Thrilling End to the Drought

Events this summer have overtaken me and I have not been keeping up with my blog.

But the announcement last night of some great news is my incentive to write a post.

As you might remember I am the exhibits chair for a local art group. For September I organized a juried all media show titled "Rock Stars!" as it is hanging in the US Geological Survey building. I thought making the show feature rocks fit the location.

I was excited when my piece, "Uluru; Star of the Outback" was accepted by the jurors in early August and then thrilled to have it announced last night that it had been awarded the Judge's Commendation award for 3D.






There are 59 pieces of hanging art and of course most of them are paintings and photographs but here and there are three pieces of fiber art hanging also. More 3D art is in a display case.

Here you can see my piece hanging next to a similarly colored painting, "Milky Way Over Bryce Canyon" oil painting by Gail Pêan and a portion of "Marina Diva" watercolor painting by Betty Ganley.

The title for the exhibit was announced to the membership in January. At the time I was away in New Zealand attending the Quilt Symposium there. A wonderful class I took with the amazing New Zealand quilter Chris Kenna inspired me to try depicting Uluru in a wall quilt.

And it worked out. The comments from the judges confirmed that my piece was taken seriously as art. One of my long term passions, and perhaps the reason I joined the art group to begin with, is to have quiltmaking accepted in the art world. This brought additional meaning to winning an award last night.

In case you do not know Uluru is the big red rock formation in the south western portion of the Northern Territory of Australia. It was previously known as Ayers Rock but several years ago, in recognition of the sacredness of the site to the Australian Aboriginal people, the decision was made to once more let it be known by the ancient Aboriginal name, Uluru.

If you are in the area I do hope you stop by and look at the exhibit before we take it down on September 30.