Green

Black

Abundance

I have so much good news to share with everyone. My cup is truly overflowing these days. It has been such a great year. 

Stars Motel, Chicago
© 2011 Lisa Kijak
47 x 35 inches
Raw edge applique, machine quilted
Commercial and hand dyed cotton fabrics

Stars Motel, Chicago will be a part of Quilt Visions 2012 BRAINSTORMS opening this weekend in San Diego. I am thrilled to be a part of this outstanding international exhibit. 40 works were chosen from 394 entrants and represent some of the finest in design and technique from around the world. The opening reception is on Saturday, October 20, 5-7pm. On Sunday the artists will speak about their work in the morning during a guided tour at 11am. There will also be a moderated panel discussion "the Artistic Journey" with 4 of the artists (Linda Colsh, Mary Pal, Terri Shinn and Charlotte Ziebarth) in the afternoon at 2pm. I will be at the opening and will join the other artists for the Artist Walk and Talk on Sunday. If you are in the area, please come by. I would love to see you. 

I am also pleased to announce that El Cortez, Las Vegas has been juried into Quilt National 2013. Major celebrating has been taking place this week. Getting into Visions and QN back to back is a dream come true. I am beyond thrilled. Unfortunately, I cannot share the image of my final piece, there are very strict guidelines about images for the show, so you will just have to wait until after the opening in May 2013. Congratulations to all of the artists! I cannot wait to meet everyone at the opening in Athens, Ohio. 

And finally, my most exciting news

I would like to introduce our baby, Maya, welcomed into the world September 13, 2012. She joins our family through open adoption. We will forever be grateful to her birth parents, J. and J., for picking us and entrusting us to be Maya’s parents. This joy would not be possible without them. We are over the moon and so in love!

2012 SAQA Online Benefit Auction

I am a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), a great organization that aims to promote art quilts through exhibitions, education and publication. They are an invaluable resource to me.  I have been inspired through my connection to other artists and have benefited from the work SAQA does to educate museums, galleries and collectors about the importance of textile art. 

Each year, SAQA holds an online benefit auction to raise funds to support exhibitions, catalogs and outreach programs.This year, almost 400 quilts were donated, including one of mine. Here is a sneak peek video of how my piece was constructed.

 

 

The online auction will begin on September 10, 2012 at 2pm EST. The 12x12 inch donated works this year are outstanding. Here are a few of my favorites:  

Rainy Monday, 9AM  

Leni Levenson Wiener 

Commercial cotton, no batting.  Raw-edge machine appliqué

The Secret  Linda Colsh  Cotton fabrics printed, painted and dyed by the artist.

Reflections 4

Jette Clover 

Cotton, organdy, cheese cloth; screen printing, painting, sanding, collage, hand- and machine quilting.

Sizing Up  

Mary Pal 

Cheesecloth sculpted with PVA adhesive, appliqued to painted buckram.

 

Entheos Deidre Adams Machine stitched, hand painted with metallic and non-metallic paints; mounted on canvas and stretcher bars.

Red and Yellow

I love the combination of red and yellow together. So eye catching.

What are you watching?

People often ask about how I work in the studio—do listen to music, catch up on NPR, watch TV, or enjoy the beautiful silence that can only be appreciated when you have a moment away from your toddler?  While the privacy and silence cannot be overrated—closing the door, taking a deep breath and combining my moment of sanity with some art is VERY fulfilling—I do my best work when I have something going on in the background, be it music or a movie.  

In the studio, I have a TV mounted on the wall on an articulated arm. This allows me to turn the TV to face me when I am working. The screen lines up just over the top of my sewing machine so that I don’t have to strain to see it. I also have wireless headphones which have made it possible to listen to music or hear movie dialog in the studio while everyone is sleeping, something that makes me immensely happy.

While we don’t have cable in the house (long story), we do have Netflix and Hulu.  I get my mileage out of both of them. Right now I am obsessed with art documentaries. Love love love them. I have my Netflix queue filled with them.

This past week I watched Rape of Europa. I found it absolutely captivating and can’t recommend it enough. Seeing images of the Louvre stripped bare of paintings and Michelangelo’s David bricked up to protect it from bombing and looting were eye-opening. Here is a description from the documentary website:

The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe's art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War.

In a journey through seven countries, the film takes the audience into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But young art professionals as well as ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.

Make sure you watch it.

Of course with this one crossed off of my list I am on the look out for a new documentary. Any recommendations? What are your favorites?

Back to work

After seeing the RITUALS exhibit last week and attending the festival, I couldn’t wait to get back to the studio to start working again. I am at the beginning stages with a new piece and I am consumed by it. I want to work on it every spare minute of the day and night. This is a good thing. When things are going right, I can’t spend enough time in the studio. I stay up late. I think about my work when I am driving. I talk about it incessantly. Of course when it is not quite working I can procrastinate with the best of them. I want to avoid the studio at all costs. This has been something I have been working on over the past year. Even when I am struggling, I force myself to go “do the work anyway”. I know that eventually I will figure things out. I just need to put in the effort and that means getting into the studio. 

But today, things are going well and I have reached a point where I am in the groove. I am past the early stuff that I don’t enjoy as much—setting up my workspace, washing fabrics, creating patterns for important elements, and establishing the foundation. Today I am sewing, and it is exciting to see things develop. As I start sewing, I get to see if my fabric choices are really coming together. I see what needs tweaking. I stab myself a thousand times on straight pins. And I relish every minute.

Rituals

I am excited to announce that Neon Coffee, Los Angeles will be a part of Rituals, a special exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, CA July 26-29, 2012. This juried invitational curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison (Dinner at Eight Artists), invited artists to interpret the Rituals theme:

“An exchange between friends. A handshake. A kiss before bedtime. The artist at work. A sun salutation. The wave before boarding a school bus. A song, a word, a meditation. A habit, a custom. The traditional toast at a gathering. A rite of passage. The sacred moments of the ordinary. Rituals: What are yours?”




detail

Neon Coffee, Los Angeles
© 2012 Lisa Kijak
60 x 24 inches
Raw edge applique, machine quilted
Commerically printed and hand dyed cotton fabrics

Artist Statement
An unlit sign, calling to the masses each morning to begin their daily ritual. The same drink, at the same time, ordered from the same place every day.

You can read about the inspiration behind all 42 quilts in this exhibition and get to know a little more about each artist on the exhibit blog. You can find my profile here.

The show will also travel to International Quilt Festival in Houston in the fall, November 1-4, 2012. 

Rituals’ sponsor for the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach is Moore’s Sewing Centers and Havel’s Sewing for the International Quilt Festival in Houston.

Red, white and blue

Neon Coffee, Los Angeles

I completed this piece last week as an entry into a juried invitational. I am really pleased with how it turned out. If it is accepted into the exhibit, it will debut at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach. It hangs in my studio right now and I have to admit, I will miss it a little if it gets into the exhibit. But being in the invitational would be really exciting and I hope it will be included.


Neon Coffee, Los Angeles
© 2012 Lisa Kijak
60 x 24 inches

Visions Interpretations 2011

My latest piece, 'Neon Schwinn Bicycle, Los Angeles', was juried into the "Interpretations 2011" biennial at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego.  I am thrilled and honored to be a part of this exhibit. The show runs from November  4, 2011-January 22, 2012. The opening reception is Nov 4, 2011 from 5-8pm.

Bridges

I’m pleased to finally be able to post a full image of Bridge Motel.  This piece was part of a special exhibit entitled "Bridges" that was organized by Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists group in Southern California. The show debuted at the Long Beach International Quilt Festival in July 2011.

Update

I know, I know. What is the point of having a blog if you are not going to post to it regularly?

Since my last post we moved and settled into a new place. Most of November and December were dedicated to getting everything put away. While some older pieces made the cut and are hanging on the wall, we are pleased to have a lot of blank walls waiting to be filled with new work. 
 

 

THE SPACE

It took awhile to get unpacked and frankly, the studio was last on the list of rooms to get organized. It didn’t get unpacked until January. But it was well worth the wait. It is truly wonderful to finally have a space dedicated to my work. I have really missed being able to stretch my creative muscles every day and this set up is perfect. Being a stay at home mom to a 1 year old doesn’t give me a lot of time during the day to do art, but having a place where I can leave work in progress, safely behind a closed door, means that I can do a little while she naps in the afternoon and pick up where I left off after she has gone to bed in the evening. Making time and space for my art has been a constant struggle over the years and I am so pleased to finally have a space that allows me to fit it in when I can.

 

 

The room is a decent size and gets really great light in the afternoon.  Most of the furniture is a collection of pieces that didn’t work in other areas of the house…a kitchen island that doesn’t fit downstairs, an armoire from our old entryway, bookshelves that are no longer needed, etc.  I wanted a colorful space that felt energized and inspiring, but since we are renting, painting the walls was out of the question. I tried to bring in color through accessories as much as possible.

 

 

 

 

Of course every space has its challenges and the lighting at night left something to be desired. There are no ceiling fixtures in the house, so most of the lighting comes from lamps. This room is filled with them.  Plus I found a great, inexpensive solution to create some overhead lighting.  The corded pendant lamp ($12) is from IKEA and I extended it out over my workspace using a wrought iron plant hanger from the garden store. It lights up my cutting area perfectly.  

 

 

THE WORK

I have started a new series on old neon signs.  I am fascinated by texture and how it can capture the passage of time. Peeling paint, weathered patinas, chips, cracks and scratches are all marks of moments that have passed. And as a designer, I have a long-standing interest in typography, perhaps because it too can speak to a period in history. I love the lines, curves, positive and negative spaces created by letterforms and the contrast of the cool, smooth neon against the tattered backgrounds and shapes containing it.

So many of the wonderful neon signs from the 1920-1960’s have been torn down—too expensive to maintain and not energy efficient enough to consider keeping. The artistry of those signs is being lost and it saddens me to see them disappear from our landscape. They should be preserved and restored. Art can serve as a record, a documentation of what the artist sees and I hope at the very least to keep the beauty of these signs alive in my work.

I am choosing to capture these signs unlit. While the magic of neon signs is often seen in their glow at night, I think there is something special in the moment just before they are turned on. By showing them unlit, I hope to both capture a little of that anticipation but also speak to the loss of signs as they fall in disrepair. Playing with the duality of potential vs. loss.

I have chosen to submit the first couple of pieces to juried shows. I’m not clear on how much can be shared online (all shows have different rules) so I have been hesitant to post anything at all. But I have been poking around a bit on other blogs and it appears that posting works in progress and detail shots is common practice…so here you go.

Bridge Motel

The Bridge Motel stood on the outskirts of Seattle for over 53 years. In 2007, it was torn down and replaced by town homes. While the building itself had seen better days, the sign was still operating and could have been restored. I love the patriotic overtones of the red and white sign against the electric blue sky in this piece.

 

 

 

 

Safety Cycle

The piece that I am working on currently is from the Safety Cycle bike shop in Los Angeles. The store has been around since the 1940s.  It has a fantastic Schwinn bicycle sign that partially lights up at night.