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Mesa woman's work is part of show celebrating quilt stories
BY SRIANTHI PERERA
Tribune Contributor
Linda McCurry’s art quilt depicts adversity. Years ago, her Gilbert home caught fire around the chimney; the fire burnt downstairs near the fireplace and upstairs through the master bedroom. Her koi fish died in her pond due to firefighters putting a flame retardant in it. In flaming red, orange, brown and yellow, she traces the story in her quilt titled “From the Ashes.”
“There was a lot of restoration to do,” McCurry said. “You could say from the ashes we rose and came back as strong as we could.”
Stories such as this are what exhibit curator and judge Ellen M. Blalock sought when she was invited to assemble the City of Chandler’s annual art quilt show. Art Quilts XXVI: Stitching Stories, featuring 64 story quilts made by 53 artists from across the country, runs through Jan. 8 at Vision Gallery and CCA Gallery.
A resident of Syracuse, New York, Blalock is passionate about story quilts.
“I know that quilters work and artists work in all kinds of different ways and I wanted to be inclusive of a lot of people’s voices because not everybody does figurative work,” she noted.
“What is also important to me is the story behind the quilt and not just a story the quilt is telling. Somebody may be having the story of why they made the quilt and or it could even be the process,” she added.
Blalock herself is a narrative artist documentarian who works in photography, video, drawing and fiber. Most of her creations come in series form, such as the 32-piece Family Quilt Project; Not Crazy, which looks at mental illness in the African American community; and the one on feminism.
In addition to creating picturesque fabric art, Chandler artist-novelist Laurie Fagen often portrays causes important to her. For this show, Fagen chose to highlight a photograph her brother, a nurse practi-
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In her story quilt titled “Seeking Center/Finding Balance,” Shelly White creates a visual snapshot of her goal of “calm” as she navigates competing concerns, an overload of information and confusion. The layered colors of nature, repetitive patterns and topographic lines help chart a path to peace, order, and beauty,” she
said. (Courtesy of Shelly White.)
At 97, author pens novel on an opera icon
BY SRIANTHI PERERA
Tribune Contributor
Many biographies have been written about Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, but none read like a thriller.
Sun Lakes playwright, teacher and novelist Mel Weiser’s “Viva Puccini,” a new historical biography in novel form, fills in the gap.
Weiser captures the essence of the composer’s life: adversity, love, tragedy, death and sexual conquest – qualities found in the great master’s operas – and weaves a compelling tale.
“There is anger in it, there is some mystery, there is a tremendous conflict in it,” said Weiser, who at 97 has four other published books and nine produced stage plays to his credit.
“There is excitement in terms of how the mystery is revealed or the mysteries of his life are revealed and how, ultimately, they lead to the inevitable conclusion, his death.”
Why Puccini?
It seems that Puccini chose Weiser as much as Weiser chose him.
Years ago, Weiser read a book on the composer and was so fascinated by him that he scribbled notes on the margins.
“One day, I was sitting in the bedroom where the bookshelves were and across the room from them – this is almost mystical – I’m looking at the bookshelf, and one book from all those books in the shelf, for no reason that I can understand, seemed to jump out at me,” he said.
“I kept staring at it and – I couldn’t read the title of it or anything – so I got out of my chair and I walked over and pulled this book out and it was the Puccini book.”
Weiser leafed through it, read his own comments and said to himself: “There’s a book in this.”
To research Puccini’s remarkable life further, Weiser bought and read eight different biographies about him. He browsed online for more tidbits. He listened to his popular operas – “La Boheme,” “Tosca,” “Madame Butterfly” and “Turandot” – and cultivated a deep understanding and appreciation of them. He read analysis of the compositions.
Then, he began writing the novel.
“I had great fun writing about Puccini,” Weiser said.
While a biography has to be factual, a novel gets more latitude, he noted.
“One sticks to the facts of his life but one embroiders those with imagination,” Weiser explained. “For example, if in a biography it says that he spent a lot of time trying to find time to write his music, that’s very vague.”
“The writer of a novel has considerable latitude and I use that latitude to create situations to indicate how he didn’t have
Sun Lakes author Mel Weiser has published a page-turner on Italian composer Puccini.
(Courtesy of Mel Weiser)
RIGHT: Linda McCurry’s “From the Ashes” depicts a story about her Gilbert home catching on
fire. (Courtesy of Linda McCurry.)
QUILTS from page 14
tioner, sent of himself: gowned, gloved and masked for work in the COVID ward.
“I don’t typically manipulate photos in Photoshop for my fiber art, but this one I specifically did because it was the year of the pandemic, he was frazzled and the world was frazzled,” she said. “So, I changed the colors, I left threads attached to it, I just made it as frazzled as possible.” Fagen, who also authors crime fiction novels and creates polymer clay jewelry, imparts texture and dimension to her work. Her recent line of fiber art involves taking photos, printing them on the fabric and thread painting with a few miles of thread.
“I embellish the art quilt with thread, give it texture and
dimension. That’s my basic technique that I’ve been doing recently. Oftentimes they’re embellished with other things – charms, yarn, ribbon, surface designs, foiling techniques and adding paint,” she said. “I love the tactile feel of the fabric and being able to take any fabric and work with them is always just something that’s very satisfying to me,” she said, adding “everything from the design to the creation to the actual manipulation of the fabric, I enjoy the whole process.” Annemarie Comes of Mesa works in a similar process to weave photography to fabric. Her quilt titled “Branching Out” is a cyanotype of one of her photographs. “My image was printed in my dark room in black and white, then turned into a large-scale transparency which was exposed overtop of chemically coated fabric,” she said. “Our AriABOVE: Laurie Fagen of Chandler created “Frazzled,” a story quilt portraying zona sun was then used to transfer the image her nurse practitioner brother outfitted to work in the COVID ward. onto the fabric.” (Courtesy of Laurie Fagen.) “As an Arizona-based photographer, I try to capture special moments in time – a lot of sunsets – so others can enjoy the beauty, as well,” she added. After isolating for much of the past months due to the pandemic, Comes relishes the freedom to create art. “It was wonderful to revisit fabrics/quilting and the cyanotype process in the past year. It’s so wonderful to allow others to enjoy my image in a quilted form once again,” she said. RIGHT: Annemarie Comes of Mesa created her art quilt “Branching Out” by “weaving” into fabric a cyanotype of a photograph of tree trunks. (Courtesy of Annemarie Comes.)
Details: visiongallery.org/event/art-quilts-xxvi-stitching-stories/ ■
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time, what was he doing in those times that he didn’t have time,” he added. “Or, if it says great conflict with his wife Rivera, now I want to know what those conflicts were like and in biographies you can’t get full details like that but they tell you they had great conflict,” he said. “What was said actually between them: that’s where the novelist comes in, in order to make that moment memorable and understandable.”
Weiser was fascinated by Puccini’s life for several reasons.
Forced into a music career at an early age, Puccini resisted every effort to shape his future. He preferred to loaf, to pursue women and to cavort with like-minded friends. However, fate decreed that he was to carry on his family’s musical tradition.
Puccini became one of the greatest opera composers of all time. But, along with success, he experienced disappointment and pain.
One reason Weiser was captivated by Puccini pertained to his relationships with women. His wife, Elvira, was dominating, but she was also the mother of his only child. So, he didn’t leave them.
He loved women and had many affairs. He used to go away from home very often and on those trips, he invariably found some women or some woman found him, Weiser said.
One such affair was scandalous. While on a train journey, a woman introduced herself to him and he found her fascinating.
“She in turn found him very fascinating. He invited her to dinner. That night after dinner they found themselves in bed together,” he said. “He developed a very strong love for her and was even ready to leave his wife for her and proposed to this woman.”
Puccini soon became very careless and used to parade around with her on his arm. “Eventually, the word reached his family and Elvira, and there was madness, threats and everything else,” Weiser said.
The family decided to investigate the woman and discovered that she was a prostitute who had sought him out in the same manner she frequently sought other men.
The family made his life miserable. “He had to separate himself from her and the separation was dramatic and painful,” Weiser said.
Weiser’s own life is not without drama. He started writing at 19, aboard a WWII
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2415 S. Signal Butte Rd, Mesa AZ 85209 www.thesummitaz.com Assisted Living Memory Care Outpatient Memory Clinic aircraft carrier. It didn’t go down too well because he was suffering from acute seasickness and unable to perform his duties. He managed to read a book, The Adventures of Cortez, which inspired him to learn how to write well.
“I remember putting the book on my chest and saying to myself, ‘If I could write like this, I could be happy for the rest of my life,’” he said.
He tried to write on board the ship, but he knew nothing about writing and didn’t have much to draw from life experiences.
“Nothing came out and that’s when the decision was made – you have to go and learn what this is all about and how it works,” he said.
The native New Yorker enrolled in college, and went on to teach English, first in the school system and later in college. He taught for more than 30 years, until he found it was “enough.”
At age 55, about the time he retired, he wrote and published his first book. He had the good fortune to have a friend who knew an agent, who sold the manuscript without any trouble. “That was a fluke. That never happened again. After that, it was a struggle as I was learning how to do this,” he said.
Weiser developed his playwriting and directing career alongside teaching. He has been a stage director of more than 25 professional productions in regional theaters, and once on Broadway.
His last book, On 174th Street: The World of Willie Mittleman, is a delightful
Book cover of Viva Puccini. (Courtesy of Mel Weiser) family story set in 1930s New York. His next book, The Crown Of Sammuramat, will be a mystery-thriller linked to the fabled and ancient Assyrian empire. Creativity keeps Weiser writing and publishing at 97 and enhances his life. His book shelves are filled with manuscripts awaiting his attention. “If one is creative, one has to do what that force demands of him. It’s the same with a painter, it’s the same with a sculpturer,” he said. “When one learns how to do something and to do it well, and I’m pleased to say I think I do it well, there’s enormous satisfaction in doing it. “I just can’t stop.”
“Viva Puccini” is available at amazon.
com and barnes&noble.com for $23.95. ■
