Leslie Tucker Jenison

Friday, August 30, 2013

Images From Telluride

A little story: my husband has been working on an unusual project for the past 5 years. After discussing his idea with our good friends, Penn & Teller, the three of them decided it could be an interesting documentary, and, well, it is (disclosure: I'm just a bit biased). The film, called "Tim's Vermeer", debuted last night at the Telluride Film Festival. This experience has many firsts for the entire family. We are fortunate that our daughters were all in a position to travel out to Telluride with us to be present for the festival.

Here are a few images from the first two days.

Day One: travel. We flew into Denver and met our two east coast daughters. We had a very loooong layover before we caught our little plane into Telluride. If you have never flown into that airport it is, well, pretty interesting. The only airport that comes close to it is St. Barts. Thrilling.

amusement at the Denver airport

Girls! What are you doing?!

You know the plane is small when your co-pilot is also your flight attendant. Guess what?

No beverages or peanuts.

Propeller, on the downwind leg of our approach into Telluride.

The first evening Tim and I attended a filmmakers party with the producer,

Farley Ziegler. They didn't even notice that I have a patio heater coming out of my head!

Thursday morning we were bussed way up onto the mountain (10,500 feet above sea level)

to a private residence for brunch. We stood in line right behind Salman Rushdie (a literary hero),

and a lot of people whom, if I were more connected to the industry, I would have been impressed to be standing near, I'm sure.

We were served an amazing array of food. Fresh corn cakes, mushroom torts, etc.

Everything local.

I made friends with this guy, who dug up these horseradish that morning to grate over

Bloody Marys. He gave me a piece to "smell" and carry around. I know, I'm weird.

I couldn't resist, so I got a virgin bloody just to have the horseradish.

It did not disappoint.

Tents and tables were arrayed across the property.

The views were beyond amazing.

Aspen trees.

The side of Robert Redford's head (2nd from left)

Pre-premier: Jenison Force Five!

Penn and Tim being very silly

The premier was held in the New Sheridan Opera Theater.

Gloria Swanson has performed here.

Penn explains how the project started...then the premier.

People were so excited! Cheering, and lots of congratulations to Tim and everyone involved.

This patron asks Tim for his autograph.

This morning is the second viewing, and there will be a Q&A following, along with a viewing of Tim's painting. Stay tuned, and thanks for coming along on this big adventure!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Goings On....

Greetings! I've been happily working away in my studio and realized I haven't written in a while.
Here is what I've been up to:

I presented lectures to both the San Antonio Fiber Artist guild and the Austin Fiber Artists.

Here are some of the Austin Fiber Artists prior to the meeting.

Members looked at several of the quilts I brought along.

Look who returned home?!

Amsterdam Alley is about to go to its new owner, but not before I block it again.

It is a bit rumpled from shipping.

I decided to finish this small wallhanging.

I was gifted with a San Antonio Mod Guild Charter member block.

I had fun putting borders on and quilting it.

Finished!

The "Juice Box" is on the way to Telluride with a painting.

My husband has a film in the festival!

Here is a quilt top that I began several months ago.

It had a structural problem and I finally corrected it.

The beginnings of another quilt using the beautiful Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics.

Just yummy!

Here is the quilt top. Negative space is Robert Kaufman Essex (linen cotton blend)

And the back. This is Robert Kaufman chambray cotton.

Tomorrow I leave for Telluride and I'll try(!) to post about the experience of being at the film festival.

It all depends on internet access!

Monday, August 19, 2013

Pet Project comes to Houston Quilt Festival for 2nd Year: Be A Part of It!!

Quite a few of you know Pokey Bolton, founder of Quilting Arts Magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors, and more.

Pokey is now the Chief Creative Officer at Quilts, Inc., and resides in Houston as a result.

Due to a personal experience rescuing an abandoned dog off the streets she became involved with "Friends For Life", the only "no kill" animal shelter in Houston.

Last year was the first round of her "Pet Project", an event to raise money (and awareness) by asking artists to create and donate fiber postcards which were sold during the International Quilt Festival in Houston. To say it was a success would be a massive understatement. The cards were beautiful, popular, and they sold out long before the festival was over. We need to do something about that!

I'm asking you to turn on your creative juices and help with this project. One hundred percent of the monies generated go directly to the Friends For Life shelter.

With permission, I am re-publishing Pokey's post from her blog. Please go there for more information!

My fabric postcard of Nellie and Clarence, my two adopted pooches from Friends For Life

We are thrilled to announce the second annual edition of Quilt Festival’s Pet Postcard Project! Friends for Life, Houston’s fastest growing No-Kill animal adoption and rescue organization, will again be the beneficiary shelter!

Several of us at Quilts have adopted animals from Friends For Life, an organization I admire very much for the work, education, and outreach they do for Houston’s most vulnerable animals who would very likely be euthanized if they weren’t in their program.

Salise Shuttlesworth, Founder and Director of Friends For Life and I are each holding up a fabric postcard from last year’s benefit.

Some may remember that we raised more than $20,000 total last year at Quilt Festival for Friends For Life by selling hundreds of donated fabric postcards for $20 each, and this year I am hoping to far surpass that amount! We are inviting YOU for this fall’s show to make fabric postcards to help us achieve this goal.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Make as many 4″ x 6″ fabric postcards (that are no more than 1/8″ in thickness) as you would like to be featured and sold at International Quilt Festival this upcoming fall.

2. We want you to get pet-ty! We encourage animal-themed fabric postcards but we certainly welcome and would appreciate other themes as well, such as abstracts, landscapes, floral pieces, etc. The point is to raise as much funds as we can! On the back side of the fabric postcard, please sign your name and title your postcard. (Contact information is optional.)

3. We will sell the postcards for $20 each at Festival, and all of the proceeds will go to Houston-based animal shelters.

4. These postcards can be mailed to the Quilts, Inc. office no later thanTuesday, October 22, 2013. Please note: this is a receive-by date! We will of course accept postcards during Quilt Festival but want to have a large starting bank of postcards so would love it if you mailed them in advance!

5. You can mail as many fabric postcards as you would like, but please place them in a padded envelope. This way they will stay in pristine condition to be displayed at Festival.

Please mail them to:
Pet Postcards
Attn: Pokey Bolton
7660 Woodway
Suite 550
Houston, TX 77063

6. Come to Quilt Festival and buy as many postcards as you are able!

If you would like to see some examples of fabric postcards (of the feline variety) we received last year, click here.

The good news is the postcards are starting to come in, and we would love to sell hundreds (thousands?) of them to raise a record-breaking amount to save animals’ lives.

I’ll be making lots of postcards over the summer months as I quilt poolside (while taking breaks with my little swimming buddie)!

Will you be taking the postcard pledge? I hope so!

Friday, August 9, 2013

Get Your Daily Sprinkles Here!

Greetings! Today I'm playing with something perfectly timed since tomorrow is my birthday! I love cupcakes, perhaps a little too much. Playing with this stencil , designed by June Pfaff Daley, will have far less calories than the one I might consume tomorrow. Here goes!

June Pfaff Daley's Cupcake Sprinkles (S011)

First, using a Gelli Arts plate and a brayer I rolled some acrylic paint over the surface.

As you can see below, I mixed the colors together a bit.

I purchased a hunk of this floor adhesive stuff at Northern Tool & Equipment.

I think it is for the garage floor.

To me, it looks like a great stamp! Since there are circular elements in the finer part of the stencil I thought it would be a visually interesting background for the cupcake.

Using several pieces of watercolor paper and a variety of liquid acrylic paint and spray acrylic paint

I applied the paint, pressed the gelli plate surface with the improvised stamp, and pressed the paper onto it. I did this repeatedly and varied the paint colors slightly, as well as using the tool as a stamp, but I did stay on one side of the color wheel to avoid making "mud".

Here are the papers....

Now, I plan to stencil opaque white paint through the cupcake opening.

I apologize that the images here are flipped sideways.

I don't like it but I don't know what to do about it.

I wanted this white opaque paint because I am either going to apply another paint color over the surface, or simply use the white to allow the "toppings" to show.