Venus Rising

This quilt has a long story to tell so gets begin. I was at the Menominee, MI public library to check on the gallery area for another exhibit and I was told there was open gallery space for Jan., Feb. and April of '11. I thought that it would be a shame to leave it empty so I mentioned this to my art friend Glenda Banta and was brainstormed and with two other local artists, Kathleen Eaton and Pat Johnson, we plan to do an art exhibit of women by women for the month of January 2011 at the Spies Public Library in Menominee. (More on that to come). Then me quilter friend, Mary Ann Provancher, lent me this great quilting book from a class she took from Ricky Timms while in Florida. I have done several of his "convergence" quilts but never saw it on point. So the combination of naming our January exhibit "Venue Rising" and the new convergence technique a fresh idea was born. I wanted Venus to rise up out of something besides the traditional water and I thought of her rising out of addition. I thought of alcohol, gambling, smoking and food additions and thought if I could find enough printed images of these subjects, I could fussy cut and fuse them around the base of Venus. I was very fortunate to have another quilter friend, Cher Alexander, who has an arsenal of "theme" fabrics and contributed about 80% to my cause. I nixed the smoking addiction for this quilt because there were no fabrics available which is actually good and I probably wouldn't have had room. As the eye travels upward "out of addiction" there are images of change like better foods, spirituality, happiness etc. I thread painted words of encouragement in the "sky" area like recovery, peace, love, karma, wholeness, grace etc. I should mention the Venus figure is raw edge fused appliqued over the convergence top and the images of good and bad stuff is fused in a collage type quilt. It is supposed to be chaotic and crazy on the bottom and open and serene as Venus "rises" out of her addictions. I had a piece of Luella Doss' Free Spirit line of fabric called "Hot Flash" which I used at the bottom to add the lettering to. It is a very fun and colorful fabric and the circles of the border print could be seen at bubbles from a beer or champagne or hard candy. I didn't embellish this piece because it had enough going on. It was a fun project with a social issue which is not my usual style. I was thinking of donating it to a place were there is a recovery program etc., after the library exhibit, but am not sure where that would be since it covers more than one addiction.