Pam Holland Designs and Productions

4th July....

It's 4th of July and I have a day off for celebration.

I have on my Un-Australian T shirt....with the American flag on it and blue shorts today.... they go well with the pixie slippers.

I worked a little on the book this morning, preparing more illustrations and it's exciting that it's getting close to completion.

It's humid and warm here and I love it so I'm sending some of it back home to family.

I have several classes to prepare and I wanted to ask the question.... if you wanted to make a "Journal Quilt" what subject would you use?

How would you make it.... ?

You know how I make mine.

I find it hard to interpret some folks idea of a 'Journal Quilt...' because I can't get into peoples minds....and two pieces of red fabric on white is supposed to be blood on snow....!!

I sat through a whole lecture on journal quilts once and saw 48 quilts, same thing... blood on snow 1, to 48......

Not my scene really.

How would you interpret the subject?

 We can learn a lot from Impressionist artists... Monet, for instance did 40 paintings of the same thing, just so he could capture the image in a certain way... testing, testing and adding more to capture the essence.... in fact it was a journal of what he was seeing.. and making a journal quilt is similar to me....

The photo tells a story.

My first port of call in the morning is to check my email, next I read USA Today on my Ipad.

Each day they have a selection of amazing photos and they are the first things I check. I generally share each photo and it's title with Keith as we have breakfast.

I get inspired by the way the photo tells a story. Yesterday there was a small boy, his face twisted in fright as he was threatened by a soldier wielding a baton.

I guess you would say that's not inspiring... but the visual tells me much more than if I was to read the story... plain words on a page, interpreted by my brain, but in a photograph there is color, poignancy, pathos and in this one particularly, anger and helplessness on my part.

I don't know that words can evoke those feelings.

Have a look for yourself... the photo after this one is of the Pope.... I looked at it for ages. It shows his back as he walks away, but the composition is wonderful.

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/The-day-in-pictures/s100572

This is a photo I took in Winnipeg last week, It tells me a story.. I love the action of the young men just hanging on the fence.

This is what they were watching.!!!

It tells a story.

The chip saga - my confession

So chips have little to do with quilting, but they have a lot to do to "adding to the ambiance"

I will confess, I was tempted...

I felt guilty after I ate them.....

We also have vinegar on our "chips" in Australia...

The chip truck was right next to the hotel but it was raining and blowing a gale... I bought them after I had done some videoing and I was on my way back to the hotel.

I had to balance the hot, uncovered bucket on one hand... the rain pouring down onto the fries.....and I hid my camera and leather bag in a plastic bag. I had a tripod under my other arm and I was trying to get into the lift without anyone seeing me...

Which I did.... !!!!

How do you make time to create?

Time to create?

I'm often asked the question, "how do you find the time to create"?

I have time, we all do.

An hour waiting for a plane.... eating a meal on my own, on a bus, on a plane, .......at the moment, I'm packed ready to leave the hotel and I have 3/4 of an hour.... a luxury of time and it made me think that most of my spare time is spent creating.

Now I have my Ipad, I am even more productive. !!!!!

For instance, I have an entire art gallery with 40.000 pictures in it... It's called Art Authority and as an App it takes me on a journey to the best galleries in the world...

I also have the entire works and history of  Leonardo Da Vinci

Using my spare time being creative is not new, I've done it since I was a child. I think we all did when we were young.

If you have 15 minutes, what would you do. A little stitching, take up pen and paper and write your thoughts down or maybe even draw a little.

I always have a pencil, eraser and journal in my bag... and now I can draw in the Ipad (not as well as with pen and paper) but I can do different things. I write notes to myself and send it by email and sometimes I've added the notes to the blog.

This morning I woke at 5.00 and I've been editing film, writing and catching up on business from home.

I could have slept, I could have watched TV, but creating something special is much more interesting...

 

My trip to Sydney.

The Chicago Quilt Show.

Go to the Quilt show site and

join me on a tour of the Chicago Quilt Show.

The Quilt Show Chicago Quilt Show Video

Designing

Drawing on the iPad

The Independent Weekly - Jamie Holland

 

Stars above the South Australian desert burn astonishingly bright. As many as 3000 look down where the Stony and Strzelecki Deserts merge, and where the salt flats of Lake Frome shimmer silver in the night.

via www.independentweekly.com.au

Jamie Holland

If you were to emulate the life of a successful, daring-do and almost swashbuckling news cinematographer, you could do worse than take Jamie Holland as a model.

Home at last and it's Mothers Day

38 hours after I left Las Vegas... I arrived home.

Still I was fit enough to go shopping with Rach and Tilly.

Bless him, our youngest son Jinda met me at the airport too and we went to a coffee shop to visit because he had to work today....he had a huge vase of flowers tucked under his arm.

What was I do to with a vase of flowers while I shopped... take them with me? 

No, I asked the coffee shop to display them till I was ready to leave and now they are set on the dining room table.

Last night, I was asleep before the plane took off in Tokyo, I don't remember anything until 4 hours later...

Let me talk about my Ipad.... I used it every day when I was traveling, It was wonderful on the plane... I wrote notes, a little bit of the book and it's much easier than whipping out the computer.

I'll get a lot of use out of it.

 

So what now. It's going to be a busy few weeks. In the next few days we officially launch our joint quilt.

I put the finishing touches to the Rhino.

I prepare the patterns for the next tour and I will now be distributing them from the USA.

The Alphabet book and prints will be ready for publication and I may have time to do some housework and shopping.!!!!

An update on the little boy who gave me the orange seed yesterday.

I made him a than you card and drew an orange tree on it and added a little message.

His teacher gave it to him this morning and said "Miss Pam drew this by for you by hand."

He ran over to his Mum.... "Miss Pam drew this with no hands..."

Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.

As an artist, my photography, art and creations with textiles blend into each other, the edges are blurred.

As a child I would spend hours reading art books, looking at the pictures. I loved the colors, I loved the line and I committed them to  memory.

Now as an adult, I like the same things but now I have the ability to do something with that knowledge. Going to an Art Gallery is like walking into a candy store. I don't spend ages looking at a  picture. Like judging a quilt, impact on first viewing is what captures my imagination.

I take photos of the ones I really like and analyze them later.

womens studies

Yesterday I went to the Art Institute of Chicago. It's my fourth visit...but each time I go I find something new.

so in the Gallery, join me on a visit and share in my explanations of what I see in a painting.

Gallery