I hope that your summer plans have gone well and everyone is right in the swing of activities before schools begin for the next year.  After our July LAG meeting with our Fiber Artists, I was in awe of all the types of art work being created with fibers and additional adornments.  I was so enamored I found a magazine in the local grocery store entitled “Quilting Arts Magazine” and picked it up.  I would like to quote the editor Vivika Hansen DeNegre from her editor’s note page.  I felt it sums up what all of us as artists feel.

Fiber artists have the ability to look at the world with fresh eyes and the courage to explore the possibilities they uncover in their fiber art.  Of course, artists who work in every genre do this.  Impressionist painters were rebels in their time as they added what appeared to be layers of paint in an unruly manner to their canvases.  Architecture was forever changed by visionaries who opened up public spaces and private homes with new arrangements of light, metal, and concrete, and jazz composers created an enormous stir in the music world by writing scores with dissonant chord changes and room for lots of improvisation.  

But how do art quilters innovate?  The answer lies on the surface of their quilts and in the intention behind each piece.  It is in the complex layering of material, techniques, and meaning that the 21st century art quilt is evolving.

Are we 21st century artists?  Do we strive to be original?  Do we explore the unknown subjects, tools, techniques, of the world around us?  Let us stretch our imaginations, and step outside the box when we create.  Everybody has seen the traditional art work, but what makes your work stop people and force them to question/admire/or change their lives a little bit at a time?   Carmen Stineman