CLAW: Crossing The Line_Artists at Work; An Online Art Quilt Group

I joined an online art quilt group through the Yahoo Group from Studio Arts Quilters Association created by Karen Musgrave back in the summer of 2012. We are named CLAW which is Crossing the Line_Artists at Work,  Karen is the mastermind/curator of the group and she has the hard part of finding galleries and venues for our quilt exhibits. We have 20 art quilters involved and every 6 months we have a theme and a size of 18"w x 24'l and we can create our quilts to our liking as long as we follow these simple guideline. I have only met Karen and two other quilters in this group and we correspond through our Yahoo group. The mission statement of the group is "CLAW is a group of fiber arts who believe that art has the power to transform thinking and inspire people to act. We are committed to creating art that deals with women and social issues for exhibition.

There have been four themes or collections so far. Karen had asked us up until recently to keep our work private but is now allowing us to share our work on our blogs.

 

The first photo is from our first collection called Women Who Broke All The Rules. I chose Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll as my rule breaker. I also chose Ruth because I love Barbie dolls and still collect them today and Ruth was the first toymaker to create a fashion doll for girls to play with. Up until this time girls strictly played with baby dolls. She was completely successful and the Mattel Company has flourished partially due to the Barbie doll. I needed to stay away from anything with the Barbie logo but I embraced the hot pink that is Barbie's signature color-the back of the quilt is fun too! 

The second quilt is from the collection called Art Can't Hurt You. This subject matter is about social issues and I chose racial injustice. My daughter is biracial and we have plenty of stories of people being confused and/or saying stupid things because they assume and judge us only by skin color. I used to say "I'm the Mother!" because people didn't "get" it. I chose various values of pink for our hair, skin tones and clothes because that is our favorite color. This quilt is my favorite of the four pieces because it is so personal and I used my two favorite colors-hot pink and lime green!

The third quilt is from the collection called Rewriting Art History. We were to select a female artist who was innovative in the art world. I chose Michalene Thomas who is a female black artist who is currently living in New York and creates very graphic and bright portraits of black women often with a 1970s look to them. She also embellishes her paintings with rhinestones and jewelry. I selected Michalene as my subject because I love her use of bright colors, mixing various patterns and doing portraits as her subject matter.

And lastly is my quilt the fourth collection called 20 Quilts which explores emotions and actions. I chose LAUGH because it is a positive action based on humans experiencing something funny. When I think of a huge laugh I envision a big toothy smile and crinkled up eyes. I added a yellow background because psychologically yellow is cheery. I positioned laugh, chuckle, tee hee and lol, which is text lingo for laugh out loud, to the background in a subtle way with another yellowish  batik. The whole quilt has a warmness to it which seems happy and positive. This is no particular woman-just that I prefer brown hair with highlights, red lipstick and bright colored clothes!

Soon Karen will announce the next subject for the fifth collection. We have about 6 months to design and complete our quilts.

If I am correct the first collection, which I have the Ruth Handler quilt in, will be at the Mancuso Quilt Fest in Denver May 1-4, 2014. That is exciting news for our group. I will have another quilt at that quilt show as well so I am doubly thrilled by the exposure!!