500 Art Quilts, my Garden of Haiti piece, TAFA List, HeART for Haiti paintings, GHESKIO

This is the cover of the new Lark book "500 Art Quilts," which just came available for purchase. You can buy it on Amazon. It's authored by Ray Hemachandra and Karey Bresenhan, who selected a really impressive amount of narrative works, the most I've ever seen in one art quilt volume before!

I have two pieces in the book: "The Timer (Magic Lama)" on page 235, and  "The Potluck / World" on page 275. This is one of my favorite art quilt books ever! Wish they'd had room to add our statements, but then the book would be even bigger. A lot bigger! And after all, curious people can google us and our titles.

Above: "Magic Lama" (formerly called "The Timer." ©Susan Shie 2008. 86"h x 80"w.  See its statement and detail shot in my 2008 Gallery.

Above: "Potluck for the World."  ©Susan Shie 2008. 85"h x 76"w.  See its statement and detail shot in my 2008 Gallery.

While I'm at it, here's my newest finished piece, "Garden of Haiti." ©Susan Shie 2010.  82"h x 69"w, begun on January 22, 2010 and finished on Feb 27, 2010.  See its statement and detail shots in my 2010 Gallery.

I've just joined a networking group called The TAFA List: The Textile And Fiber Art List. It's really interesting to see works from fiber artists from all over the world in this group, which was founded in March by Paducah, KY artist Rachel Biel.

My own profile on TAFA includes the flickr photostream slideshow I worked so hard to figure out, as well as a live-view link to my Facebook fan page. Next project will be to make a little video to put on there.  :)

On February 12, one month after the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, Lisa Wagoner held a benefit auction at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster, Ohio. Twelve high profile citizens bravely and rather well made paintings that night to auction, and our WAGE (Wayne Artists Group Effort) group donated paintings we'd started on Feb 2, when we'd painted together. The project raised $11,000, which was split between Save the Children/Haiti and Muncheez Food Drive Haiti.

My two pieces in the auction brought over $3,700. for Muncheez Food Drive Haiti.  They both have a lot of Haiti's history written on them, as well as stats about the earthquake's damage.

"Heroes of Haiti" ©Susan Shie 2010. fin Feb 7, 10. 18"h x 24"w, acrylic with brush and fabric paint with airpen, on stretched canvas. Purchased by Carol Ohl at the HeART for Haiti auction, now in the collection of Lisa Wagoner.  It is based on several photos by Joe Dore, as well as things I made up, like the line of people waiting to eat and the trees. The man in front is Gilbert Bailly, the driving force of Muncheez Food Drive Haiti, who's headed the efforts to feed over 1,000 people each day, without charge, since the quake.

Above is "Women of Haiti." ©Susan Shie 2010. fin Feb 7, 10. 18"h x 24"w, acrylic with brush and fabric paint with airpen, on stretched canvas. Purchased by Anonymous in England, via online bidding on my Facebook page, for the HeART for Haiti auction.  This composition started with my freehand brush drawing, while looking at a photo Joe Dore had put on Muncheez Food Drive Haiti's Facebook page.  I'm not used to working from someone else's photos, and I deeply appreciate that Joe put the pix online, and that I was able to convert them into works that raised money for the cause of feeding many homeless people.

I'm not used to being able to earn money for really useful causes, beyond my own income.  HeART for Haiti was the first time ever, that what I did really had some impact on improving others' lives. And we have such a long, long way to go.  But I'll keep trying from now on. Although I gave all the money from the above two pieces to a cause, the next piece I'm trying to sell for a cause has to also help me pay my bills:

This is "Racism Did This to Haiti," ©Susan Shie 2010, 18.5"h x 24"h, a quilted painting. It shows children injured by the quake in Haiti, sitting outside a field hospital after being treated. The writing tells about Haiti's already precarious situation of poverty and illness, before the quake, along with some of her history.  The price is $2,500, and $500 of it will go to GHESKIO, the world's first HIV/AIDS clinic, which has given only free care to Haitians with infectious diseases, since 1982. Now GHESKIO also cares for over 6,000 people in a tent city beside its clinic, and needs to move them to higher ground before the rains come. The buyer and I will decide which of us will send the $500 to GHESKIO - as long as we both know it gets sent.

I guess that's all for now. Thanks for reading my blog. Susan

My class in August at Valley Ridge Art Studio

Classes this year are having trouble getting students, for all the craft schools, etc, around the country. No surprise, considering the economy. For my Turtle Art Camps here at my home in Wooster, Ohio, I've only got students signed up for two of the camps I've offered for the whole year! One's in July and one's in October, and I have lots of openings for October and other months.

Most of my other classes, the ones I teach out, have enough students for them to happen, and one's even almost full (Peters Valley in NJ) (I about fainted, when I found THAT out, but I know they have other classes that aren't nearly full.)

There's this lovely gig Im really looking forward to, out in the country near Madison, WI, at Valley Ridge Art Studio, that still has class openings. It's for August 12 - 16, a Wednesday through Sunday class. Diary Paintings for Quilted Art Books, which is my Master Class there, is going to be unique, with a new twist on my diary work. (Don't get that Master Class term confused. It doesn't mean you have to be an expert in drawing, writing, painting, or sewing. My classes are ALWAYS for all levels, and I welcome beginners!)

Since Valley Ridge's focus is on book arts, I've designed a new class format, in which we make diary art paintings on cloth, but we make them into an art book. So it's a really holistic project, in which all the paintings are part of the same story or the diary for the week.


This is "Magic Lama #1," 23"h x 25"w, which I started last year at my April class at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, (where I'll be teaching this October, by the way.) Magic Lama isn't meant to be a book page, but I can see pages similar to this in the book I'll make as my classwork demo at Valley Ridge. I plan to put my book's story all through the imagery, though students can take a more straight approach, with the writing and imagery more separated. We'll be using markers, a lot of airpen and fabric paint, and brushed-on colors with fabric paint, all on Kona cotton. We'll do my Crazy Grid machine sewing to quilt the "pages."

Oh, and if you'd rather just make paintings or paintings for quilting, not books, that's fine with me, too. It's all the same processes, so just do your thing!


This big farmhouse at Valley Ridge has bedrooms you can rent during the class session, as well as a big kitchen.

Find out everything you need to know about Valley Ridge Art Studio on its site. Go through all the options in the links on the left, because there are pages you need to see, that aren't obvious in the link titles. Snoop around!

It sounds like one of those places you just want to keep living at, instead of going home! It's about 75 miles southwest of Madison, Wisconsin and southeast of La Cross, near Muscoda. You can read about the housing and food there in the Concierge Services link on the site. Here's info about the classroom.


Here's the outside of the classroom.


And here's the inside. It looks really good to me! And yes, it's got A/C and a big fridge!

I taught at a similarly rural location in Fall, 2004, at the Frederick-Talbott Inn, which at that time had a program of fiber art classes, one at a time, much like this one at Valley Ridge. I went into that class at "The Fred," thinking it would be so weird for just one class to happen out in the country, with just US there all week, by ourselves. But it turned out we had a blast! We became such a bonded group, we went out to eat together all the time, loved our class time together, and became an email group that still stays in contact once in a while! SO I think this Valley Ridge experience will be the same thing: so intensely personal, we'll have a riot together!

If you're interested in taking my August class there, you can contact Kathy Malkasian at kathy@valleyridgeartstudio.com, or phone her at 608-943-6212. She owns and runs the Valley Ridge Art Studio. Again, cleck out my class: Diary Paintings for Quilted Art Books.

OK, I'm off to clean up my quilt storage room and console Jimmy and myself about the herd of groundhogs, who are wrecking our garden and showing no signs of being trapped in our live-trap! Jimmy's got a sling shot and some rocks ...

Be happy. Love, Lucky