Hudertwasser's Happy Houses

The collage project that I worked on while Alicia made her "Oriental Robe" piece is the third in my series of Hundertwasser's happy houses. I made this to meet a fabric challenge presented by the quilt shop, Fabric Fusion, owned by a friend in Milwaukee. The quilts made for this event are on display at the shop on Brown Deer Road until May 20th.

"A Hot Time ..." (in the old town tonight) - 19"x22 - 2006

I've been fascinated with Friedensreich Hundertwasser's art and philosophy since 1998 when my nephew, Peter, brought a book about him to our summer cottage. I knew then that I wanted to interpret Hundertwasser's houses into fiber. I'm intriqued with his strong feelings about trees as fellow tenents of our dwellings and that we all should have the right to decorated our doors and windows for as far as we can reach to do so. To me most of his paintings are quilt-like.
"Hundertwasser's Happy Houses I" - 24"x24" - 2003
Gifted to Alicia - Christmas 2004. It hangs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The quilting patterns for all three pieces are done with a "continuous" line. I did this to honor his drawing of a spiral climbing horizontally up the walls of a room in 1959. I almost panicked when my bobbin thread ran out. But then, I realized he most likely had to put down his pen to answer the call of nature before he was finished. So, I wound a new bobbin and picked up the line where I left off.

Also, I free-motion quilted all ten names that he claimed during his life in the foregrounds of my first two pieces.

"Hundertwasser's Happy Houses II" - 18"x20" - 2003

My daughter-in-law, Terra, had fallen in love with HHHI, so I made this one for her birthday. It hangs in Evanston, Illinois.