Lyric Kinard Art +Quilt

I'd like to introduce you to another ArtSparker today, Lyric Kinard. Lyric is a master art quilter and a very popular teacher. She's done numerous appearances on Quilting Arts TV, has a DVD out and her book, Art + Quilt has been a joy to read and work with.

A+Q = a great foundation in the elements of art as they relate to quilters. Lyric's exercises  are a great hands-on illustration of the concepts she introduces and, really!, this is a book that any artist could embrace. Along with each concept, a look at the inspiration is included. Looking over Lyric's shoulder as she moves through the design process is really a help to understanding the concepts.

A+Q is filled with concepts to learn and teaches the art of inspiration and creativity. It teaches how to build and strengthen your craft. In other words (loosely quoted): Give a woman a fish and she eats for a day. Teach her how to fish and she'll never go hungry. This is a book to be worked through, scribbled in and to read with your journal alongside of you. A strong tool for quilters with a load of relevant information for any artist.

Be the change

How is it Sunday night?

This is the quilt square I designed for the Regional Center for Women in the Arts' art quilt "The Fabric of Peace." We were all to design a 12" square and send it off. It will all be sewn together as a large collaborative piece. I love the idea of collaborative art pieces - all of those voices chiming in on the same topic in visual conversation.

When I agreed to this I hadn't really thought that I'm quite a poser as a quilter- maybe "poser" is a bit stern but I've only actually made one baby-sized quilt.

The letter said we were all to "design the enclosed section of the quilt." Since I am not an art-maker who "designs" first, I was a bit perplexed. I finally threw caution to the wind and wound up following my usual art creating by the seat of my pants routine.

I sewed disparate bits of fabric on the base fabric, gessoed over it, color glazed it and wrote into it. I was pleased with the metaphorical nature of the piece at this point and began to rustle about for some kind of imagery that would tie the whole thing together. Admittedly, the bird is a bit expected. It came from a truly lovely book of stencils called Stencil101 by Ed Roth. It was fun to then paint around the stencil and then sew around the painted areas (just use a heavy duty needle in your machine).

This was one of those situations where I said "yes, OK. I'll participate in this project" without giving it a ton of thought and I would have chickened out if I'd thought about it, but I'm glad I didn't think about it.

If you follow that line of logic.