Doesn't seem my usual style, does it? Hey, we've all got a dark side.
I was one of a hundred artists invited to participate in an exhibition as part of Skull Appreciation Day in Richmond, VA on Saturday, June 4. We were given an unpainted paper mache skull as a base, and our imaginations did the rest.
Noah Scalin is the creator of the Skull a Day blog (and book) and the author of 365: Make Something Every Day Challenge workbook. The man is seriously busy being creative.
As you all know, I have tons of quilt pieces from my Grammy and two Great-Grandmothers but I'm not a quilter. Yet. I say that but by the time I actually get around to it, I may be old and living in a condo with a herd of cats. I figured the fabric pieces might be perfect for the skull project, and after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to sew flowers.
Images of Georgia O'Keeffe's work got stuck in my brain. I loved her juxtaposition of bones and flowers, and with that in mind as inspiration, I began sewing.
I broke just about every sewing rule while doing it too. I left threads hanging and showed every stitch and knot. The messy chaos of it reminded me of pulling clover from the flower bed. The roots go everywhere. The plant may look small at the surface, but there's a forest of roots beneath it.
Thoughts of my grandmothers stayed with me as well. Quilt pieces are like small snips of time, remnants of a shirt or dress or coat from long ago. There are memories attached to each, and it felt like I was working with their past lives as I stitched the fabric together. I wished the grandmothers were with me to tell me their stories and to laugh about where their quilt pieces ended up. (After the initial surprise wore off.)
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