Our New Website

Thanks for following Viewpoints 9!

As of September 1, 2016 we have relocated to our new home:

Viewpoints9.com

Look forward to seeing you there!

Our previous cycles of work are still available at the following links:

Viewpoints 9

Viewpoints 9: Challenges of Nine

Viewpoints 9: Constants & Variables

The Journey

 by Misik Kim

The Journey, 27" x 40"

The Journey.

This work is the last one of challenge 3.

I think it took over 4 years.

After I met Martha in Houston,  the journey “ Viewpoints 9” of 9 members was started.

It gave me many things, good friends, the opportunity to see beautiful works and more …….

Thanks Martha….. and other members.

Some day I hope to meet all members together.

The Fire Within

You need to have a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to  make important work.  You need to go beyond the pretty and defy the socially accepted norms at times.

This piece is called the Fire Within, because that's what it takes to have to push past boundaries.

It's dedicated to the artists who stick with their messages, and forge their own paths.

The Fire Within,  30x24"

silk, cotton and wool- nuno felted, machine quilted and hand painted.

Hello! Summer

by Lin Hsin-Chen

NASA announced that our Earth had just survived from the warmest July in 136 years. This summer, we experienced disasters due to global warming. Mankind is not the only species suffered. I would like to comfort summer. This is not the weather it wanted. What is the problem at all?

There were several ecological disasters in Taiwan in July, 2016. Even the timing of flowering was in turmoil! I always don’t like summer. I love winter. You have nowhere to escape from the scorching weather. Using air-conditioning is very energy-consuming and also a waste of natural resources. On the contrary, we can just simply wear more clothes in winter for the cold weather. The energy consumption is significantly different from each other. I let the flowers in my work wear chiffon, just like wearing a bikini, it is translucent, cool, unfettered, self-liberated and relaxed. Feel the passion, enjoy the summer heat wave and learn to coexist with the extreme weather.

The 9 works of Cycle 3 is my Thinking series, which is presented with 9 types of flowers. They depict the relevant people, things and environments when I was creating them, through the slow and deliberate work of hand sewing, combining time and space with patience. I feel, experience and record ideas when inspiration occurs and sew the ideas in my needlework. Through the 9 works in the long 18 months, I encounter my true self. It is the process of inner learning! Maybe there are people questioning what my thinking is. Together the 9 quilts is a diary documenting the perfection and imperfection within the 18 months. I very much enjoy the project and happy for myself that I didn’t give up due to obstacles along the way, but keep working to the end! Thank you to each member of Viewpoints 9, you keep me learning and growing!

Materials: chiffon, cotton, dyed fabric, sequin, beads, lace flower, Romanian thread, embroidery floss, metallic thread

Techniques: hand appliqué, hand pieced, hand quilted, hand embroidered

Size: 80 x 80 (cm)

Journeys

The past four and a half years with Viewpoints 9 has been quite a journey! I can’t believe it’s the end of the third cycle already. This group has helped me to grow and to push my limits in my art, in my thinking and in what I demand from myself. Thank you all!

For this challenge and my theme of water, I used rusted fabric to make an old map I call “The Journeys of Sir Richard” (30.5” H x 40.25” W). 

I wanted to stretch myself to not only use my undesirables, but also use elements of all of the challenges this cycle. Here’s what I did:

• Challenge 1 – Use thread in a new way for you – Well, I finally did some hand stitching! Sir Richard’s island forays are stitched by hand. Note to self: budget more time when doing hand work.
• Challenge 2 – Neon – I used neon blue paint for the water.
• Challenge 3 – Unconventional fabric – I tore and cut a piece of leather and burned lettering into it for the “sign plate”. In addition to the leather, the rusted fabric includes linen and canvas, two unusual fabrics for me.
• Challenge 4 – Tradition – The quilt is made with traditional block piecing.
• Challenge 5 – Dimension – (Hopefully) I created depth in the water with the use of color and contour. 
• Challenge 6 – Natural Dyes – I used rusted fabric pieced together in 2.5” squares.
• Challenge 7 – Monochromatic – Does brown qualify as black? I only used blue paint and the natural rust/black color of the fabric.
• Challenge 8 – Text – Areas of the map are named and the entire map is labeled with text.
• Challenge 9 – Undesirables – My rusted fabric counts for two of the challenges! I may have to rethink the undesirable part.

Bark Impressions

Bark Impressions

19.5"w x 30.5"long [49.5cm x 77cm]

It was great fun to revisit the crystal organza fabrics I had in the stash and use them to create the bark Impressions quilt. Many of the eucalypt trees in my suburban neighbourhood in Brisbane have interesting bark patterns, from which I took inspiration. A bit of paint to pattern the organza made the whole much more interesting as well as the interplay of shadowing when the sheer fabric was overlapped. A few fanciful bugs/insects were added to inhabit the bark.







Materials: synthetic organza, batting, cotton backing, yarn, thread, fusible web, fabric paint

Techniques: fusing, machine quilting, hand stitching, fabric manipulation, hand printed



Busy Bees Village

As I said before, everything I found in my cupboards is desirable - it's just that I haven't got round to use it!  So I call this my "unused desirables" piece. 

I have been collecting commercial batiks for years.  I find them pretty and at times irresistible - so I buy them occasionally, with the idea that I will one day find a use for them.

I decided to use them to make a map. When I teach classes on map-making, I find my students often bring commercial fabrics to work with.  So I have often thought I should make a map using commercial fabrics myself, as a class sample. This was my opportunity.  (I can always show a photograph, if the quilt is away travelling).

It's an English village among fields, with a river at the bottom.  I added one or two other old fabrics. I used my usual freehand piecing technique for most of the quilt.

It was important to find a contrasting fabric for the roads. The dark fabric I originally planned on did not show up well. So I eventually bought a new, very light, batik fabric, at the Festival of Quilts - it has a much more interesting effect.

I also fused-appliqué a bridge crossing the river. 

The striped fabric comes from a small stash of fabrics I bought in my first trip to the USA in 1993, intending to use them to make doll's clothes (and I did - in the times when I was a toymaker).  I have recently used some of them for my tribute to Yvonne Porcella quilt, and have rediscovered the pleasure of using stripes and checks, and black and white.

However I am not sure I will use the batiks again, certainly not all together - maybe as details, among other fabrics.  I find the result too busy - I am so used to working with hand-dyed, almost solid fabrics.  So I called my map Busy Bees Village.

Size 30" high by 25" wide.