Yesterday, Mr C and I drove 4 hours over to the Coos Bay on the Oregon coast so that I could attend the opening reception of the In Stitches, Not Your Grandmother’s Quilts exhibit at the Pacific Park Gallery. The gallery is a big open space in quite new dental office.

The gallery is a lovely space, but not lighted that well. Quilts were hung on both floors. The women involved in putting this on were very gracious and welcoming.

My Pick Up Sticks was on the landing of the stairs to the upper level. It looked great all by itself.

My other quilt, Taking Leaf of My Seasons was on the long hallway.

This is Tina McCann from Depot Bay who won Judges Choice for best freeform art quilt. It is titled Saturday Market Baskets. I met Tina at Cynthia Corbin’s workshop last summer. It was nice to see her again.

Paulette Landers, who is a member of SAQA, and an incredible artist won Best of Show with this piece; and it was well deserved.

She was not at the reception even though she lives in the area. The quilting on this is exquisite.

There was also a traditional quilt category. No photos of those.

Now here is what took me aback about this exhibit. The jurors got to speak and give out the awards. They were both very much in the traditional quilting wheel house. They actually judged the quilts as in a quilt show. They talked about taking off points for this and that to reach their awards. There was nothing in the prospective that would have given a clue that this was going to happen. I did not expect an award. I am very happy with my two pieces and think as far as “art” goes they were in a small minority in this exhibit. I do not enter my quilts in judged shows. I enter them in juried shows which I thought this was. I will not enter it again. I think some people I know did not enter this year for that reason.  It is too bad because this is a lovely venue and would make a great space for a real art quilt exhibit juried by artists not quilt police.

Mr C and I stayed overnight and drove back this morning. Even though it was cloudy and rainy, it was a beautiful drive and the fall colors were still quite vibrant.