At the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, for the opening of Connecting Our Natural Worlds, SAQA's global exhibition. My piece, Flyover 6: Glacier is on the wall. Seventeen artists came for the opening; each had an opportunity to talk about her art and the dangers presented by climate change. The works were beautifully lighted and presented, and there was a nice crowd for the reception. We were able to invite some family members to the event, none of whom had been surrounded by fiber art before--always a rewarding experience.
The day before, artists were invited to participate in video interviews, and a professional makeup artist was available to make us camera-ready. Now, I haven't worn makeup since I retired in 2010, so this was a new venture. She did a fine job--I haven't yet seen the video, but expect that I look better than usual--even though I had been up since 3 a.m. Texas time and spent all day on airplanes.
We stayed at Hotel McCoy, a 1960s-era motel that has been completely updated and transformed into an art venue. If you ever get to Tucson, look them up. It's delightful, fun, and they have an oatmeal bar with all the fixins for breakfast.
So that was my great celebrity opportunity. In the meantime, I've been working on Flyover 8: Pathways. It's almost done now, made from a beautiful piece of Ghanain batik and some buffalo check fabric from my stash, plus lots of yarns. I wanted it to have the rumpled appearance of an old map, folded up in the attic.
This is just a quadrant of the piece, but you can get the idea. I think of it as land and sea (the viewer can decide which part is which), crisscrossed by the multiple paths taken by people, animals, mining operations, gas and oil pipelines, merchant ships, wars, migrations, cyclones, earthquakes, erosion and on and on through the ages.
"Nothing new under the sun" says Ecclesiasticus--we keep making "new" explorations over ancient territories without regard for the claims of our forbears or of fellow creatures. What must the birds think of us?
Home now, to stay for a while.