Borrowing ideas from Others, part 2

 There was a general rule when I was growing up, that stealing ideas from others for your own art work was evil, wicked, or even cheating.  But this is so silly. It's been going on for a long, long time & so I'm going to 'bust' myself, own up, & give thanks to my inspirers.

First of all to Stephen Denslow, a marvelous artist, came directly these dancer figures. They dance around the edge of the quilt rectangle in a room open to the stars.

From Michael James, master quilt-maker, from Lexington Mass, flowed a huge body of quilts based on strips of color. He had incredible engineering skills & it showed in the precise match-up of all the stripes & had gradations galore.

I made two knock-offs using thin ribbons & cotton cloth in the first on & dots (a la Stephen Denslow's work). The one below on the left was my very first try. The lines don't line up because I just am too impatient to be bothered!

 

Thirty something years later I had another artistic fling with Michael James, this time much simpler.

            

While I was collecting stuff from Vancouver industries In the 1980s, I picked up a bag or two of clothing off-cuts. The business was called Portegaz, now long gone, & I thought I had scored silk scraps. Not! but no matter. The shapes were awesome, & the cloth also. Two important quilts emerged. The first called Silk Shards [before I knew].

The next I called Thunderstruck.

The same shapely attraction of off-cuts happened for me again with scraps from Maiwa clothes-making. Those are quarter-circular-arm-hole shapes!

My sister Lynne gave me this Snow Angel painting of her sumac trees in winter.

In response I made a quilt I called Double X Snow Blanket.

While teaching I came across The Accidental Zucchini, by Max Grover. It was an alphabet book: apple auto, bathtub boat, cupcake canyon, etc.

I made my own version called Dragonfly Dancer. It had finger fish, banana butterfly, unlikely umbrella, etc.

The artist I took this idea from was Czechoslovakian, Joana Steniskis. I called this one The Tapestry of Childhood. It had quotes taken from pre-school children printed around the edge.

On Maui & in Santa Fe I saw work by Pascal Pierme. I love his shapes.   

I played quite a bit with what opened up for me thinking about softer shapes.

That's it for now.