Dear Friends,

September is right at our doorstep. The days are still hot in North Carolina, but the nights are beginning to cool down. We’ve never had so many butterflies in our garden. Every evening we sit outside and enjoy watching them glide through the air and land, sometimes two or three on the same flower. So beautiful and peaceful.

The big news on the personal front is that our daughter has announced her engagement and the bride and groom will be getting married in our garden next June (and I thought I would be getting a lot of quilting done next spring!).

Our son (who is traveling the world for a year) has left Malaysia and is now in Thailand.

Enclosed you will find the August newsletter. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

Have a great month of September.
Hollis

My Latest – The Desmond Tutu piece was put aside this month so that I could work on another piece called “The Gift”. This piece is about economic refugees and is a profile on a woman I met last February.

Karen is a massage therapist on a cruise ship. The gift she has is her hands. Her salary helps sustain her parents and two brothers in the Philippines. Economic refugees are in our lives everyday, but rarely do we think of the sacrifices they make to support their families. This piece is a tribute to the many people who live without their loved ones in order to provide for them.

The morning after I met Karen, I woke up with a very clear vision of this piece in my mind. click here to see the preliminary drawing of it. It will be a tropical blue color.

The reason I have shifted from one piece to the other is that “The Gift” will be shown in a special exhibit that will take place at the University of Nebraska from February 5 – March 4, 2007.

Teaching–“Quilts for Change 2006” was a quilting conference held in Cincinnati, OH from August 10-12. I really support what the dedicated women from the Zonta Club tried to do with this event. All of the proceeds go to their organization which helps battered women and children. Unfortunately, it was not as well attended as it could have been which saddens me because this is the only semi-annual conference that I know of that gives all of their proceeds to a cause like this.

I taught all three days and even though my classes were a little smaller than normal, they were great classes with very talented women coming from many different states.

Next month I will be traveling back to Berkeley, CA to teach a 3-day workshop that is part of my five-year study. The class is called “The Color Challenge” and I’m thrilled to be going back to this great group of women. click here  for contact person.

Exhibiting – Two of my quilts were accepted in the International Quilt Festival show in Houston, TX that will take place November 1-5, 2006 at the George Brown Convention Center. click here for more information.

There will be a solo exhibit showing my monochromatic statement work at Berea College in Berea, KY in April 2007. Each piece in the show will be a different color and will carry a message about social or environmental issues. My new Desmond Tutu piece will be shown for the first time in this exhibit. “The Gift” will also be there.

Berea has also invited me for a convocation event April 19, 2007. I will be speaking on “The Emotion of Color and How it Affects Activism in Art”. In the last years, I have been working uniquely with monochromatic color schemes in my statement art. Since each color evokes its own emotion, this is a topic that truly fascinates me. This convocation event will be open to the public.For more information click here

Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC has invited me to do a solo exhibit October 5 – November 17, 2007. I will also be teaching a 5-day workshop at the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild October 1-5, 2007. click here  for more information.

Website – All of the threads that I designed for Superior Threads are for sale on the website. They are sold in packs of 25 because I have found that quilters use threads differently when they have the opportunity to “audition” a number of different colors (just like we do with fabrics) before making their final choices. click here

 We have received the new giclees of “Fatima’s Son”, “School: It’s Never Too Late to Learn”, and “Nature’s Gift” and they are beautiful. Check out all of the prints here. click here

Also have a look at  Art for Sale this month. I have just finished another abstract piece titled "Call to the Angels", (the angel pieces  do keep coming back to me), and a small abstract called “Single Star” was added to the website in August. click here

We now have a secure system where you can order thread, fabric, prints and my artwork directly on line and pay by credit card or Pay Pal.

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