There are usually two ways to approach a new book – whether just pulled out of the shelves in the book store or delivered from an internet site. There are those who in a puritan way start turning over the leaves, one by one, from the beginning. Then there are those who flick through the book in the reverse order, controlling the speed with the thumb. Whereas Inge by and large belongs to the first category I am definitely within the latter. I typically first note how the book feels in the hand, its weight and tactile touch of the surface. After having briefly judged the visual impression of the cover I do the thing which puts me in the thumb-flicking category. I start flicking backwards and stop here and there when something attracts my eyes – an image or a caption, or specifics in the layout. 

I behaved no different when I encountered a book on Danish Art Quilts. Its title was exactly that, just in its Danish version: “Danske Artquilts”. It was edited by Bettina Andersen with contributions from 21 members of QuilteQunstnerne – a group of art quilters – and introduced to the market in a soft cover version just in time for the last Christmas shopping sprees. 

I noticed that the book was pleasant to touch, the weight signalled good quality glossy paper and the front cover was lively and inviting. Then I started my habitual behaviour of flicking through it backwards and quickly noticed that it was illustrated throughout with photographs in vivid colours and graphical drawings. Apparently the idea was to introduce the concept of quilts as an art form through this group of art quilters, presenting one quilt per artist with her (yes, they are all women) own explanation of where the inspiration for this particular piece came from. Each section also included a brief auto-biography and finally a sub-section on how the piece was constructed.  

Having gotten this overview I started to note the selection and photographic quality of the art quilts, the applied fonts, as well as the layout. Whereas Bettina Andersen has strived to maintain a serious style in her introduction to the book, it was obvious that the publisher had had a finger in the pie what regards the font selection, framing and background colours of captions, etc. The publisher’s motto must have been: See what I can do with my marvellous publishing tool! The majority of the art quilts represented in the book being very colourful and vivid in their designs, the readers certainly would have preferred this techno show-off and its resulting visual confusion to be left out. 

The intention, stated in the introduction by Bettina Andersen, was to introduce quilts as an art form by allowing the readers to get “under the skin” of the featured art quilters through individually written auto-biographies and explanations of where they had found the inspiration for their particular pieces. This idea came through well and must be said to be successfully implemented. It was interesting to get a feeling for the diversity in observance and sensitivity across this group of art quilters. There is one particular aspect of the book which I had to discuss with Inge. I did not understand why on Earth this book, the chief purpose of which is to introduce quilts as an art form, included 21 “How-to” sections? 

Inge explained that publishers of quilting books in general suffer from the syndrome that “How-to” sections help selling the books better.It may be true and measurable in dollars, euros and yen from a marketing point of view and relevant for books on how to produce a quilt – when written by one author only (21 individual contributions are bound to create confusion). But this is not the theme here. Here we are talking about a book introducing the artistic aspects of contemporary quilting – and I challenge the point of view that “How-to” sections improve sales of this category of books. On the contrary, “How-to” sections inevitably move the book from the art category to that of craft. 

I would have preferred that the book had remained on the art-line instead of mixing in production issues. In the established art world you do not – when providing an introduction to a group of artists – elaborate on how each artist places his brush-strokes. Imagine the “How-to” sections replaced by sections on how the 21 artists worked intellectually on interpreting the impressions they got from their sources of inspiration and their thoughts on how to translate this to the textile medium. Then we would have gone even deeper under the skin of the art quilters. And this is what Bettina Andersen’s book is about, in my view – through examples to introduce the phenomenon of Art Quilts to those, who do not know it yet and maybe inspire them to dig deeper into the subject – or to inspire quilters who would like to make an art quilt themselves without becoming a copy cat. 

If I should conclude in some way, I would say that the book leaves a positive impression and that Bettina Andersen has succeeded in introducing the concept of art quilts through the contributions of her colleagues in the art quilt group “QuilteQunstnerne”. The idea of sharing the artists’ ways of finding inspiration was very good. I just wanted to see more of this, digging deeper into individual thoughts on inspirational digestion and artistic interpretation – but Bettina Andersen certainly took a step in the right direction for books of this sort.

As I read the book I gradually built up an impression of the spread in individuality amongst the 21 art quilters represented by a piece each. That was interesting – and it left of course a question open: Is there, despite their individuality, an artistic coherence across the group? 

Inge and I are looking forward to seeing works of “QuilteQunstnerne” this summer. They will be exhibiting in the historic tower “Rundetårn’ (The Round Tower) in the centre of Copenhagen. The exhibition is called “Tekstile Tegn & Tanker” (Approx. “Textile Symbols and Thoughts”) and runs from 7 July – 12 August 2007. We are curious to see if we find the answer to the question of artistic coherence across the group!  Title of Book: Danske Artquilts. Editor: Bettina Andersen  

Published 2006 by Akacia. ISBN: 87-7847-097-8 

Exhibition “Tekstile Tegn & Tanker”:

 http://www.rundetaarn.dk/dansk/udstillinger/07quilt.html 

Someone voiced the theory – it was during a dinner in Lyon – that onetime successful artists gradually could develop a fear of submitting proposals for exhibitions – a fear of rejection or a fear of maybe not winning a price if the exhibition has this additional competitive feature. Interesting thought. 

Could this be the reason why Inge and I do not submit proposals for this year’s Quilt 2007 – the most prominent exhibition in the UK at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham? No, it is not. 

For some years we have deliberately not sought participation in this exhibition. Not because of fear of rejection or not winning – not at all.

It is primarily because  we are required to send our piece of artwork to Birmingham in the UK for the jurying process – secondarily because we do not agree with the return shipment policy, which imposes excessive costs for the applicants. 

A good piece of artwork is a good piece of artwork – in real life as well as on a digital image.  A good design always holds!

Why is it then that the Birmingham show organizers want to have the pieces in their hands for the initial filtering process, when some of the most prestigious exhibitions the world over in this kind of art (e.g. Nihon, Quilt National and Visions) can jury from images and are embracing modern technology to doing so? 

Could the answer be that members of their jury “… leading figures drawn from the broad art world, art & textile education and the media …” have problems evaluating art from images only? If they have, then they ought to change attitude. Because today you do not require artists to ship their works across the world for the jurying process! When other juries drawn broadly from the art world could change, why is this not possible in
Birmingham? 

“Oh”, they say, “But if your artwork is not accepted for our prestigious Quilt 2007 exhibition, then you can opt for a transfer of it to the non juried group of exhibitions. And we will tell no one that you had applied for the top exhibition in the first place!” 

 ”What?”

It just does not work that way. If artists know that they have produced a very good piece of artwork they certainly do not want to see it lose its virginity in a melange of styles and quality – and on top of this see it lose its eligibility for future competitions! Just like a wine-grower who would hate to see his vin-de-tête end up in a coupage instead of shining on the world scene as a millésieme in competitions for silver and gold medals. 

We are not the only ones curiously reading the yearly letter of invitation and rules for the Birmingham exhibition to see if the organizers have gotten it. So far they have not. Sadly enough – because it is basically very good and sound idea to stage a highly profiled international art exhibition at global level in Europe. The potential is there, we believe, but to fully exploit it the Birmingham organizers need to modernize regulation and procedures, embrace modern technology and reduce cost and risks for the artists – always keeping in mind that serious artists chose their exhibitions very carefully. 

Whereas Inge by and large remains occupied in the Art-world, I move in and out of it. When I move out of it, then I move into another world of international cooperation on research and development of space systems. The exploitation of such systems can be entirely scientific to learn more about the moons and the stars in outer space, alternatively they can be used to look the other way – to look down on the Earth to get global and regional views on the environment, natural behaviour of rivers and seas, crop monitoring, and many other aspects of what is going on, where we and the other citizens of the World live. Space systems can also facilitate navigation, positioning and timing applications.

As you can imagine, such systems are very complex and very expensive and are often the results of international cooperation. You can also imagine that establishing agreements for international cooperation of this scale at bi- or multi-lateral levels inevitably require more than engineering skills, and now you do not need much imagination to figure out that many of my colleagues are lawyers.

We discuss, draft and negotiate such agreements with the involved parties, a process often consuming a lot of time and a lot of paper. And all this paper is there to hold all the words the parties have found necessary to cover the overall purpose of the cooperation and their mutual interests. So you can imagine that I have seen many “whereas”, “considering”, “having regard”, “taking note”, “reaffirming”, “agree” etc. starting paragraphs.

There is a reason behind every paragraph, for example to state financial contributions, to take care of liabilities or intellectual property rights. But I am sure that you will show understanding for me, when I say that my artist-half sometime sets in and make me wonder if this or that was actually necessary or whether we are in a hair-splitting exercise.

My lawyer colleagues patiently explain me that we are not.

By now, you may believe me if I say that I have seen quite some legal formulations in my time and that I sometimes have been surprised that something was an issue at all and not given by default. I thought I had seen a lot – until I recently read a loan agreement for an image of one of our quilts to a quilting magazine!

I understand that we need to allow the editor freedom in terms of layout and grant permission to publication, and on the other hand protect our copyrights. This is routine and requires a few paragraphs – I thought…

But this loan agreement included 10 lines and more than 150 words assuring that Inge and I would not claim pension rights or employment benefits from the publishing company!

We would never – not even in our weirdest dreams – imagine that having one of our artworks published in a quilting magazine would give pension rights or allow us to take a swim in the publishing company’s pool, if it had one.

How has it come that far?

An artist wanted recently to propose some of her artworks for an international exhibition, for which images of the proposed pieces had to be submitted in digital form, which in principle was fine, but – a resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi) was required! 

The artist had an ordinary compact camera, which – as such cameras do these days -produce images of given dimensions depending on its image sensor and the JPG-compression settings., which may be influenced by the user. Such dimensions can for example be 640 x 480 pixels if a small file size is wanted or larger file sizes of 2816 x 2112 pixels, or higher on  more sophisticated compact cameras, if more information is desired. So, how to relate to the request for 300 ppi? 

Well, the artist did not know – so, being a good soldier and eager to propose her pieces for the exhibition, she went to a professional photographer with her artwork and paid him to produce images at 300 ppi resolution. She could subsequently email the 300 ppi image file to the organizers.   

Was this detour via the professional photographer necessary at all? If only for making a 300 ppi image file the answer is “Probably not!” Were 300 ppi images required for the jurying process? The answer is “Probably not!”. Was the 300 ppi image file required for the printing purposes the organizers may have thought of when specifying the requirements for applications for the exhibition? The answer is “Probably not, but this depends on the physical size of the printed image envisaged for the exhibition catalogue or other related publications”.  Now, how comes that the answers above are not more precise? The reason is that the notion of “ppi” only can be meaningful when associated with a physical size – in inches or centimetres. As simple as that! 

We have earlier reflected on requirements for jurying purposes and suggested to limit the resolution requirement to 72 ppi, because screens and projectors typically do not provide higher resolution.

This is true, but our argument was still flawed by a notion of “ppi”. To make life easier for everyone, and to eliminate any doubt as to what is required, organizers should specify dimensions in pixels only – and nothing else! 

If the purpose is to cover the jurying process only, then the dimensions of the projector/screen should govern the requirement. Projectors sold today typically display images with resolutions of 1400 x 1020 pixels – older ones with less, and ordinary screens typically display 1280 x 1024 pixels. Images of these dimensions are achievable by compact cameras and will create files of 400 – 800 kbytes depending on the camera’s JPG-compression. If the purpose is to cover printing as well, and the organizers envisage printing good quality images at post card size (approx. 6 x 4 inches) then they should require images with a resolution of no more than 1600 x 1200 pixels. This corresponds, by the way to 266 ppi horizontally, and is largely sufficient for most exhibition printing purposes. Images of these dimensions are also achievable by compact cameras and will create files of 500 – 1000 kbytes depending on the camera’s JPG-compression.   As you have noticed, the two examples above specify unambiguously what is required by the artists in terms of image resolution. Simple! 

If organizers feel it is necessary to provide the jurors details of the proposed artworks, then they should request images of sections of the artwork, rather than wanting gigantic image files for jurors to scroll around in. Jurors do not need that.  As said before, organizers should realistically evaluate their needs and set requirements accordingly, and prepare for the influx of files to their email-boxes. Now, just to round this reflection in our blog off, let me share a principal opinion with you – I know that Inge is in agreement – Exhibition organizers should – when it comes to printing – not leave it to the individual artists to produce the images. It ought to be done by a professional photographer using the same camera for the entire batch and post-processing the images using calibrated equipment. 

I can understand if shoe-string budget organizers cannot afford professional support and have to rely on the artists to provide the images for the envisaged printing. The organizers ought in this case also to be realistic in their requirements for digital images – and on top of that be aware that they cannot control the colour correctness, irrespective of how many paragraphs they spend in the application forms to say that manipulation is a no-no. A fact is that compact cameras will apply their brand-specific image processing with variations across the brands providing warmer or cooler images. The lighting conditions will vary from artist to artist as well. Finally, images shot in the RAW-format inevitably will be processed anyway. 

In conclusion, this week’s message is directed to organizers of exhibitions of artwork/quilts to specify image requirements in pixel dimensions (i.e. number of pixels horizontally and number of pixels vertically, maybe with a maximum limit in either direction) – and be realistic doing so.