The on-going strikes here in France have unexpectedly brought me in a very interesting situation lending insight into a little part of Inge’s intellectual world – the part that concerns her perception of works in progress in our studio.

Paris being a mess these days made it an easy choice to work from home unless I have meetings to attend in places to where I need to fly – actually, right now I’m sitting in seat 4C en route to Rome writing on this blog.

Yes, modern telecommunication, the internet and email services make it possible to keep up with the world and the businesses in it, that concern me. So, recently that easy choice made me spend more time at home than usual, and being unusually occupied professionally at home – at Inge’s sewing desk.

You, who know her as a very prolific artist may ask why she isn’t busy at her desk quilting or otherwise busy designing new pieces of artwork? Well, she has indeed been busy, as you correctly expected – this time, however at the studio wall working on a piece with brushes, sponges, paint, etc.

Inge being busy at the studio wall and me working home are the clues to the insight I’ve gained. Sitting at her desk I experienced her vantage point as she usually looks up from her work to follow the work in progress on our studio wall.

I looked over my laptop as she looks over her sewing machine.

Following the progress on her piece in numerous brief glimpses during the day made me realize that she accumulates such glimpses and by day’s end crystallize them into an overall impression of the piece. Strengths and weaknesses become – through this kind of perceptual integration – clearer much earlier than I am used to, when preparing the foundation for a new piece of artwork.

It is this integration, I realized, that in the course of the day – or over some days – makes her capable of synthesizing her impressions and formulating suggestions for the ways forward with a confidence that always baffles me.

You can easily imagine that I’ve been wondering how I can apply this insight in our studio work. When the strikes are over I’ll be back to my commuting life and my contribution to our collaborative work in the studio will be back to normal. Moreover, realizing that Inge is a born analyst and I not steered my wondering in less ambitious but still constructive directions.

Here on the flight back from Rome, now in seat 2F, I know how I can apply my newly gained insight. I can do what has been preached to artists over a hundred generations – I can more frequently step back from my work at the studio wall and evaluate the impact on the overall piece of artwork of my latest intervention with brushes and paint.

Perhaps I can thereby – at day’s end – better follow Inge’s lines of thought and in a more constructive fashion discuss her suggestions for how to proceed with a project in progress.

And that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

With our recent reflections on diversity in and personal closure of Quilt Festival in Houston we may have left you with the question on what brings us to Houston in the first place, what is it that we like about the event?

Let’s share this with you a little and end the chronicle of this year’s trip to Houston by inviting you to help solving a mystery.

We of course feel a professional obligation to stay informed what regards the state of the quilting world – less in terms of merchandise than in the creative evolution of fellow quilters. Quilt Festival covers this broadly from traditional to avant garde – and what is in between. Whereas we would like to have seen more European works on display, we appreciate in particular the presence of Japanese works, as well as the opportunity to see works from other regions of the World. It is all about cross fertilisation.

We like meeting colleagues and friends related to our metier d’art, touching base with them again and exchanging views on the various topics that have occupied our minds since we met last.

We like meeting them on the show floor, in the merchants’ hall, at receptions and we really like meeting them in the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel after hours. Well, you can get a nice glass of wine elsewhere, but this bar seems during the days of Quilt Festival to function as a relaxed cross-field where people come and go. These meetings are rarely scheduled in advance. They just seem to happen with a charming lack of predictability.

We like closing the bar Saturday night, saying goodbye to the servants and continue discussing in good company and joyful spirit for another couple of hours – all for the purpose of facilitating the biological adjustment to next day’s European daytime, of course.

The mystery?

No, it is not related to a gruesome murder in aisle M on the show floor, or anything in that category. It is rather related to behaviour including a royal wave. It is related to the Tiara Parade!

For years we have not been able to figure out what makes 30 – 40 women, who we believe regard their quilting and art making with great seriousness, spend time to create the weirdest contraptions, put them on their heads and enter the Tiara Parade.

Disciplined, but under loads of laughter, they are called to the podium – one by one – to receive the applause of the audience as a judgement of the contraptions they are wearing. The more creative or fanciful, the higher the applause – and the higher the chances are to get to the final and win a tiara-related pin.

After 5 years we have not found an answer to what make them do this. Maybe there is a clue in one of my mother’s sayings, which in English would read something like this: “Keep your mind child-like – through the fight and the deed – till the end!”

Some theorists are of the opinion that to become a true artist – and true to yourself – you have to unlearn all the learnt and rediscover the childhood’s unbound sources of fantasy.

Is this what these women unknowingly are doing?

Note: If you do not know what I’m talking about, check this Tiara Parade slide show out.

On the day of leaving Quilt Festival, the Sunday, we usually profit from the fact that our flight back from Houston to Paris leaves in the afternoon allowing us to spend the morning for making our personal closure of the Quilt Festival.

We close by making a round in the convention centre having a chat and saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances, and by revisiting those exhibitions we found most interesting – either in terms of works we liked or works we found challenging and perhaps difficult to understand.

During this last round in the exhibitions we usually also challenge ourselves to choose that or the pieces we could imagine could be of interest having on our walls for a month or two, to engage with it and learn to know it or them better or simply for the sheer pleasure of being able to return to details several times.

In other words, during our round of closure we engage pretty much with the exhibited works at a personal level, which makes it a very intense and subjective experience.

The more objective and at-arms-length aspect of our closure round is the evaluation of the individual exhibitions in terms of coherence – But this is for another time to reflect on.

By showing old, traditional and contemporary quilts in a multitude of exhibitions the annual Quilt Festival in Houston provides for the visitors a genuine diversity, which is one of the aspects of going there that we usually appreciate. So when the stewards of Air France finally decided to show up at work and fly just one out of 8 flights in four days and that that particular flight happened to be “ours”, we could follow our Plan A and go to Texas.

It may appear odd that I in this blog entry do not focus on the various exhibitions per se, but more on a bi-product of them – the diversity. But this is an easily forgotten aspect of such a mega-event and that is a pity. It may hence serve a good purpose to point at this indirect source of inspiration. An inspiration which grows from walking from one exhibition to another – for example from an exhibition of old Amish/English quilts to a representative group of pieces from the Quilt National exhibition, which enjoys the reputation of showcasing the excellence in contemporary quiltmaking.

What a viewer in this case could bring with him or her from the old quilts to the contemporary ones is for example the sense of calmness, which often is an inherent basic factor in the “old” ones, and which often is a missing factor in the “modern” ones.

In reverse, a viewer could bring thoughts of innovation or evolution from an exhibition of contemporary pieces to an exhibition of so-called traditional works.

Such exchanges of thoughts in the minds of viewers can be very fruitful for individual and personal approaches to future works. They can also be challenging due to the fact that they invite to think different, invite to be bold enough to take steps in new directions with the risk of stepping outside the personal circle of comfort.

I guess that the morale that I’m passing on is this: Both the traditional quilter and the contemporary can gain by looking over the fence and try to analyze what “works” in the other category – all with a view to see if features there perhaps could improve, enhance, enrich the experience of viewing a piece of artwork from one’s own studio.

Mutual respect is not a bad thing at all…