Breath of fresh air

Anne Smith's talk at the AGM of Contemporary Quilt was a breath of fresh air. Her art studies were in ceramics and she says that working in other materials informs the stitch. Some of her early quilts had porcelain held on with organza, and she's combined cubes and beads of fabric to make flexible constructions.

Anne brought along not only the quilts that were in Quilt National, including best-of-show Calon Lan, but also some small works and samples of her raw material - children's clothes from thrift shops - unprecious fabrics with a previous life.

Anne says "without doodling, ideas don't happen" - and she makes little painted doodles on bits of corrugated cardboard and small paintings from which quilt ideas arise. With smaller pieces, you feel in control - you're bigger than the work, she says. She also talked about having a gut reaction to these, leading to development.

Her larger works, like Catherine Wheel, which she's showing below, are limited in size by the available space for spreading them out - on a bed - and she has to move out to the landing to get a "distant" view. (Very encouraging for those of us who work in small spaces!)

She often stitches from the back of the quilt, and will pick out threads from the stitched-down fabric to get an interesting mark that isn't controlled -
While adding elements, she'll rip out anything that isn't working.

Anne emphasised the importance of composition, and mentioned the work of Tapies, Rauschenberg, and Sarah Fanelli. We drank it all in, with rapt attention -

It was the sort of talk that makes you start noticing things - compositions everywhere!