The Arts Company

Yesterday, my husband and I went to Seneca, South Carolina (a small town near Clemson) to see a special exhibition of work from the art group that I used to belong to called Focus.  It was held at The Arts Company, a gallery owned by Warren Carpenter, and had the theme of "wood" as Warren is not only a gallery owner, but also a wonderfully accomplished woodworker.  Although Seneca is a small town that has lost much of its industry, it has blossomed into a community that supports the arts--in  particular the quilt arts.  There were 5 or 6 different exhibitions last night.  The only confusing thing in this small town is getting around to the different locations.  There were addresses such as 111 East South 2nd Street and 122 West South 1st Street.  For the directionally challenged (namely ME) this was a challenge --a challenge made greater by the fact that some of these streets stopped and then started again a couple of blocks later.  Whew!  It was well worth the search though.

The first work is foundation pieced and is by Marge Edie.  This picture does not begin to do it justice.  It is based on a hand carved box that her husband gave her a a wedding gift on the day they were married and she has had it on her dresser ever since.  She worked long and hard on the design and the choice of fabrics and I think she succeeded in achieving the three dimensional aspect of the original box (which she had displayed there, also).

The next work is a wooden fence with the mountains inthe background.  It is by Veronia Moriarity who is a pharmacist in her day job.  She is so talented and turns out an incredible amount of work considering the busyness of her life (Of course, it helps that her husband is the cook in the family!)  I think she did such a wonderful job in her use of color in the pieced background.

Diana Pickens created this very angular forest scene.  She has been doing a lot of innovative work using stripes in her pieced projects and I this also has that feel even though there are NO stripes.  She has the kind of mind that can easily figure out how things can fit together in a quilt and is quite an inspiration to this "seat of the pants" quilter.

Although I didn't get as clear a photo as I would have wished of this next quilt by Marilyn Wall, I hope you can see the man hiding in the trunk of the stump (Hmm, that almost rhymes).  The man is Warren Carpenter so she certainly placed him in his element.  Marilyn has been doing a lot of work lately that deals with turning black & white photos into pieced faces.  She has been working on getting the shading just right and it certainly works in this piece.

And this is another piece by Marge Edie which is obviously a forest of trees--with plenty of wood for Warren to use in his work. While we were in the gallery, we picked up several of his turned bowls and they were light as feathers--not an easy thing to achieve without gouging a hole in the side.

This last piece is by Bonnie Ouelette--who I don't know but I admire her work.  The background is handquilted with many, many tiny stitches and the woodpecker is composed of many, many, many, many tiny seed beads.  If  you click on this closeup you can probably see more of the detail.

And there were several more quilts in this display--each of them uniquely demonstrative of some element related to wood.  And after we had spent a while enjoying all of them, we went into the larger portion of the shop  that was filled to overflowing with wonderful handmade crafts from around the entire United States and many, many people who were out for a lovely evening of cheese, wine and art.

The exhibit will remain open until the end of October.