Deconstructing an Old Quilt

When deconstructing an old quilt, you never know what you’ll find. Inside this found quilt, which had been used as a painter’s drop cloth, there was an old flowered drape with a fringe and several pieces of a yellow tablecloth or bedspread. The backing was also a thin, old, patterned drape or bed cover. I will use the top of this quilt in a new project, and try to find some use for the batting material as well.

All of the hand-stitching on this one was done in bright red thread, so I may do the same when it comes time to put the new one together.

Religious Imagery in the Quilts of Mary Catherine Lamb

Mark the Lion

From the International Quilt Museum:

Lamb made at least a dozen quilts that re-interpreted religious art produced during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. She drew particular inspiration from The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the Gospels drawn by monks in Britain or Ireland around 800 C.E. Using mid-twentieth-century domestic linens and gaudy clothing discovered at thrift stores and garage sales in Portland, Oregon, Lamb transformed the images into textile works.

Scaley Beast

Temperature Textiles

Just a couple of the brilliant pieces from Temperature Textiles, which seeks to “communicate climate change through textiles” – blankets, scarves, socks.

Temperature Blanket: “The diverse patterns and graphics of the blanket are based on several Temperature related data.”

Sea Level Blanket: “The lines show the recorded temperature rise from 2000 until the predicted rise in 2100.”

Rascal

When I first saw the raccoon in the middle of the street, I had to pull over and get out to see if it was real or a stuff toy. Even from close up, I had to keep focusing on the feet to convince myself that it wasn’t actual roadkill. I brought it home, cleaned out the road grime that had filled its insides and washed it in bucket after bucket of hot water. Once it was dry, I restuffed it, gave it some new eyes, stitched it a nose, and sutured its many gaping wounds. My daughter named him Rascal.

This isn’t her first road-rescue stuffed animal. The menagerie includes a giraffe, two pigs, and a snake.

Alice Trumbull Mason's Shutter Paintings

Two current exhibits highlighted in the New York Times both include work by the artist Alice Trumbull Mason. The first is a solo show of her Shutter Paintings, which have always reminded me of strip quilts in both composition and ratio. And then there is this reading of the paintings:

“Mason’s edges all wobble noticeably, which adds to the air of instability and fragility, intimating the effects of aging and drinking perhaps but also grief about the tenuous miracle of life.”

The other show mentioned in the article is Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction, 1930–1950, at the Whitney, which includes works by Trumbull as well as Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, and others.

Alice Trumbull Mason’s “The Saffron Pitch” (1963)

Alice Trumbull Mason’s “Magnitude of Memory” (1962)

Serra's Verblist and Cloth

In the late 1960s, artist Richard Serra compiled a written list of actions which he title Verblist – as he defined it, “actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process." As a way to better understand cloth, I am working my way through the list, attempting to apply these actions a few at a time to a simple piece of cotton cloth.

to roll

to crease

to fold

to twist

to crumple

to tear

to cut

to sever

to mend

to tie

Historic Arkansas Museum Exhibit

I am thrilled to be in a new show with photographer Tim Hursley and furniture maker Peter Scheidt, “Unbroken Circle,” opening next week at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock. We have been trying to make this happen for almost two years now, and thanks to the perseverance of the HAM curatorial staff, it’s finally happening. I have four new quilts in the show – two originals made from found material, and two found quilts that I painted on, to both interact with and disturb their inherent grids.

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Abstract Design in American Quilts at 50

Abstract Design in American Quilts was first exhibited in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is being presented again at the International Quilt Museum on the occasion of the original exhibit's 50th anniversary.

The exhibit and resulting catalog have been monumentally influential on contemporary American quilting. A few personal favorites from the exhibit, plus a couple of photos of the original exhibit at the Whitney in 1971. The first one below is described in the catalog this way:

“This perfectly wretched quilt has nothing to recommend it technically or historically: Its top was very crudely and incompetently made … its color combinations show a complete disregard for, or inability to create, chromatic grace or harmony. … But it works for me as a wonderful design. I am amazed each time I see it.”

Squares, Pennsylvania.

Roman Stripe variant, Vermont

Bars, Pennsylvania

Crazy, Pennsylvania

Crazy, Maine.

'Looming Chaos'

A great conversation from Clark Atlanta University Museum with two artists who employ weaving in their work, Zipporah Camille Thompson and Diedrick Brackens. And one of the best exhibit titles I’ve come across.

Pablo Rasgado's Reconstructions

Mexican artist Pablo Rasgado uses found materials – in this case, sheetrock and sections of art museum and gallery walls – to construct new abstract pieces that sit somewhere between collages, painting, and, I’d venture, quilts. At bottom is a video that shows the breadth of Rasgado’s work, but I’d still like to learn more about his process behind these particular pieces – how he actually gathers the materials, how he reassembles them, how much of the design is improvisational.