Upcoming Shows

In less than one week, my mom and I will be traveling to IQF in Houston for the quilty extravaganza of the year.  If you're going, drop me a note in the comments, maybe we can say hi in person!  I'm privileged to have two quilts hanging there this year.  My quilt Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence is in Quilts: A World of Beauty, and my quilt Peering Out of the Darkness is part of the Quilt National 2015 exhibit at IQF.

My mom also has a quilt in Quilts: a World of Beauty, hers is called Conflagration, Desolation, Rejuvenation, Jubilation.  She also has a second quilt in the brand new SAQA show "Turmoil" called Flying Geese (sadly I don't have a picture of that one).  If you make it to Houston, definitely check these out, they're so much more interesting in person than in pictures.

Shannon Conley, Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence

Shannon Conley, Peering out of the Darkness

Vicki Conley,  Conflagration, Desolation, Rejuvenation, Jubilation

Mom and I also both have quilts in Art Quilts XXI: In Stitches.  This annual show is opening November 18th at the Vision Gallery in Chandler, Arizona.  My dog quilt is going to be hanging in the show, and my mom's fabulous donkey quilt, Shocked, is also going to be there.  Super exciting, her quilt is on the show postcard!

Shannon Conley, The Dogs

Vicki Conley, Shocked #2

It's really exciting to get to have pieces hanging at these venues, and I encourage you to check them out if you're in the area.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence

It's time once again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, hosted as ever by the indomitable Amy from Amy's Creative Side.  She does such a great job of hosting and gathering sponsors and it's really one of the premier online quilt shows anywhere.  I really encourage you to click through and see/comment on the fabulous entries.

This quilt is my entry in the Original Design category.  For my regular readers it'll be familiar as a recent finish, but I'm excited to have the opportunity to share it with a wider audience.

This quilt is one of my most long-running ever.  The first post about it was February 18, 2014, but the project had been bubbling in my mind since at least 2009.  It's construction has been a comedy of errors, so if you're interested in more details, you can check out its tag.

Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence, Shannon M. Conley, c. 2016, 45"h x 62"w

The quilt is an exploration of the intersection of science and religion and is part of an ongoing series of liturgical quilts I'm completing.  The central text comes from Eucharistic Prayer C, from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.  It is a slightly more contemporary version of an ancient prayer used before communion.  I have always been drawn to the science/natural history feel of the text. It says:

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give him thanks and praise.

God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

By your will they were created and have their being.

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.

By his blood, he reconciled us.

By his wounds, we are healed.

I started thinking about God in the world, the evolution of life on our planet, and those who use their talents to study the world around us.  Thus instead of saints, the illuminated initials contain pictures of notable scientists.

Louis Pasteur

Galileo Galilei

Marie Curie

Barbara McClintock

Likewise, instead of depicting biblical stories or other scenes from the life of the church, the borders illustrate the evolution of life on our planet.  Starting along the top are "galaxies, suns, and the planets in their courses" along with sections of a Louis Pasteur quote expressing the idea that science can bring us closer to God. "par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu"

The whole quote is: Le premier regard de l'homme jeté sur l'univers n'y découvre que variété, diversité, multiplicité des phénomènes. Que ce regard soit illuminé par la science, — par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu, — et la simplicité et l'unité brillent de toutes parts.

Working counterclockwise, the far right border depicts early life: my interpretation of "primordial soup" (top), chemosynthetic bacteria at an undersea hydrothermal vent (middle), and stromatolites which helped oxygenate the earth's atmosphere (bottom) beginning in the Archean eras (~3.5 billion years ago).  

Working around the quilt counterclockwise, the bottom right border features a variety of creatures from the Cambrian explosion (~544 million years ago [Ma]) on the right.  These include everyone's favorite trilobite as well as examples ofHallucigenia, Opabinia, Pikaia, Marrella, and Aysheaia. 

The middle panel shows two examples of more advanced, later undersea life.  The bottom is a Eurypterid, which is basically a giant (up to 8ft) sea scorpion which first appeared in the Ordovician period (~505 Ma), but was present for an extremely long time (all the way into the Permian period ~278 Ma).  The top animal is a type of early jawless fish called Cephalaspis which appeared in the early Devonian period (~408 Ma).

The left panel is my very favorite of all the "creature" panels, and is meant to depict early life on land.  Life spread to land during the Silurian period (~440 Ma), and features an example from the order Trigonotarbida, a small spidery creature.  Of course life on land means early plants as well, so the little bug is pictured with a fern.

The skinny borders along the middle of the two panels effectively function as one set of animals, all from THE AGE OF DINOSAURS (that should sound like a deep resonating voice over a PA system).  At the bottom is my old friend the Helicoprion, a shark species with a round saw blade-like set of teeth. Definitely check it out if you aren't familiar. Helicoprion actually arose in the Permian period (~290 Ma), survived the great extinction event at the end of the Permian, and continued living on into the Triassic period.  The middle panels feature our old friend Coelophysis, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur of the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods (~200 Ma).  The top is a Pteranodon, from the Cretaceous period (~144 Ma).

Back on the bottom (this time of the left panel) but continuing to work counter clockwise, I've included a Gastornis, a species of giant (up to 6 feet) flightless bird that lived during the late Paleocene/Eocene epochs (Paleogene period, ~60 Ma).  The center features a wooly mammoth from the Pleistocene epoch (first diverged from other mammoths ~400,000 years ago).  The final piece of the puzzle is people, and the bottom corner shows my version of Adam and Eve, sitting at the base of a symbolic tree of life.  They're reading On the Origin of Species, and the rest of the tree of life that runs all the way up the left side is filled with a variety of Darwin's finches.

I think most of the story of this quilt will probably not be evident to those who just view the quilt, but all the pieces were integral to my design idea, I wanted to explain them here.  After finishing this highly planned, quite precise/realistic/involved quilt, I'm looking forward to working on some other more abstract and free-flowing pieces.  I'll be called back to this series at some point though, so I'm sure there will be more illumination-style work in the pipeline.

What are your long-term-in-your-brain-forever projects?  Have you finished some of them?  How did that feel?  Were you happy with the outcome and how it matched what you had in  your head?

Thanks to all those who clicked through from the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and I encourage you all to check out the great quilts there.

Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence, Finally Finished!

I feel like there have been a bunch of "finally finished" posts on some of my big projects lately.  I don't think it's really the case, certainly I've been even less productive than usual recently, but I guess it's just how the posts shake out.

This quilt is one of my most long-running ever.  The first post about it was February 18, 2014, but the project had been bubbling in my mind since at least 2009.  This is one that's been "almost" finished for months.  You may recall back in June I realized that two of the large illuminated letters had been put on backwards, so I had to rip out a ton of quilting, carefully remove the initials, change their places and then requilt.  It then needed to be rephotographed (thanks Mike for all the pictures in this post).  Then came the pockets and labels (times 2 of course since there are two panels).  And then finally another large black pocket spanning both panels and sewn on top of the original pockets.  The large black pocket was required because the IQA judged show at Houston requires multi-panel pieces to be sewn onto a single pocket or black panel.  Although it was extremely annoying to sew on, I don't mind so much since the quilt got into the show (yay!).  Anyway, now it's actually finished finished, and writing up the blog post is the last step.

Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence, Shannon M. Conley, c. 2016, 45"h x 62"w

The quilt is an exploration of the intersection of science and religion and is part of an ongoing series of liturgical quilts I'm completing.  The central text comes from Eucharistic Prayer C, from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.  It is a slightly more contemporary version of an ancient prayer used before communion.  I have always been drawn to the science/natural history feel of the text. It says:

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give him thanks and praise.

God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

By your will they were created and have their being.

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.

By his blood, he reconciled us.

By his wounds, we are healed.

I started thinking about God in the world, the evolution of life on our planet, and those who use their talents to study the world around us.  Thus instead of saints, the illuminated initials contain pictures of notable scientists.

Louis Pasteur

Galileo Galilei

Marie Curie

Barbara McClintock

Likewise, instead of depicting biblical stories or other scenes from the life of the church, the borders illustrate the evolution of life on our planet.  Starting along the top are "galaxies, suns, and the planets in their courses" along with sections of a Louis Pasteur quote expressing the idea that science can bring us closer to God. "par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu"

The whole quote is: Le premier regard de l'homme jeté sur l'univers n'y découvre que variété, diversité, multiplicité des phénomènes. Que ce regard soit illuminé par la science, — par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu, — et la simplicité et l'unité brillent de toutes parts.

Working counterclockwise, the far right border depicts early life: my interpretation of "primordial soup" (top), chemosynthetic bacteria at an undersea hydrothermal vent (middle), and stromatolites which helped oxygenate the earth's atmosphere (bottom) beginning in the Archean eras (~3.5 billion years ago).  

Working around the quilt counterclockwise, the bottom right border features a variety of creatures from the Cambrian explosion (~544 million years ago [Ma]) on the right.  These include everyone's favorite trilobite as well as examples of Hallucigenia, Opabinia, Pikaia, Marrella, and Aysheaia. 

The middle panel shows two examples of more advanced, later undersea life.  The bottom is a Eurypterid, which is basically a giant (up to 8ft) sea scorpion which first appeared in the Ordovician period (~505 Ma), but was present for an extremely long time (all the way into the Permian period ~278 Ma).  The top animal is a type of early jawless fish called Cephalaspis which appeared in the early Devonian period (~408 Ma).

The left panel is my very favorite of all the "creature" panels, and is meant to depict early life on land.  Life spread to land during the Silurian period (~440 Ma), and features an example from the order Trigonotarbida, a small spidery creature.  Of course life on land means early plants as well, so the little bug is pictured with a fern.

The skinny borders along the middle of the two panels effectively function as one set of animals, all from THE AGE OF DINOSAURS (that should sound like a deep resonating voice over a PA system).  At the bottom is my old friend the Helicoprion, a shark species with a round saw blade-like set of teeth. Definitely check it out if you aren't familiar. Helicoprion actually arose in the Permian period (~290 Ma), survived the great extinction event at the end of the Permian, and continued living on into the Triassic period.  The middle panels feature our old friend Coelophysis, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur of the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods (~200 Ma).  The top is a Pteranodon, from the Cretaceous period (~144 Ma).

Back on the bottom (this time of the left panel) but continuing to work counter clockwise, I've included a Gastornis, a species of giant (up to 6 feet) flightless bird that lived during the late Paleocene/Eocene epochs (Paleogene period, ~60 Ma).  The center features a wooly mammoth from the Pleistocene epoch (first diverged from other mammoths ~400,000 years ago).  The final piece of the puzzle is people, and the bottom corner shows my version of Adam and Eve, sitting at the base of a symbolic tree of life.  They're reading On the Origin of Species, and the rest of the tree of life that runs all the way up the left side is filled with a variety of Darwin's finches.

I think most of the story of this quilt will probably not be evident to those who just view the quilt, but all the pieces were integral to my design idea, I wanted to explain them here.  After finishing this highly planned, quite precise/realistic/involved quilt, I'm looking forward to working on some other more abstract and free-flowing pieces.  I'll be called back to this series at some point though, so I'm sure there will be more illumination-style work in the pipeline.

What are your long-term-in-your-brain-forever projects?  Have you finished some of them?  How did that feel?  Were you happy with the outcome and how it matched what you had in  your head?

Linking up with Nina-Marie, and TGIFF.

Eucharistic Prayer C Quilt- Almost Finished

I realized I haven't updated with progress on my Eucharistic Prayer C quilt since early March so thought I'd jump in and give an update.  It's been my primary quilting focus this spring, and I'm really pushing to get it finished!

Back in March I finished the quilting, and after that the next step was to paint in all the quilting in the borders.  I'm going for a dense, richly colored border, something like this or this which meant a lot of quite tedious painting.  I decided to go ahead and block, square, and put the facings on before painting, so that it wouldn't be all raggedy while painting.  Here's what the two panels looked like before I started painting.

 For the painting I used a combination of regular acrylics, setacolor, and fabrico markers.  It was quite challenging as the goal was to stay just inside the quilting lines and as soon as the paint was liquidy enough to apply gracefully, it started to bleed.  I finally just had to give in to the idea that that would happen and let go a bit.  It really took forever, just ask my mom, who for several months would call and ask what I was working on only to hear Still Painting!  My biggest struggle was actually how boring it was which made it hard to get up the motivation to work on it.   I didn't get very many in progress pictures of the painting, but here are a couple so you can see what I'm talking about.

I was so excited to finish the painting, but unfortunately realized shortly thereafter (when I really truly thought I was done) that I'd made a catastrophic error on one of the panels.  Specifically, I'd mixed up the two illuminated initials.  You can see in the first picture below the initial L followed by "t you..."  and in the bottom picture, the initial A followed by "et us..."  As you might imagine, the L goes with "et" and the A goes with the "t you" and I cannot believe I made such a huge mistake.  The whole illuminated initial is 6-8 layers thick, and will have to come off from the blue/purple border forward.  Unfortunately, it's fused down and heavily quilted.

I'm currently now beginning what feels like an insane amount of (quite boring) quilt ripping which is even more fun given how much tedium I just forced myself through with the painting.  Talk about learning lessons the hard way.  I'm just hoping that I can peel the fused initials off cleanly once I get the quilting removed, but it's going to be tricky.  Also tricky will be getting them back down since they're not exactly the same size.  Alas, it's always something.

Someday I will be well and truly finished with this, but until then.....

More Quilting

I feel like I've been quilting on my large Eucharistic Prayer C quilt forever.  I still love this project, but it feels like the quilt that is never ending.  Alas, there is still much more quilting left to go and then painting, so the end is not yet in sight.   I've been getting so bored and frustrated with the quilting that it's been hard to get motivated to work on it, but it's not like I'm at a design standstill or anything so I feel like I should just force myself to push through.  I keep telling myself that it will take even longer to finish if I don't work on it.

I realized the other day that I haven't actually shared any updates on it since this very brief snapshot before Christmas, so I figured I was due to show some progress.

The background of the large borders on both panels is quilted in green, red, blue, and purple and will eventually be painted in.  The green is fairly continuous, but the red blue and purple aren't which means tons of stops and starts.  Added to all the color changes in each vignette and I feel like I spend twice as much time burying threads as I do quilting.

Wow this is turning whiny!!!  I better stop and just show some pictures :)
These are a few of my favorites of the quilted images.

And here's the back of one of the panels which is mostly finished (quilting wise).  I think the back looks pretty cool, apart from the giant ripple bump in the backing which I didn't discover until hours of quilting had gone over it.

I'm going off now to be inspired by all the rest of the creatives out there and hopefully exit the other side in a better frame of mind!!  Linking up as always with the awesome Nina Marie.

More Animals!

I've been working away on my large quilt, but have gotten behind on posting.  I finished all the animal pictures and have started quilting the first panel.  Last time  I finished with the emergence of land life and the Trigonotarbida.

Today I'll start with the pieces that go up the "middle", that is, the right border of the left panel, and the left border of the right panel.  These borders are the narrowest of all, only about 3.5", so each of these pictures is about 2" wide.  This is my dinosaur section, with a Pteranodon (from the late Cretaceous) flying through the top panels, my friend the Coelophysis (from the Triassic) in the middle section, and a Helicoprion (very long-surviving, from the Permian through the late Triassic) swimming in the sea in the bottom.  Helicoprions are actually a type of shark, and are super awesome.  I learned about them this summer on our Alaska trip, and you should definitely check them out.  Sorry the pictures are so dark!  The helicoprion is especially hard to see, but his background is multilayered blues.

Then moving into the Cenozoic era, starting along the bottom edge of the left panel. First up is a a Gastornis (from the Paleocene/Eocene epoch).  It's a giant flightless bird, one of many that arose during the early Cenozoic when mammals and birds really started to dominate.

Next comes a wooly mammoth from the Pleistocene epoch (the last before our current epoch).

Finally we get to people and our current epoch (the Holocene).  The people are sitting at the bottom left corner of the left panel.  The tree panels go up the left side, and to cap out our track through evolution, sitting in the tree are a bunch of "Darwin's finches".  Of course, in real life, they wouldn't all be in the same tree, but Darwin's study of the collection of different finch species found in the Galapagos Islands helped him develop the theory of natural selection.  Mine aren't 100% correct, but I did try to represent a variety of different beak shapes, one of the most obvious distinguishing features of the finch species.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the tree trunk lines up in all four panels to provide continuity up the left border.

As with all the other pictures, each one will have much more detail added in the quilting, but so far they're coming along ok.  Next time I'll share the ones that go across the top border, and then I think I'll be up-to-date.  

I'm linking up with the ever-fabulous Nina-Marie today.  Hope everyone is having some time to be creative!

Abiogenesis

I mentioned a couple weeks back that the borders of my current quilt feature several different vignettes and that each one represents a stage in the evolutionary history of our planet.  It was quite fun to read up on the evolution of life, particularly in the precambrian era since I knew little about it compared to later eras.  Obviously "evolution of life" is a pretty big topic to break up into a few pictures, so I just picked things that jumped out at me and put them in chronological order.  Each one will have quite a bit of additional detail added with stitching once I'm into the quilting phase, so for now some of them are kind of blank.

I started with "primordial ooze"- not much to see here. The first organic molecules, polymerization of them into proteins and RNA, and then eventual compartmentalization into the first organisms will be added with quilting.

The next panel shows an undersea hydothermal vent.  Hydrothermal vents are one of the few places where extremophiles still live- organisms that don't require oxygen or light for metabolism and life.  There are some quite technical definitions for chemoautotrophs but the main idea is that they make organic molecules from carbon dioxide and utilize inorganic energy sources like hydrogen sulfide or ammonia.

Then follows the great oxygenation event, and the rise of cyanobacteria.  This panel depicts stromatolites (a type of cyanobacteria) which are still currently found in a few isolated places.  This period was especially critical since prior to the development of photosynthesis and the ability of photosynthesizing organisms to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, there was virtually no oxygen in earth's atmosphere.  To me, this is really really nifty- the idea that all the oxygen that we take for granted and that supports most life as we know it was spewed forth by billions of tiny bacteria over billions of years.

The great oxygenation event (among other things) paved the way for the Cambrian explosion which is marked by the proliferation of vast diversity among organisms.  This panel shows several, including a trilobite (I feel like they're sort of the poster children for this era), an opabinia, a hallucigenia, and a couple other things I don't actually know the names of.  This image is the bottom right hand corner and marks the turning point into what I'd think of as more "normal" life forms.

Next up is a Eurypterid, a type of large under sea scorpion.  Eurypterids were key predators and though some species were in the 15 inch range, others grew up to 6-8 feet.  They thrived for a long (long) time from the Ordovician through the Permian eras.  He's swimming along with a jawless primitive fish from the Silurian period (which is partway through the reign of the eurypterids).

During the Silurian, the first terrestrial life appeared, and ferns first appeared during the Devonian period (right after the Silurian).  The fern is accompanied by an early terrestrial arachnid from the order Trigonotarbida.  Although they were small, they did feed off other arthropods, and after the giant under sea scorpion, I was ready for something that would eat bugs....

Here's where I'll leave it for today, and more animals will come along later this week!