Monocerotis and Me

June 4, 2010

                                                                                      
Two days ago, I felt the urge to create something, anything. I hied myself into my art areas to seek inspiration. I had no particular project in mind. After some mining of stacks of papers and fabric and supplies and "stuff", I came upon the photo printed on fabric that you see in the little work pictured below, finished yesterday. The picture inspired me instantly to do something with it. Two days from birth to life for my piece.  [Completion came so quickly because this work is small - only 10 1/2 inches square.] Since it's not a very large piece, I was able to hand quilt it. This is satisfying to me in a whole different way than machine-quilting a larger piece.

Millions of light years away in our Milky Way galaxy of millions upon millions of stars and planets and comets et al, the star Monocerotis V838 [in the constellation Monoceros] put on a light show of beyond-spectacular proportions. Visit the Hubble Space Telescope websites for a retrospective of its photographs. Monocerotis was a true shape-shifter!  http://www.hubblesite.org/  http://www.hubble.nasa.gov/  http://www.spacetelescope.org/ 

Many months ago, I printed on cotton fabric a photograph of Monocerotis at work, one of the many that the brilliant, tax-payer-sponsored and -financed Hubble space telescope has captured of this particular star's death agonies since about 2002. This image was taken by permission, copyright-free from the Hubble site. You and I fund Hubble, so it's working for us every day! Per their requirements, I have advised Hubble that I'm using their photo in this way.

So, in two earth days, thanks to millions of light years of space image transport captured by Hubble, you can see a bit of our universe's history, a light show from God.

I'm going to put this up for sale on my Etsy website, http://www.artquiltartist.etsy.com/  and the possibility also exists I may donate it to the annual fund-raising auction of Studio Art Quilt Associates http://www.saqa.com/ by July 1st.

SAQA is a non-profit, educational organization for art quilt artists of all mediums. Visit their website in September to see all of the donated work.  The auction starts on Monday, September 20th.  You can pick up a piece of original work by fiber artists from famous [definitely not me!] to just-emerging [probably my category] and support a worthy art organization at the same time.




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