For years and years, I've wanted to visit the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site outside Flat Rock, North Carolina. Every time I've taken artwork to the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, I've pass the sign on the appropriate I-26 exit and thought, "One day I'm going there!" Well last Thursday was that day.
This is the final home and sheep farm where Carl Sandburg and his family lived until his death in 1967. Everything in the home museum is original to the family. The grounds are beautiful. The tour was leisurely paced and extremely informative. (Advanced tickets are needed but really affordable ... as in $6.00 each with our National Park Service senior lifetime pass!) I'm so glad we went, and it will not be the last time!
There's an ulterior reason I've wanted to go. It might not happen but it is worth a shot. I have a Grave Rubbing Art Quilt that I'd like to donate. Donating artwork to a museum isn't as easy as many people think. There's almost always a a lengthy process and a mountain of paperwork. (Well ... that's not always true! If one is selected as an artist-in-residence at one of the national parks offering this program, donating a piece is required and the process and paperwork is simple. I have artwork in the collections of Guadalupe Mountains NP, Great Basin NP, Hot Springs NP, Catoctin Mountain NP, Homestead National Monument, and the Department of Interior Museum in Washington, DC ... but unsolicited donations are far different!)
My Grave Rubbing Art Quilt series was an obsession for several years. Each one was made using a crayon-on-fabric grave rubbing with hand and free-motion stitching. One was once accepted into Quilt National 2013. Another was included in Art Quilt Elements. These quilts became the wall hangings for my installation Last Words. Almost every piece is without a personal name ... except for one: Carl Sandburg.
In the summer of 2012, I had an art residency with the arts council in Galesburg, Illinois ... which happens to be Carl Sandburg's birthplace and the location of Remembrance Rock, a large boulder under which Carl Sandburg and his wife's ashes were buried. Of course I visited this museum! I was given permission to make the grave rubbing and I finished the piece the following May. It is blogged HERE.
I have no future use for this quilt. I'm no longer submitting proposals for Last Words. As an artist, I have moved on to new ideas and new approaches to stitching and expressing myself. So ... I'm about to write a letter to the Carl Sandburg Home Historic Site's superintendent. Maybe the process for an acquisition will start in the future. One way or the other, please scroll down for some of the images I snapped in the rooms where Carl Sandburg lived and wrote one third of the published words he penned in his life!
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