Paint the Tpwn v.2

 Arts Alpharetta held the second annual Paint the Town event 

Here are some of the artists painting around Alpharetta. Their paintings were shown in and exhibit and reception on Friday Evening May 21at the Alpharetta Arts Center. The works remained on display for a week after the event and many pieces were sold.

Artists painted all around town. The Shirley Farm Red Barn was a popular scene. Many artists painted around the downtown area as well as locations like the Arts Center. Larry and Margo Attig's house and gardens were again a very popular site with numerous artist painting on site throughout the days of the event.

Best in Show "Early Morning Light" by Stephanie Amato

Second Place - "A Place for Ice Cream" by John Guernsey

Viewers Choice - "Lake Windward Nocturne" by Munir Kapasi

I painted the Shirley Barn and the Rest Haven Cemetery, but my favorite location was a property that I never knew existed very close to my first home in Alpharetta. Almost 50 years ago my wife Jackie and I purchased a small house on Jere Drive. Just around the corner on Hook Street is a fantasy land behind one of the homes on that street. The property is over 2 acres of buildings and interesting collections of all kinds of things.

My favorite subject was an old stone building that appeared to be a shop. When I got there the sun was washing over one side of the building while the background of lush trees was still very dark. There was another artist there before me who was painting the scene from a slightly different perspective. I included her in my painting. At the exhibit on Saturday night my painting sold to the property owners.

Rest Haven Cemetery- Marian Norman Bagwell

Shirley's Red Barn and Firewood

Stone Cottage on Hooks Street

Georgia Celebrates Quilts - A Fantastic Show!

 East Cobb Quilt Guild sponsors Georgia Celebrates Quilts every other year. That is except when the unthinkable  occurs. The quilt show has been held in odd number years until the 2021 show had to be cancelled due to the COVID pandemic and so we planned for three years for our most recent quilt show in June, 2022. That means that our future shows will be in even-numbered years from this point on.

Georgia Celebrates Quilts is the largest quilt show in the southeast traditionally showing over 300 quilts. This year there were 344 quilts shown. The pandemic gave quilters a bit over 3 years to make quilts while in quarantine. The 'stay in place' order provided us with many hours of continuous sewing and some high quality work. I'm sure that those who served on the jury for this who must have had some tough decisions.

Our judges also had a very difficult time determining prize winners in each category. I commend them for going through the 344 quilts very efficiently in just over two days and the awards were well deserved.

There were awards given in over a dozen categories and special cash awards in at least 15 categories.

Best in Show 

On a personal note two of my quilts won ribbons in different categories. My Stephanie Brandenburg Floral won an Honorable mention ribbon in the Large Pieced (2 person) category. It was machine quilted by Terri Taylor who was Quilt Show Chair for this show. In the Special Techniques category M. Matisse Chambres a' Louer won second place in the category. This piece was started 14 years ago but sat in boxes for about 5 years and was finished during the Pandemic. It was done as a quilt-as-you-go where each block was quilted after it was finished and the put together in rows and hen the rows were stitched together. This quilt was a two-sided quilt that showed the outside of the building on the back.

Below are photos of my two ribbon-winning quilts with details.

My Quilt on left Kathleen's on Right Made From Same Fabric

Close up of piecing and quilting

Interesting story; The strips that are used to separate the floral fabrics were a fabric created by Stephanie Brandenburg to coordinate with her floral designs. Near the end of the piecing I discovered that I was a bit short of some of those fabrics, so, painted some extra fabric using fabric paint and Inktense Blocks. While the quilt was hanging in the show I tried to find the pieces that I made and couldn't tell which ones were the original fabric and which ones I made. I guess that most people will never know.

My most proud honor was for my M. Matisse Chambres a' Louer quilt. it won a red ribbon for second place in the Special Techniques category.  This is based on the question What if Henri Matisse owned an apartment house and decorated it himself? To achieve this I chose a different fabric designer's fabrics for each room. There is fabric by Kaffe Fassett, Amy Butler, Robin Pandolph, and others. Objects in the rooms are made from other fabrics that I chose to coordinate with the colors of the walls in each room.

It is shown below.

Here are details of some of the rooms .

Amy Butler fabric for the walls. Woman in purple robe and furniture
is drawn and painted with fabric paint.

Walls are Robin Pandolph fabric and other things are painted
on white fabric then cut out and fused.

Kathleen and I each had two other quilts in the show that did not win any ribbons. We were very proud to have our quilts selected to be a part of this incredible show. Well done East Cobb Quilters' Guild, this year celebrating 40 years as a guild.