Pushing Your Artistic Creativity | Quilting Arts Podcast Episode 19

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Artistically, if you aren’t moving forward, you may be standing still. Sometimes, all we need is a creative spark to propel our artwork beyond the imaginary boundaries set in our minds. Other times, we just need to work hard and inspiration hits. Today’s episode, featuring a conversation with art quilter Mel Beach, is all about motivating, experimenting, and inspiring the creative mind. Mel is an artist whose devotion to doing the work – day after day – has led to an incredible outpouring of creativity and the creation of an amazing body of work.

Below are a few resources mentioned in the conversation

Zoom screenshot of QA Podcast episode 19 — What fun! Here’s a screen shot of our recording session. From top left: producer Dacia Clay, Artist in Residence Mel Beach, and co-hosts Vivika Hansen DeNegre and Susan Brubaker Knapp.

Green leaves quilted on beautiful dark blue fabric - Dancing Leaves for Joy by Mel Beach — **Dancing Leaves for Joy** by Mel Beach

100 Days of Mark Making by Mel Beach — **100 Days of Mark Making** by Mel Beach

Patrons visiting and admiring the Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibit at The Art Institute of Chicago. — Susan Brubaker Knapp shared this photo of the exhibit, *Bisa Butler: Portraits* at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Mel Beach's mandalas — Mel shared her method for creating gorgeous stitched mandalas using no math at all! You can find her article in Quilting Arts Magazine August/September 2020.

“Cloud Gate” sculpture located in Chicago’s Millennium Park by Anish Kapoor. — More inspiration from Susan’s trip to Chicago! “Cloud Gate” is a sculpture located in Chicago’s Millennium Park by Anish Kapoor.

Mel Beach melbeach.com

Mel Beach is a San Jose, California based quilt artist, teacher and lecturer who loves stretching her creativity through challenges. In 2020, she embarked on her first 100 Day Project using dice to create outside of her comfort zone. She absolutely loved these daily creative explorations and is currently working through her fourth 100 Day Project. Each project has involved new dice assignments to play with the elements and principles of art, free-motion quilting, new sources of design inspiration, mark-making on fabric, design layouts, and color.

Mel currently serves as the vice president of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) and will become president in 2022.

You can learn more about Mel at melbeachquilts.com.

“Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.”