Elizabeth Rosenberg

I’m so happy to be able to share photos of three of the quilts in my new series, Venetian Lace. These photos were taken by D. James Dee, The Soho Photographer. He’s just wonderful — so careful, so precise.  I thoroughly enjoyed my time in his studio with him and his very sweet assistant, Joy. Here are the photos:

The first is VENETIAN LACE #1. It measures 38″ high x 34″ wide. It was completed in November of 2009.

Here’s the detail photo:

This next photo is of the second quilt in the series, VENETIAN LACE #2. It’s smaller, measuring 31″ high x 15″ wide. There’s no piecing of the background in this quilt. It’s just applique, and applique, and applique…. I just LOVED working on it!!!

And the detail shot:

Finally, the third in the series, VENETIAN LACE #3. It measures 40″ high by 21″ wide. The dark fabric is hand-painted, the gold fabric is a shiny, fancy thing that I had floating around in the stash for WAY too long!

And the detail, which really shows the stitching well, I think:

Whew! I’ve finally finished adding these quilts to the portfolio on my website. The rest of the morning was spent writing an artist statement for the series. I worked so very hard on it. I deleted, I added, then I deleted some more, then I didn’t like it at all. Then I started from scratch again, only to throw up my hands in despair. It’s so hard to write an artist statement and not sound pompous! Writing is such a different skill than quilting — it’s so hard to translate the feelings that come when quilting. At least it is for me!  Finally, I just put the computer aside, went out for a nice long walk with the dog, and began again with a nice cup of tea and a fresh outlook. I wrote from my heart, and I’m really happy with what I ended up with:

Each day, on the small island of Burano, not far from Venice, a group of lacemakers gather in the Lace Museum to create merletto, the famous Italian lace known throughout the world for its intricate beauty. I joined them for a time to learn their art. As we worked, we conversed in my long-idle native language. Among many other topics, we discussed the great joy of creating beauty in the company of friends. This is a series of quilts about the intricacies of lace and friendship. When broken down to their essence, like most things, these concepts become quite simple to understand.

The next time I’m struggling to write, I have to remember to just let it come naturally out of my heart. It hurts so much less that way!  Well, now that all that work is done, I can get back to the studio and do something really FUN, like quilting! Yay!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Italian, quilt, venetian lace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.