Working on a Solo Exhibition for 2027
I’m super happy to share that most of my studio work these days is making new work in my Structures Series for an upcoming solo exhibition.
This series has been on hold for a decade and after I started posting the work here and on social media, I got excited about it again. I have lots of new ideas to explore. And I’m having fun making BIG artwork again.
The exhibition will be in New Zealand at the end of 2027.
Holding the Line: Works from the Structures Series (solo exhibition)
Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua, New Zealand
18 December 2027 – 30 January 2028
Structures #26 – #35
And on that note, continuing on with sharing the first 200 works in this series.
Lisa Call
Structures #26 (2004)
24×24 inches (61×61 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
I was invited to be part of an exhibition with the theme of cactus. I didn’t want to stop making work in the Structures Series. I’d been focusing on it for the previous four years and was deep in the exploration of my language of boundaries.
My solution was to make a cactus themed Structures piece. Nothing says boundaries like the spikes on a cactus!
This piece is my landscape of southern Arizona and the saguaro cactus. The configuration of the fence motif I used here was meant to represent a cactus. I loved the motif and ended up returning to it several times, eventually using it in four more works.
It felt great to stay grounded in my series while also responding honestly to the invitation.
Lisa Call
Structures #27 (2004)
13×10 inches (33×25 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
This is a small piece, similar in spirit to Structures #6. With so little space, every color choice and every placement mattered.
At this point in the series I have been trying out a variety of ways of quilting the work. This all over wavy pattern of lines across the surface pairs well with the energy of the composition.
Eventually I moved away from all over quilting but that won’t be for quite a few more pieces.
Lisa Call
Structures #28 (2004)
57×84 inches (145×213 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
This is the second piece where the configuration from Structures #26 (the cactus one above) shows up again. I was excited by what was happening on the wall working large, and the work came together quickly.
Sometimes a piece is a struggle to bring it together, but this one was the opposite. Everything seemed to fall into place as I worked. It’s such a gift when this happens.
This piece was later acquired by Cleveland University Hospitals and hangs in the Seidman Cancer Center in Ohio. A huge honor and personally meaningful as my father had recently passed away from cancer and I spent many honors at hospice enjoying the artwork.
Lisa Call
Structures #29 (2004)
61×87 inches (155×221 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
I had some red fabric strips left over from Structures #28 and decided to create a second piece. This time, I went back to the simpler construction I had used earlier in Structures #6, but on a much larger scale.
While I had worked with this simple block before, it was quite different working to scale. First it took much much longer to sew all the components. And at such a huge size I had to rethink how to make an interesting composition using the simple blocks.
It was fun seeing how far that language could stretch. Adding in a second color and using gradations allowed me to fill the space in an interesting way.
Lisa Call
Structures #30 (2004)
28×48 inches (71×122 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
Here I bounced back again to brick walls. By this point in the series, I had so many ideas I wanted to follow that I felt like I was running back and forth, exploring different paths as fast as I could.
It was exhilarating. There was no sense of narrowing things down yet, just loving exploring whatever felt right as I worked from piece to piece.
I had this great energy of moving quickly and not wanting to let go of any direction one too soon.
I did eventually let go of the brick wall format, but someday I will return to it.
Lisa Call
Structures #31 (2004)
34×53 inches (86×135 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
This piece returns to the configuration first explored in Structures #26 (the cactus), using one of my favorite color combinations: gray and yellow.
It was also the second time my work appeared in Quilt National, in 2005.
This returning to familiar motifs is the process of narrowing in on my visual language.
Lisa Call
Structures #32 (2005)
53×67 inches (135×170 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
Looking back at Structures #24, I really liked the way the black bars worked with the rich earth tones. This textile painting is another iteration of that approach.
I started to think more about the theme of boundaries. I’m thinking about the layers of barriers we put up to present ourselves to the world.
Lisa Call
Structures #33 (2006)
49×46 inches (124×117 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
A few new things happening in this work. First – the colors are clear and bright, which was unusual for me at this point in my work as I tended to prefer softer muted colors.
Second – in addition to breaking up the lines and shapes of the motif, I did the same in the background. This is the first of only a few pieces that I explored this approach. And like so many of the things I’m rediscovering in this review of my series, there are still many unexplored options here.
Lisa Call
Structures #34 (2006)
57×55 inches (145×140 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
I stayed with the blues from the previous piece and kept working with the idea of dividing both foreground and background. This time, with a clear split down the center of each line of the motif.
In these two works, the quilting starts to be more intentional and directional, more connected to the structure itself.
Lisa Call
Structures #35 (2005)
32×49 inches (81×124 cm)
fabric, dye, thread, cotton
This textile painting was the turning point, the first larger work using thin lines to represent the fence motif. I loved the results. Other than one or two brief diversions, the remaining 165 works in the series employed thin lines. They became a defining element of the series and ultimately a signature of my textile work for the following decade.
In Structures #35, instead of using fabric to break up the spaces in the background, I used quilting lines. The stitching now does the dividing rather than additional pieces of cloth. I explored this style of quilting for quite some time.
This work is also in the University Hospitals of Cleveland art collection.