Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Hot and Exhausted

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Hot and Exhausted

I am pleased to say that my latest work, "Hot and Exhausted" (made to meet a challenge "The Hole Thing") was judged by artist Cheryl Fausel this past Saturday, November 4, 2006 at the Ft Myers, Florida, Alliance for the Arts. The show was sponsored by my art guild, Art Quilters Unlimited. (www.artquiltersunlimited.com)
There were many beautiful quilts so I felt quite honored that mine was chosen First Place.
It will, I believe, be displayed on an internet site and will be open to anyone who wishes to view all the entries and vote for their favorite.

My depiction of earth is based on a EUMETSAT image of air mass satellite image of earth as focused on Africa and southern Europe. EUMETSAT is Europe's conterpart to the United States' NOAA.

My earth is composed of yarn and outlined in cheesecloth, all of which I hand-dyed. I used the yarn in a "coiled and sew" technique to evoke the fluidity of the air masses. The representation of earth is elevated 3/4" from the background of the quilt and is surrounded by the orange/red cheesecloth to indicate climate warming. My hand-dyed and pieced cotton fabric (the sun's rays) and hand-dyed batting (for both the miniature cars and for the exposed black batting of the cars' exhasuts) complete the work's composition.

I obtained written permission from EUMETSAT to represent their images in my work; the date depicted is September 4, 2006 and the exposed white batting on the earth's image indicates convective waves rolling off Africa, one of which I believe later became Hurricane Gordon.

To see EUMETSAT's real time satellite air mass images, which are breathtaking, you can veiw them at:
http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/SDDI/cgi/listImages.pl?m=prod,a=1,sa=8,pr=RGB,f=1,c=AIR,se=0,n=24,d=1,v=400,pp=0,t=200608302200#controls

The "toy" cars respresent our child-like oblivion to the consequences of burning fossil fuels. The cars' exhausts, shown as rips or tears in the black silk dupioni background, expose the dyed blackish gray batting and indicate the effect we all have on our atmosphere and, ultimately, on our climate.

I would love any and all comments about the art quilt and it's message.

Patricia Anderson Turner
November 8, 2006