Loser's Club Revisited!

 

So much for "hunches"and feelings of certainty! I was so sure that that above masterpiece, "Quilt of Exhaustion", was going to get selected for inclusion in a "modern" quilt show, that I even had a box picked out to mail it in! And then I receive the dreaded "not invited" email. ("Not invited"??!??! It's like be excluded from some popular kid's birthday party! They used to reject us, then they not accepted us, then they declined us. Now we're "not invited". Hahhahaha!)

And what's not to love about that piece above? It has poop emoji/Phillip Guston inspired font, actual batting sandwiched between two snuggly flannel layers, millions of small thread tacks affixing front to back (and I have the pierced fingers to prove it!) and it has almost 200 hand-tied recycled plastic baling twine fringes!!! (Like almost 200 feet of baling twine, lovingly knotted into prickly fringe!!) Haven't we all just been so tired of "winning" these last four years that we wanted to crawl back under the covers? This is a quilt of truth for our times!

Detail of the fringe:

Ironic, no, that the text reads "so tired of winning" and I didn't win. Sad! Artists put up with this sort of nonsense constantly: a friend suggested I apply, I do and feel totally confident and then comes rejection. The stupidest part is that they never tell you WHY you were "not invited". The least they could do if offer a brief explanation of their decision... like "puke-y colors! or "really dumb idea" or "don't quit your day job", or "What were you thinking??!"

I have a sneaking suspicion that I was rejected because my piece is (as usual) political and the show was in Indiana (not known for being a hot bed of radical leftist art. I mean Mike Pence is from there!) This is despite one of the jurors claiming to construct "political" quilts. Who knows!!

Anyway, win some, lose some and I am in another show coming up, so all is not lost! But Bob and I have dusted off our Loser's club tee shirts and are lifting a glass to future invitations.

 

Here's what I've been working on in my (old) studio): a series of collages based on those annoying (and all to present in our modern day world ) phone menus. While stuck on one the other day, I decided I had only two options. Number One was to get really angry and rip the phone out of the wall, or Number Two, make art out of my (and everyone else's) experiences. I chose the latter.
I have made seven of these, including such high lights as, "Please hold the line; your call is very important to us". Or the classic, "Press 5 for more options". Approximately 28" x 22"; I mixed graphite and paint for the grey field areas and the rest is collage.
In the meantime, my membership in the "Losers Club" is in good standing. I applied to- and got fucking rejected from ($^#$%&!!!) three separate art shows/ venues that I thought were appropriate to me and my work. Hey! What do I know? Why I even bother is beyond me. I mean that rhetorically, of course. I do despise submitting to juried shows, as when they reject you, they never even tell you why so it's not as if you learn anything. On the other hand, most of the time it's like what the jurors had for lunch didn't agree with them when they come to your piece. You can't win. But the sheer wanton fear of never showing again compels me forward. I just submitted to another show today, at the insistence of a couple of friends. I truly must be a glutton for punishment!
But on an entertaining art related note, I am currently in a show in New Bedford at the Colo Colo Gallery. (Our good friend Don Wilkinson invited Bob and I to participate). The theme, loosely Christmas inspired, was "Naughty and Nice". An idea come to me almost at once, when out on my morning walk. I thought to make two plates of cookies, as befits the holiday season. Both plates were covered with cookies made from the same recipe of sugar cookies but once batch, while looking innocent, had chunky kosher salt on top (looks like sugar) and the other had lumps of coal. I polyureathaned both batches three times so as to make them as shiny and artificial looking as possible. Guess what happened? A so-called "art lover" (according to the gallery owner Luis Villaneuva) promptly ate one! This was despite them being labeled as "inedible" and a "work of art"! And at the opening, they had to assign a "cookie watcher" to discourage others from attempting to eat them. The least they could have done was buy my piece before consuming it. Hahahahaha.

I suppose as a very funny footnote I should mention that the person who ate my cookie reported that the flavor was good, but they were hard!