cards, but I'll say
this: Madeleine and Guenveur were both extremely kind, caring people, and they
both dealt with a lot of fast-changing problems. They both deeply wanted and worked for Peace. They were both prolific writers, and Guenveur
was also a brilliant artist.
After
I did a lot of research, including reading many of Albright’s books and
Guenveur’s blog, called Kent Kapers, I did a lot of sketches, to figure out how
to show these two women working together, even though they never met. I settled on having them cook up some Peace
Soup on their Peace Stove, and put the Statue of Liberty behind Guenveur, and
the Statue of Freedom (she’s on top of the Capitol Dome in DC), behind
Madeleine. So those sheroic statues became their muses here. Then I ended up putting a
Peace Dove on top of the stove, so that, where I’d intended for the two women
to be looking at each other, they suddenly were both looking at that dove. And then I wrote “Love One Another” on the
Dove – That just popped into my head right then. I loved it! I think I’ve never written that on my art
before. It sums up beautifully what we all need to do, to make Life so much better. Why is it so hard for us to do??
I
wrote biographies of both women on this quilt, gathering my info on Madeleine
from many sources. But my bio of
Guenveur is largely from her daughter Sally Burnell, who wrote most of it for me. And I put Guenveur’s cat, Sixto, below the
stove. I listed all of Madeleine’s books
below her bio. And I added my own little
bio of the first woman member of a US Cabinet, Frances Perkins, in the skillet
in the bottom right corner. She was
FDR’s Secretary of Labor, another wonderfully strong woman!
I write a haiku, as I think it up,on each of my drawings, and I’ve done that for many years now. Recently, I started writng them also on my quilts. Here’s the haiku I wrote in the very bottom
left corner of this quilt, on the Statue of Liberty:
Roe
v Wade is gone.
What
can we do to save it?
Are
women not free???
That
is the last part I wrote about the SCOTUS ending Roe v Wade on June 24,
2022. I wrote the rest of that terrible
story all over the Statue of Liberty in this artwork.
Madeleine
was a foreign policy genius, our UN ambassador under President Clinton, and then
he made her the first US woman Secretary of State. Guenveur was an artist, political activist,
and worked to help many troubled people, through her social work in Kent, Ohio.
The agency she worked for, Townhall ll, was formed to help people cope with the
trauma of the murders of students at Kent Sate in 1970, and that’s when
Guenveur went to work there.
I
wrote about their amazing lives here and drew them cooking up Peace for the
world, together. From May through August, 2022, while I was making this quilt,
a lot of things went on, that they both would have cared immensely about: the ongoing
War in Ukraine; the ending of Roe v Wade; and the polarized politics of our
country, leading up to the Midterm elections.
Hearing the
daily news, I often wonder: “What would Guenveur and Madeleine say about this?
I
teach a class called “Lucky Drawing” in a private Facebook group classroom,
just for adult women, and it’s all about freehand drawing in your own natural
style, working with themes I cook up, but the students can change all they want. I began teaching month-long classes there in
January, 2015, giving 8 classes a year.
I
was honored by having Guenveur Burnell in 7 of my online classes, before her
eyesight got so bad, she couldn’t draw anymore.
What a joy it was, to have her in my classes!!!
I
also have taught week-long Turtle Art Camps at my home studio in Wooster, Ohio,
since 1994. But that has been curtailed by the pandemic, though my online
classes never stopped, with my 66th drawing class coming up from Feb
19 to Mar 20, after my last class ended on Feb 6.
If
you’re curious about my teaching or buying my art, please contact me. Thanks a lot!
Power
to the People.
–
Susan Shie, Wooster, Ohio
Feb 17, 2023
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On Feb 17, 2023, Sally Burnell wrote these thoughts about her mother, Guenveur Burnell:
"If there is one good word I could use to sum up the
arc of my mother’s 94 year life, it would be “fierce”. She lived life
with a fierce devotion to good causes, to justice, to equality, and a
fierce devotion to the English language. Nothing upset her more than bad
writing and poor grammar. She was a fierce critic of such things. She
also hated off key singing. She was stubborn, opinionated, brilliant,
always seemed to know that she was probably the smartest person in the
room, and she had a devotion to interesting and novel words to use in
her adult spelling group.
She was also quite witty and she and her sister Mary Lucille Walker were
absolutely incorrigible when they were together: laughter abounding. I
loved being in their presence whenever they were together. Irish humor
shone through in them. They were natural storytellers extraordinaire and
could spin fascinating yarns. I miss my aunt, too, she predeceased my
mother by about a year.
"I’m so grateful to see this stunningly beautiful work of art that’s a
lovely tribute to my mother and Secretary Albright, women of the same
“Greatest Generation” who were shaped by the Depression and World War II
and took those lessons forward. I hope they’ve had a chance to meet if
there’s anything resembling an afterlife. My mother deeply admired
people who worked to make change and for the better. She sure left her
mark on our world.
I miss her. Fiercely. 💔
"Especially as I have battled my way through advanced stage breast cancer these past seven months. What would Mama say?
"Voting was a BIG DEAL to our mother: her own mother was born at a time
when HER own mother couldn’t vote. Grandma turned 21 the year that the
19th amendment was ratified and was an early member of the League of
Women Voters.
"Participation in democracy was a huge deal for our family. Our mother
was heavily involved in local politics with other female friends like
the inimitable Harriett Begala, a force of nature in her own right. It
was a given that we would vote even during off year elections even if
there was just one local issue on the ballot.
The vote mattered everything to my mother. And to her mother before her.
I’m only the second generation of my family born with that
Constitutional right to the ballot box. That’s always kept me humbled
and grounded and determined to have my say each time an election
happens. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from voting. Neither could it keep
my mother from doing likewise.
"Astrologically, my mother was a Leo. She was fierce like a lioness and I
always saw her as being just that, someone with the quality of a lion.
She would defend to the death things and beliefs she held dear. “Fierce”
is the perfect way I could aptly sum up my mother’s long life in one
very descriptive word. She very much reminded me of all of the qualities
of a lioness that she truly was as one born under the sign of Leo."
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
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Susan Shie
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This page updated by Susan Shie, December 10, 2023.