For a few years, I’ve belonged to a wonderful group of seven fiber artists from the Charlotte area, Fiber Art Options. It includes me, Nancy G. Cook, K. Grace Howes, Deborah M. Langsam, Janet A. Lasher, Linda Stegall, and P.J. Howard. This weekend, our group exhibition, “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched,” opens at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden (DSBG), near Charlotte. This is my first group show, and I’m pretty excited!
For a while, we’ve been wanting to have a group exhibition to show our work, and about a year ago, we decided on an approach: We would all take photos of orchids, mainly at DSBG, and then create a series of pieces based on these photos. The Garden has an “Orchid Spectacular” event that runs from January through March, and loves working with groups on events that will bring people to DSBG and tie in with their events.
Our goals were to increase our production, to work in a series (which several of us had not done before) and to create an exhibition that could travel to different places after its initial showing at Daniel Stowe. Lots of cities have orchid shows, so our exhibition would be appealing to many different venues.
I love creating quilts from photos I take, so I was very excited about working in this concept. I chose three subjects, partly for their flamboyant color, and decided that I would create each piece as a wholecloth painted quilt. This is something I’ve only started doing in the past year or so, and I wanted to improve my skills. Continue Reading…
