At home in our big, old house we have all our windows open welcoming in the sweet, chilly breezes of this lovely autumn and the singing that comes in, too.
Have you heard them singing? The cacophony of insect songs singing in our new autumn.
How did October arrive so fast? Seems like just yesterday we were back in March switching out our closet wardrobes from last winter into spring and summer.
Now we’re talking about shedding our flip flops and looking under the bed for our cozy, fleece-lined house shoes we want to wear again.
Autumn! Oh, how I do love this crisp season with so much to enjoy. Signs of celebration are appearing all around us. You can see them in the imaginative windows of Mother Road Coffee on the square.
Enlisting the artistic ingenuity and talents of Terri Bunn, at MRC Kara and Ed Hardesty go all out to decorate for each new season. For now, among a plethora of colorful delights tucked into a forest of birch tree trunks (or are they aspens?) there’s a stack of books perched on a shelf.
Descriptive words are neatly printed on the book spines, as though they’re song lyrics on the staff lines of sheet music. Collectively they perfectly describe this magical season. They poignantly express my autumnal sense of wonderment as together they sing a sweet shout out for the joys of this time of year: Autumn; jeans; crisp air; football; hot cider; good books; coffee; bliss. I’m tempted to sneak in two more volumes placed at the tip top of the stack. The text on my volumes would read “art” and “quilts”!
Yes, art is at the top of every stack of books in our house and at artCentral’s Hyde House, too. Art is what makes this and every season special. The art of nature. The art of gathering with family and friends. The art of slowing down so not to miss the comfort this season brings to all of us. The art of seeing another splendid exhibition filling our gallery walls with the beauty of quilted fiber creations.
The current exhibition, “The Art of Quilting,” at artCentral, in the galleries upstairs and down is made possible by the generous underwritting of Edward Jones Financial Advisors in Carthage: Darren Collier, Kristi J. Montague, Joe Ryder and Garrett Stramel.
This exhibition offers us the best of autumn — color, imagination, comfort — on the walls of Hyde House waiting for your viewing all through our Carthage Maple Leaf Festival and beyond to Nov. 18! Quilters with outstanding entries have been selected by juror, Michelle Hansford. Their ribbons and awards hang beside their creations.
These aren’t just old-fashioned or ordinary quilts. These are fashion-forward fiber art. They come with stories told by the creators who give us written windows into their art-making.
• Exploring how others see her is the foundation for Mary Thornton’s “Quintessence of the Heart.” Using a drawing a friend composed of her after she wore outlandish leggings to her friend’s home, she broke free of her friend’s constraints to radiate her soul outwards with the colors of hope, life, love and creative synergies. Some free motion flowers are enhanced to be a rebirth of ideas.
• Fiber artist, Andrea Luliak, says about her “Oklahoma Earthquakes,” “Oklahoma has experienced an unprecedented rash of earthquakes caused by wastewater disposal during fracking operations. I strongly felt two earthquakes where I live and the impression they made on me was intense. No one knows the extent these earthquakes will have on Oklahoma, but I needed to show the displacement of the earth in this piece.”
• “Peach – Anyone” — cream on one side, peach on the other — by Sue Swindle is an oval, reversible table runner with a satin stitch edge.
• Lillie Eaton usually looks for a appliqué pattern. Appliqué patterns are her love. When she saw the “Snow Village” pattern she was instantly drawn to the the colors and houses. She altered the original pattern, adding her own appliqué bird. She feels the quilt is very inviting and would be a great entry piece in someone’s home.
• Joan Banks likes the dimension that a layer of organza gives to an art quilt. “The Snowy Day” feels almost as if you could step into her woodland setting and sink into the snow.
Through the weeks ahead, before our own winter descends, all the quilts at artCentral are hanging like open windows singing colorful welcomes to autumn and to you. Come see them soon and often during weekend gallery hours at artCentral: Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. and Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to schedule a weekday visit please call (417) 358-4404.
We think for sure you’ll hear autumn singing through our windows and on our walls in our big, old Hyde House.
