New Albany Field Trip

The Carnegie Center for Art & History has long been one of Carol's favorite area museums. Housed in a former Carnegie Library (Indiana is home to more of the Carnegie Libraries than any other state!), their exhibit space is small but they have a great variety of excellent exhibits.
As our quilt guild doesn't meet in August, we thought it would be a good time to take a field trip to see the current exhibit titled Heartbeats: Art Quilts by Penny Sisto. So Carol, Vickie and I headed south for the day.

It is an interesting collection of her quilts and other creations including the tipi shown below. Carol is resting on a bench made by her son-in-law with some of his wooden bowls inside the tipi.
The collection of quilts is quite interesting. They even have recordings of Penny Sisto talking about her inspiration for several of the quilts. I think my favorite is of Crazy Horse. The strip of fabric running down the left hand side of the quilt was unique to this quilt. More often the quilts are composed of fabric scraps, utilizing hand dyed fabrics, silks, leather, foil, feathers, paint and other materials.

Another of her unique creations was this sculpture titled Trail of Tears. This was one of the pieces that she talked about creating - her thoughts behind the depiction of the uprooting of the Indians and their forced move to Oklahoma - as well as the materials and techniques she used to create this sculpture. It is even set up so that tears fall from both the man and woman into a pond at their feet.

Moonwalker, the quilt below, interested me because of how perfect the halo is around the head of the Indian. It is even more noticeable as the remainder of the fabrics in the quilt are bits and pieces, sewn together or appliqued or held down with netting. Also interesting are the hangers that are used to hold the quilts - walking staffs and pieces of driftwood.

Although not quilt related, another interesting exhibit are theThe Yenawine Dioramas. Merle Yenawine was born and reared in Georgetown and carved the scenes. He created each tableau based on his childhood memories of Floyd County, Indiana. In addition to the exquisite detail work of the carvings, portions of each diorama are motorized. In the picture below, the ferris wheel goes around. The bird in the shooting gallery flies back and forth as the man attempts to shoot it. Several other areas of the diorama are motorized as well and there were several dioramas - fun for kids of all ages.

This was definitely a wonderful museum for a daytime excursion. In addition to the wonderful displays, DeLicia (I hope I'm spelling her name correctly) was a wonderful museum hostess. She was excited about all of the exhibits, knew lots of details about Penny Sisto's other exhibits that had been at the museum in the past 5 years, and had great suggestions for a Cuban restaurant just a block away...Habana Blues Tapas Restaurant. Their food was DELICIOUS, reasonably priced and very attractively displayed. The mahi mahi was wonderful. Check it out!

Cheers!

Margaret