I was pretty excited this week to receive the digital catalog for the Fine Arts Exhibition of the Decatur Arts Festival. I had two works juried into this exhibit

Both of these are memory pieces, but the memories work in different ways.

Here’s a detail of “The Lord Giveth and the Interstate Taketh Away.” It was inspired by a drive through rural South Carolina and photos I took of abandoned houses in small towns.

This back porch was especially poignant to me. I remember walking around the corner of the house with my camera. It was so easy to imagine the Mom of the family standing there calling the kids home to supper. So, I added her figure to the photo. I like the mix of a realistic presentation – the photo of the back porch – with a less fully realized figure. Mom is a memory. We see just the silhouette. And it is slightly transparent. (Overpainted with transparent acrylics over the photo transfer.)

The photos I took looking into the open windows were quite haunting to me. I placed the windows into the story of the quilt, but I did not add to them. You see them as I saw them that day.

What makes this memory story different from many of my other quilts is that this is not my own story. I was there as an observer. I discovered the small towns. They were filled with the stories of other people’s lives. Still, the feeling of a gracious life that had disappeared was very compelling. I want to try to capture the warmth and charm of what that town might have been like when it was thriving, to honor it, and to place it side by side with the images of abandonment.

The second quilt, “Look Through the Memories,” was created for a solo show I presented in 2018 called “Home is What You Remember.” In it I examined memories of home from different angles.

For this particular quilt, the inspiration was the tree.

This tree was in the backyard of a small house I own here in my hometown, DeLand, and the sun illuminated one side like a bright spotlight. The details of the vines were intriguing. In the actual place, I looked through these to a shed at the far side of the yard. That made me think of the process of looking beyond things that get in the way of our perceptions of our own homes, especially a home from one’s childhood. So I created a fictitious house to be viewed through the complexity of the trees.

Memories are powerful. For me, they are the basis of storytelling and a lot of what interests me as an artmaker. It is my hope to create works with both physical layers and emotional layers. I hope that, like a favorite book, they provide things to discover and rediscover over time.

For readers who are near Decatur and would like to visit the exhibit the exhibit at Agnes Scott College, here’s where you can get more information. http://decaturartsfestival.com/. It will be exhibiting till June 13.

If you’d like to see more about these two quilts on my website, please take a look. Find them here:

THE LORD GIVETH
LOOK THROUGH MEMORIES

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

BLOG POSTS  - once a week:  If you would enjoy receiving blog posts by e-mail,  please subscribe here:  I post and send by e-mail each Sunday evening. BLOGS-BY-EMAIL

NEWSLETTER – about once a month: If you enjoy more detailed behind-the-scenes stories, as well as FIRST LOOKS at new works and members-only discounts, I hope you’ll become a Studio Insider.  You’ll hear from me about once a month.  NEWSLETTER