Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Bitta Ankenbauer surface design course

The exhibition I visited this weekend was quite a special one. Two years ago I met Britta Ankenbauer in Luxembourg, this year she brought an exhibition of her pupils. The course "surface design" she teaches seems to be popular, she is busy with her third group at the moment. Her students are not only quilters, she is sure that the members of the interdisciplinary groups can enrich each other by exchanging techniques and knowledge of different materials. They are very different in spite of the fact that Britta has her own distinctive style. It happens all the time that during a class of a well-known artist, his/her students are supposed to make quilt in a style of a teacher or simply copy one of the teachers works. For Britta the goal is not to teach a number of techniques, but inspire to render personal experience to a piece of fiber art and it doesn't matter if it is three dimensional, mixed media or batik without batting and quilting. According to the rule of the Module 2 I have to choose 5 pieces of the exhibition to analyze. I haven't chosen an exhibition to write about yet, but it has become a habit to select 5 works every time I go to any exhibition. Probably a good idea, helps to remember the most impressive ones.

The most impressive (for different reasons) 5 of Britta's exhibition (I didn't include her own works)





Saturday, May 12, 2012

Veldhoven 2012

Veldhoven quilt show is one of my favourites, because it's in May, where quilt shows are still scarce, because it's not far from my home and because it's democratic and even novice can be accepted though the standards are high. This year it was quite painful to see the competition quilts hanging in the air in such a way that the back of the bigger quilt served as a background for the smaller one. Needless to say they didn't match. I understand that the space is an issue but some contributors were very unhappy with the way their quilts were presented. This quilt acquired a white frame



this one-polka dot blue "sky" around



These three were visually "extended" in length, and the hexagon shape of the middle one became a square





The advantage of such presentation is, however, that one could step backwards to look at the quilt from some distance, last year it was impossible, the rigid screens with quilts formed narrow passages.




I didn't have time to have a closer look at all the competition quilts, but composition of some of them (IMHO) needed more attention. I would have loved to meet the authors and ask them about their choices and about other options they considered.







This quilt was made by Corinne Zambeek Thanks to these quilts I can't wait to go to Veldhoven next year.



Maya Khaimovitch