Big News!

First, an update on the 27 dresses….

I will say, for all my complaining, I am actually enjoying this, I’m learning a lot, since prom gowns are not my specialty, I’m fascinated by what industry uses as stiffening agents, and I’ve discovered heavy gauge fishing line can be sewn into the edge of ruffles to make them stand away from the body.  Who knew…

Believe it or not, I’m just about to the half way point of the alterations.  It has gone much quicker than I expected, and without having to make everything perfect, I’m actually enjoying speed sewing!  Again, who knew…

But the BIG news came today in an envelope from the HGA.  First, some background…

I have applied to exhibits off and on for most of my professional career as an artist, and I can wallpaper my bedroom with the amount of rejection letters I’ve received over the years.  That goes with the territory.  It makes you thick skinned, and more determined, and that also goes with the territory.  I probably shouldn’t say the letters are rejection notices, because they aren’t.  They are letters that say your piece wasn’t selected, and in a show of 35 pieces, where 350 people applied, chances are pretty good your piece won’t be selected.  But you just keep on sending in those jury fees and hope that someday your lottery number will come up.

Last year, for Convergence 2008 in Tampa, I was determined to push myself to get more of my work exhibited, and in shows I wouldn’t normally have placed my work.  Convergence 2008 had eight different exhibition opportunities, of course the Fashion Show, and others that had themes like felted, home furnishings, accessories, basketry, etc.  Among the exhibits was HGA’s annual Small Expressions.  I have applied to Small Expressions a number of times in the past, and of course, haven’t been selected.  But I keep on trying.  Out of the eight exhibits for Convergence this past year, and I applied to all eight believe it or not, I got accepted into six of the exhibits.  I was really thrilled, mainly because I managed to apply to all eight exhibits, making work specifically to fit the themes.  But I was really disappointed that I wasn’t selected for Small Expressions, for that is the show that meant the most to me.

The Visual Art Center of NJ held their members show a couple of months after I was rejected from Small Expressions 2008.  I had done a new piece to enter into Small Expressions, two dimensional, that I thought was pretty powerful in content, and a bit difficult to look at, and very graphic, but it took more than a quick look to grasp the message.  I decided to put the piece, “Survivor” into the members show at the Visual Art Center, among 200 other works of art, mainly photography and painting.  It was the only hand woven piece in the show.

I received a phone call from the Art Center two days before the show, they needed to talk to me about my piece.  I was terrified they were going to say that the piece wasn’t good enough, or wasn’t up to their standards, OK, I admit, I can have a pretty thin skin and low self confidence when discussing my work…  Anyway, they wanted to know if I would be attending the opening because I had won an award.  That caught me completely off guard, and I assured them I would be attending the opening, and I nearly fainted when I arrived at the opening and saw that out of 200 other works of art, mine had taken Best in Show.  It was a very validating experience, the same piece that had not been accepted a couple of months before, was give a Best in Show, and some very nice ink in NJ’s largest Newspaper.  That all happened last May….

The Economies of Scale exhibit at the Phoenix Gallery in NY, which I wrote about in a previous blog, just closed this weekend, and one of the pieces in that exhibit contained the same imagery as the Survivor piece I just described above.   But I rewove the piece in a smaller scale, about the size of a post card.  It is part of my Personal Post series.  I entered this year’s Small Expressions, 2009, using the Personal Post Suvivor piece, and two others, one of which I’ve pictured here called, The Spouse.  And today, in the mail, came a packet from the HGA, with acceptances for two of the three pieces I entered.  It is a proud day for me, I will bask in my success for a day or two, because I know tomorrow, the same works can just as easily not be accepted.

If you click on the February 24th Small Expressions Exhibit over in the Upcoming Events Widget on the right, you can see both The Spouse, pictured here, and Survivor.  I chose to put the Survivor piece, because of its graphic nature, over in the Events Column.

If you go to the blog entry of December 20th, there is a detailed description of how I did this piece, basically the image is printed onto silk, cut into strips, and rewoven back together in a Theo Moorman inlay technique.  The gray background is the ground cloth woven at the same time as the image.

Back to altering prom dresses…