The Man I Married by Terri Lagerway. Courtesy photo SAQA
Telephone Tag is on view at Step Up Gallery. Photo shows how an image can be interpreted by artists taking it from representational to abstract on the left, and from abstract to representational on the right. Courtesy photo SUG
Step Up Gallery News:
The latest offering at Step Up Gallery at Mesa Public Library presents a burst of color and vivid tributes to beloved people and pets. Two traveling exhibits, Personality Plus and Telephone Tag, are being shown. Both were created by members of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA).
The combined exhibit is now open to the public and there will be a reception at 2 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 28, with a gallery talk at 2:30 p.m.
Many of the artists, SAQA members from all over the Southwest region are expected to attend.
Quilts have always been appreciated as labors of love and the works shown here are no exception. Beloved pets, dear family members, and intimate glimpses of childhood are among the pieces found in Personality Plus. Terri Lagerway’s portrait of her husband, called “The Man I Married,” tells the story of a peaceful, gentle man who still channels the values of the young person who was among the first people to arrive at Woodstock.
She says “Woodstock was a life changing celebration of peace, love and music, and those principles have stayed with him his entire life. We met a few years after the festival. The times have changed since August of 1969, but the man I married is still the same 50 years later. And yes, he is still playing his bass!”
The quilts shown in Telephone Tag are meant to portray how differently people can interpret a picture. The concept for the exhibit was to start with a single image, then see what the first artist would make of it. Thirty-five “strings” were created, with each string inspired by a different image. The artists had one month to create a one-foot square quilt that referred to that image. When it was complete, the quilts were passed on to the next set of artists for their interpretations.
In the Telephone Tag exhibit, the 35 strings are shown side by side with their original images and with the explanations from each of the four artists of what they saw what they created. What one person sees as a flower can become fireworks in another person’s eyes. Some artists turn abstract images into representational ones, while others go in the opposite direction, turning a picture of a tree or flower into a lovely abstract. The accompanying photo shows two of the strings, examples of those transformations. Viewers will get a glimpse into the thought processes of each artist on the accompanying show cards.
Art quilting has come a long way since the Studio Art Quilt Associates first was established in 1989. Quilting as a craft had seen a great resurgence in popularity at the time of the Bicentennial, but artists discovered the medium and wanted to take it into the realm of art. SAQA founder Yvonne Porcella and her 34 founding members wanted to see art quilts finding a place in major art museums, publications and galleries. The organization has 4,000 members now, from all over the world. Their unusual reverse auction, in which the unsold artwork gets cheaper every week, is currently underway, through Oct. 6, at www.saqa.com.
Step Up Gallery (https://stepupgallery.org) is on the top level of Mesa Public Library in Los Alamos, at 2400 Central Ave. The gallery is open the same hours as the library: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and 1-5 p.m., Sunday.