We got our quilts back from the MAQS where they had been displayed in the exhibition “On a Grand Scale”, a dialogue exhibition with works of Florida based artist Eleanor McCain. They returned in the same two robust boxes in which we had sent them, so there was a little touch of déjà vu already when the FedEx man stepped out of the lift with the boxes on his sack truck and approached our front door.

But the interesting part did not begin before the boxes got opened and I (yes. I did the logistics) took the quilts out for inspection and storage. The interesting part is this defile of works after they have been away for a while as they pass through my hands, the unfolding of them and instant recognition of the piece.

This familiarity with each of them must of course be unique for Inge and me, since they were created by our minds and hands, and it is incredible how fast the eyes track details and the brain recall how these details were deliberated over beforehand and sometime the problems of creating them as we had envisaged.

Some days later 3 boxes arrived from Houston, bringing back the 2 of the 7 works we had exhibited in the various exhibitions at Quilt Festival (the remainder 5 are all going on tours) plus one that had finished its touring. It is only a couple of weeks ago since we last saw the two most recently exhibited so they were rather fresh in mind. But what the unpacking of these boxes brought instead was the instant recollection of many of the conversations we had with viewers in front of our works while they were on display in Houston.

I consider this a very nice and rich experience which complements the interesting aspects of unpacking.

“But Steen”, you may say “You did not make it to MAQS and hence did not have such conversations with the visitors to the dialogue exhibition there. So did you miss this nice and rich experience of recalling conversations with visitors there?”

Yes, I am missing them and would very much have liked being there. But you know what? The curator at MAQS, Judy Schwender has compensated this by sending us a splendid photographic coverage of the entire exhibition, and slide-showing the images gives a very good impression of the whole set up and a good idea of how it must have been walking around in the exhibition area.

Recently, when in Houston at the Quilt Festival a representative of the publishing company Nihon Vogue Ltd. brought us a copy of the 1^st issue of their new magazine “Quilt World”. We knew that a copy was in the mail to our home address but we had not received a copy before leaving France. At Quilt Festival it happened that people we met referred to that new magazine – in particular to an article featuring Inge, how she worked and how our teamwork in the studio unfolds. Understandably we were curious to see how this new magazine presented itself.

We knew that the article was laid out well in terms of text and images. But it is not the same as seeing it in print, getting a feel for how images were reproduced and how the article per se had found its place in the overall flow of the magazine.

When it comes to printing and reproduction of images, I truly am a nit-picker – have always been and cannot help it. I knew that the printing quality of the catalogue for the 8^th Quilt Nihon Exhibition was superb, but one thing is a catalogue for a specific prestigious exhibition, another thing is the printing of a monthly magazine. 

I was not disappointed with what met my eyes, and that was a pleasure in itself. But I have too admit that the closest I come to reading Japanese is the English version of “I am a Cat” by Soseki Natsume, which I’m currently reading – so what regards the written content of the article I have to resort to the knowledge of the input for the article provided by us in English.

For the time being, that is. Because next time we meet with our Japanese friends or those knowledgeable of the Japanese language, I will kindly ask them to read it for me in English, slowly – and I will leisurely lean back and enjoy every word of it!

Oh, I forgot to mention – with a smile – that the editor had included an image from our blog where the little fellow is walking in the Pennines. I found that amusing, and I’m sure he’s very proud of being featured nation-wide in Japan…

Throughout last week we have been as busy as politicians in an election campaign with all our doings at Quilt Festival in Houston. You know, visiting with many of our friends who also attend this event, sitting in on lectures, going to receptions, checking out new materials on the market, discussing future projects and – of course – enjoying the many different exhibits of traditional and contemporary quilts.

We consequently had very little time to meet the public, which is important for us. So many of the visitors walking through the exhibitions have a profound interest in what they see, and given the opportunity they would ask all kinds of questions about a quilt that has attracted their attention. They would ask questions about how it was made, which materials and technique were applied and so on.

Well, most of this visitors can read on a information sheets, but it is not the same compared to entering into a dialogue and ask those questions directly to the maker(s) of the quilts and perhaps also get the story behind it or be pointed to a given detail which may not be apparent at a first glance.

Such dialogues enriches their visit to the exhibition and ours as well, because we get this additional dimension of a personal contact with the viewers of our works and learn which impact they have.

We love these dialogues with the visitors and regret that we have not had all the time we could have wished to meet them this time. In contrast to politicians we cannot cover our absence with TV-spots.