I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I started entering the fine art competition at the State Fair.   But ever since I started I have gotten at least one piece accepted.   There is always that tension between making something that might be accepted versus something that follows a personal vision.   The piece submitted has to have been made in the past two years, so I usually go with something totally new and I usually work on it in the summer.

I started with a weird idea in this piece.  The central design is the bones of a Celtic design, and the lettering was an expression from my commonplace book.   It is entirely hand embroidered in muted threads.  I liked the idea, but it wasn’t turning out like I wanted.  It wasn’t working and I couldn’t make it work.   I had to dither about it before deciding to stop and try something else.   So I went to an old design that I had always wanted to make.

It’s in a more typical style for me, bold, bright colors, but something about this wasn’t working for me either and time was running out.   So I started yet another new one.

I finished this the day before it was due, and amazingly enough it was accepted.  I like the lettering better, and the piece has more contrast.

I made this one last year and it was not accepted (but a similar piece was), so I decided to re-submit and it got in this year.  It’s based on the word lists that we did in blogging class, and is hand-embroidered in muted colors.    I am so happy to get both pieces into this show, which has a huge rejection rate.   I’m totally amazed and thankful.