Highlights from 2025 part 5

Our Art Group TalkTen came up with a new challenge: The Split Image.

TalkTen is composed of an International group of 13 female textile artists who share a passion for design, art quilts and creativity. As a group, they decide upon a design challenge and the women build art quilts as a response to the prompt.

In April 2025, an independent volunteer selected a digital photograph by California photographer Lee Decker from the Escondido Arts Partnership Photo Arts Group website (with Mr. Decker’s consent). The photograph was digitally split into two halves: six members received the left half and six the right. Each artist was asked to create an 18" x 18" textile imagining the unseen portion of their half.  This is the right half I received.

The right half of the photograph

We couldn't talk about the project to each other. I didn't have a clue what I was looking at! Neither did the others. We all had a hard time making sense of this challenge.
I decided to start with the colors and shapes in the photograph, extending the lines to the left and made a structural background. I was extremely bothered by this shape. Debated with myself to forget about it and exclude it or what?

mysterious shape

Here is my final artwork: Close Encounter

Close Encounter

After the sky split open and the spaceship vanished, a capsule remained — small, silent, and humming with questions.  

The entire project was on show at Escondido Arts Partnership, California, from October 11 to 31 2025. Here are some photos of the artwork in the gallery.

Lee Decker (left) with some of the artists.

Lee Decker's reaction after viewing the Zoom meeting of the reveal of the project :  "The fabric pieces that the artists created were quite amazing and I was impressed with their creative interpretations of the photograph. … I so enjoyed your presentation and the discussions that followed; they were endlessly fascinating. I want to thank the artists for their careful consideration of my work"

 

Escondido Arts Partnership