"NEO Buddha" Full view and statement.
by Susan Shie Contact me
back to 2005 Gallery page ////// detail view
"NEO Buddha" Full view. 2005. 56"h x 57"w.
Begun February 15, 2005, Finished March 6, 2005. #294
Materials: White cotton, fabric paint. Airpen and hand painted. Machine crazy grid quilted. One Green Temple Buddha Boy bead.
Processes: Whole cloth painted quilt. Hand and airpen painted. All lines machine crazy grid sewn. No measuring. Tons of diary written straight onto the painting. This piece is much more a diary quilt painting than an art quilt.
Statement written March 6, 2005: When our daughter Gretchen and her husband Michael found out they were having a baby in 2004, I knew I should become the nanny for this child. Jimmy didn't like the idea, but I pushed and pulled and found ways to make it happen. Now in 2005, since Nov 1, 2004 really, I've got a granny pad in Lakewood, two blocks from the kids' place, and I go over there four or five days a week to take care of Eva, while Gretchen works at the art museum in Registration.
So now I have a double life: I live at home in Wooster two to three days a week, always weekends. And I live in Lakewood more. I have stuff in my apartment to make art with, to do my paperwork with, and to live with. Doubles of some things, others I carry back and forth, and some are just in one place, and I wait til I get there to work with them. I am trying to do art full time yet, while being a full time nanny as well.
This piece is my initial diary of what it's like to live across Northeast Ohio, commuting thanks to Jimmy, since I don't drive. About one hour each way, providing that the weather is good. It was pretty bad this winter, and winter ain't overwith yet!
I don't go out much, but have made a few new friends in Cleveland and already had some. Some of my Wooster girlfriends like Renie and Pat and her YaYas have been up and have helped me some with moving and getting back and forth, when Jimmy can't do it.
Eva is the spittin' image of my baby Gretchen, so often I get a déjà vu while taking care of her. Only I had Gretchen in 1970, and I'm a lot more both tired and wise than I was then. So it balances out, I suppose. Gretchen and I both have the advantage that we're not taking care of a baby 24 hours a day, so we both get replenished, hopefully. OK, we're both exhausted, but Eva isn't!
I wanted to use light Spring colors in this piece, but when I made the two houses (Wooster and Lakewood) bright dark orange, then everything had to go brighter, darker, to balance. I did all the writing after the painting, in stages. As usual, I wrote whatever came into my head, and kept pulling It back to the subject, if I could. The Gates in Central Park went up Feb 12 and started going down this last week, early March, or was it really late Feb? Anyhow, Robin Schwalb, my dear Brooklyn buddy who works at The Met, got me a swatch of the Gates fabric from a monitor (this was legit!) and I was so swooning over the "saffron" color of the gates, that I chose to have this color very strong in my piece. The sewing machine thread is Christo and Jeanne-Claude's saffron in color. Or close!
I have slept under this little piece, even though it isn't really big enough for a bed, and I don't consider it a quilt. I think of it as a diary quilt painting, which is what I dubbed my work way back in the mid 80s, when I was doing an MFA thesis at Kent State School of Art. I think this is really much more like a diary quilt painting than those things were, and it sure has a ton more writing on it, thanks to my airpen!
Happy Spring! Susan, March 6, 2005, in the sun and 48º in scenic Wooster, waiting for Jimmy to get home from his first bamboo fly rod making class in North Carolina, at John C Campbell Folk School. You can read all about that on NEO Buddha, coz Jimmy was gone ten days, including today, and I really missed him.
Detail of "NEO Buddha."
Note: "NEO Buddha" is in the John M Walsh III Art Quilt Collection.
Read the article "John M. Walsh III: Passionate Patron of the Art Quilt," by Robert Shaw. This article, on the Studio Art Quilt Associates web site, and published in the January, 2006 issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, mentions that Jack Walsh now owns "NEO Buddha."
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
Quilts and Paintings
Susan Shie and James Acord
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