Seeing Art Quilts - Enjoying good company 11-29-12

What a gift it is to spend a day with a dear friend visiting quilt exhibits, enjoy a lovely lunch and have a chance to talk to friends that I don't see very often.  My friend Liz and I drove to San Diego yesterday (stopping at Starbuck's on the way) to see the "Brainstorms" exhibit at Visions Art Museum, have lunch, and stop to see one of the parts of Quilt National - 2011 at Oceanside Museum of Art.  It was a lovely, sunny day but with rain predicted for the afternoon in Orange County.

We went first to Visions Art Museum.  Liz is not an art quilter, but she is interested in seeing whatever there is to see.  We chose our favorites and filled out the voting slips for Viewers' Choice. No photography is allowed, so I am showing you the cover of the catalog.  The photos are excellent - done by Eric Nancarrow of Alaska.

It is an outstanding exhibit - make the trip!  The exhibit closes Feb 17, 2013. 

www.visionsartmuseum.org

 

We had lunch at Ikiru a nice little Japanese restaurant about two blocks from the museum, but we had to pass on the green tea ice cream this time. They don't have just sushi, Liz had delicious tempura.  www.ikirusushisd.com/

 

Then we headed north on I-5 to Oceanside Museum of Art.  Back in March I saw two parts of QNational at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, so I have been eager to see the third part.  I wasn't disappointed, there are some wonderful quilts there. 
One thing we noticed in both "Brainstorms" and QNational - 2011 was the dominance of hand stitching.  Some of the quilts are entirely hand stitched (I.e., Carolyn Sullivan's "Mushroom") and some have both machine and hand stitching (i.e., Elizabeth Brimelow's "Rook Road").
Again, no photography.  www.oma-online.org/  The exhibit runs through Feb 10, 2013

One of the quilts I admire is this one (from the catalog):

"Firebox"  Jan Myers-Newbury - Pittsburgh, PA  2010  Dyed in arashi shibori techniques, machine piecing and quilting.
With the gallery spotlights it glows.  It is not all pieced, some of the lighter rectangles appear to have been blocked when another layer of color was applied.  Intriguing.
 

 

By the time we left Oceanside the clouds had rolled in.  The Pacific Ocean is just beyond the bushes (which are just beyond the southbound lanes of I-5).   The sun was struggling to shine through, but soon gave up and we had periodic sprinkles on the way home.  Not much and the traffic was light until we got into Orange County and were in with the "rush hour" commuters.

A lovely day with lots of friendship and artistic inspiration.  Thanks, Liz.  And Beth and Charlotte and Judy and.....