A selection of my quilts from 1985 to the present, varying in scale, processes and subject matter.
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The Persistence of Vision, 2024
59" x 44"
Fabric; fabric paint, thread. Painted, silk-screened, and stenciled. Machine and hand appliquéd; machine pieced; hand embroidered; hand quilted.
Photo credit: Robert Wright
High and low cultural references abound in a layering of graffiti and street art--the perfect analog of a layered quilt. A celebration of the often chaotic, always energetic urban environment, with a few shout-outs specific to NYC. I've taken some artistic liberties to skew towards the theme of eyes and sight, e.g., The Met's 1992 Magritte poster used a different painting; and, had a punk rock group named The Styes existed back in the day, it surely would have performed at the Mudd Club. The second quilt in a series on the five senses, begun way back in 1994 with "Hear the Difference."
Reveal, 2023
40" x 40"
Fabrics, some over-dyed; threads. Machine appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Steve Guttenberg.
The intense mash-up of people and architecture and signage and sights in a city is a continual visual provocation and delight. A quilt is a perfect metaphor for a city: layer upon layer built up over time. Here, a weathered patchwork peels away to REVEAL even older graffiti--the palimpsest of the past peeking through.
Dreamtime, 2023
45" x 40"
Fabrics, threads. Machine pieced; hand and machine appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo credit: Robin Schwalb
The character, "dream," an outtake from Grid Doodle, resurfaced after yet another frantic dig through the scrap box. As I quilted the relatively subdued-in-color Reveal, my eyes kept ticking over to where "dream" was pinned on the design wall. Its brightness was cheering, and the fabrics I planned to use with it made it glow. I dug deep into my stash for nontraditional quilting threads, and found all kinds of treasures stockpiled from previous projects.
FRANKENTIM RULED, 2022
81" x 96" x 7"
Cotton fabrics, organza, digital print, thread, buckram, glove, zipper, plastic pennies. Machine and hand appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Steve Guttenberg.
Why is Detective Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) grinning ferociously as he points towards a white dress glove? Why is Detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) haunted by the photo of Adena Watson he cradles? For the answers, binge watch what was The Best Damned Show on Television, "Homicide: Life on the Street" (1993-99). The series was notable for diversity, vivid characterization, great writing and acting, and dynamic camerawork. It had it all, comedy, tragedy, pathos, virtue and vice, in short: humanity.
Lady of the Candied Fruit, 2021
37” x 29”
Fabrics, pearl cotton thread. Fused and machine appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo Credit: Steve Guttenberg.
A snapshot—albeit an odd one, viewed through the prism of my memories—of Beijing in December 2001. Here, a headdress composed of candied hawthorn berries on skewers crowns a mannequin’s head. She stands in front of an antique wall painted with the character, “tear down”— indicating that the building is condemned. The “Flying Pigeon” brand of bicycles was ubiquitous then and was a popular way to peddle the candied snacks.
When I travel, I tend to photograph whatever captures my fancy in the moment. I don’t pretend to be anything other than a tourist—but I hope an observant and culturally respectful one. Once back in my studio, I “pulse” these images in my mental Cuisinart, and then collage select details in Photoshop.
Test Pattern, 2020
70" x 84"
Fabrics, fabric paint. Some fabrics are stenciled or overdyed. Fused and machine appliquéd, reverse appliquéd, and pieced. Hand quilted. Photo credit: Steve Guttenberg.
There's nothing like shining a bright light onto a surface to expose all of its flaws. Here, my former media installation team from the Metropolitan Museum stares at the wall--as we were so often wont to do. We’re using projector-generated test patterns, geometry-correction software, and a cross line laser to methodically align and square up the projected image, in order to compensate for a lumpy wall.
Life Begins at 40, 2019
40" x 40"
Fabrics, embroidery floss. Machine pieced and appliquéd; hand quilted. 40” x 40”. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
Roman numerals, “greeking”—Latinate gibberish used by graphic artists to design layouts—and a detail of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes form the basis for my quilt. My professional background as a film projectionist makes me want to combine color and black & white whenever possible.
I’m With Her, 2019
58" x 98"
Stenciled, commercially available cotton fabrics, embroidery floss. Machine pieced and appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
Commissioned by John M. Walsh III for his "Fibers of Change" project.
The grave and beautiful Statue of Liberty welcomed my immigrant forebears to America--the golden land--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, she appears as two images from an old school film contact sheet.
Liberty holds her torch aloft against a patchwork background spelling out Emma Lazarus’s poem, "The New Colossus." Crowned with a pussy hat, she also raises her fist against a welter of notes left by impassioned citizens in support of immigrants and women’s empowerment. She embodies both the promise of America, and the enduring need for patriotic, civic engagement.
The viewer is encouraged to consider what happened between these two, non-sequential frames of film.
More background about inspirations might include: The Statue of Liberty is practically a neighbor; I often walk the few blocks to wave to her out in New York harbor. I'm an a/v geek from way back, so it was fun to be able to reference analog film technology--and it was a natural way to include a sequence of images, suggesting a narrative unfolding over time. Not long before the 2016 election, I was skimming the NY Times and saw an article about Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. As I quickly glanced at the accompanying photo, so quickly that it registered subliminally--I thought, "OMG, there's a quilt on the wall!"--but I had completely misunderstood the image. It was actually dozens of differently colored notes with positive messages, affixed there by her staff. In my haste, I had misread the irregular geometric pattern as a patchwork quilt. In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, that wall of colored papers connected visually to the communal expressions I saw at Union Square subway station, www.subwaytherapy.com. Of course, "I'm With Her" is a play on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign slogan, but as the piece began to take shape mentally, it became less about the election, and more about the idea of America. One of the first outrages committed by the new administration centered on immigrants and immigration, so that was much on my mind. As the iconic embodiment of welcome, the Statue of Liberty is a perfect shorthand for idealistic and hopeful American values, not to mention, a symbol of my beloved hometown.
Amelia Bloomer: Advocating a Change, 2019
48" x 48"
Silk- screened and commercially available cotton fabrics. Fused, with machine appliqué and reverse appliqué, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
When I was a child, my family called girl’s underpants, “bloomers.” I can’t recall that we ever mentioned or were even aware of the origin of that name. I now know that Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) became associated with the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers because of her early and strong advocacy. It was inspiring to learn that her work on behalf of women's rights and temperance led her to become the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women, The Lily, whose title was commemorated in a Washington Post online feature for women (2017-2022).
I based the triple images of my quilt on an 1851 illustration of Amelia Bloomer wearing the bloomer costume. The colors of the American suffragists were white, gold, and purple--symbolizing purity, life, and loyalty—so I colored my three Amelias accordingly. The background is a repeating dictionary definition of bloomers that I silk-screened onto a subtly printed fabric. For the figures and the border text I used a combination of appliqué and reverse appliqué by machine—using a fusible web, and then zigzag stitching around every raw edge. I hand quilted this piece, with part of the quilting design in the borders inspired by the title art of The Lily newspaper.
Speak No Evil, 2018
48" x 39"
Fabrics, embroidery floss, zipper. Fused and machine appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
Sometimes, a butterfly isn't a metaphor for metamorphosis; it could be merely the shape of a diseased thyroid. Sometimes, a blue moon--the second full moon in a month--happens on the day of surgery. Sometimes, it was hard to share the news because I didn't feel confident enough myself to reassure others that "everything's okay." Yet despite my anxious expression here, I took enormous pleasure in working with these fabrics and colors and patterns.
FYI The quote in the border is from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward: “Unforeseen and unprepared for, the disease had come upon [her], a happy [wo]man with few cares, like a gale in the space of two weeks.”
Born Analog, 2016
80" x 47"
Silk-screened and commercially available cotton fabrics. Fused and machine appliquéd, hand appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Winner of Juror’s Award, QN ’17. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
Quilt National Collection, International Quilt Museum. Lincoln, NE
Gertie is a dinosaur because she was drawn that way by animator Windsor McCay. I'm a dinosaur because, in this increasingly digital and digitized age, from 1976 through 2018 I was licensed by the City of New York to run 35mm motion picture film. Here I celebrate classic works of proto- and early cinema by Muybridge, the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, Edison, Buster Keaton, and Robert Flaherty, as well as my own history as a film projectionist.
The text in the outer border reads: "The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings."
Martin Scorsese, edited extract from the book accompanying The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean, FILM at Tate Modern, London (2012).
Zoom In, 2014
12" x 12" x 2"
Stitched and embroidered paper and fabric; embroidery floss; graphite; wooden embroidery hoops. 12" x 12" x 2". Photo credit: Jean Vong.
Plays off the photographic technique of zooming in, with each of the three layers enlarging the text until all that is visible is a single letter. The text on the bottom layer, excerpted from Anne Tyler's Celestial Navigation, describes an artist's feverish, obsessive search for scraps of exactly the shade of red. I wrote the text out in pencil, but then embroidered each appearance of "red" in red thread.
SPQR, 2013
70" x 48"
Stenciled and commercially available cottons and cotton blends. Fused and machine appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Jean Vong.
The past, both ancient and more recent, is always present in the Eternal City. The ancient acronym SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, "the senate and people of Rome") is still used by the modern municipality. Here, a contemporary mannequin--you may think of her as Candida, patron saint of yeast infections--is haloed by the coffered ceiling of the Pantheon. Is she receiving an electric shock from those outstretched fingers?--a shout-out to Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel. Her torso is a composite capital in the Capitoline Museum, in Rome. The borders are based on Roman cosmati, or mosaic floors. And no image of Rome would be complete without a buzzing flock of Vespas, with an old Fiat thrown in for good measure.
FYI: The quote stenciled in the lower section is from Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story (2010): "The city of Rome appeared around us, casually splendid, eternally assured of itself, happy to take our money and pose for a photo, but in the end needing nothing and no one.”
Jive Boss Sweat, 2012
63" x 48"
Stenciled and commercially available cottons and cotton blends, embroidery floss. Fused and machine appliquéd, hand appliquéd, machine pieced; hand embroidered and quilted. Photo credit: D. James Dee.
It’s a pleasure and a puzzle to experience firsthand how contemporary Japanese culture is layered over the bedrock of ancient traditions. A beckoning cat--a bit of Tokyo street architecture--is shown against a manhole cover with a cherry blossom and gingko design. The cat strides through a torii gate onto the moss and stones of my favorite Zen garden. And, there’s always a vending machine nearby, offering both refreshment and amusement—Pocari Sweat, anyone?
FYI: The quote stenciled onto the squares of the torii gate is from Donald Richie's Tokyo (1999):
"One is advised to admire the famous old shrine and, since one is not Japanese, one also includes the gas station next door, the TV aerial in back and the supermarket truck in front, and is consequently disturbed. It is doubtful that a native sees all of this, because he or she is gifted with partial vision, the ability to ignore that which would encroach upon the famous shrine, the single ancient pine or the once wide vista of the sea. The West does not encourage vision this selective, but in Tokyo it is almost a necessity...Since they share this gift, most Japanese are notoriously fond of the camera. As they ought to be -- cameras approximate their own learned vision.”
Your Name Here, 2011
55" x 40"
Cotton fabrics, some stenciled with fabric paint. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: D. James Dee.
Q: What's red and white and read all over? A: Ancient Chinese name seals or cutting-edge QR [quick response] codes. A playful response to the astounding 651 red and white quilts on display at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, March 2011.
Central Booking, 2011
36" x 36"
Stenciled and commercially available fabrics. Machine pieced, hand quilted. Photo credit: D. James Dee.
Made for the fifth Manhattan Quilters Guild's traveling exhibition, Material Witnesses.
Updates the traditional quilt design of a diamond in a square. It also continues the legal theme suggested by the exhibition's title: central booking is where the newly arrested are brought and held before arraignment. The central QR code and stenciled text in the corners together spell out the first sentence of The Trial, Kafka's nightmarish tale of bureaucratic and legal injustice.
Bella Figura, 2010
59" x 52"
Stenciled and commercially available fabrics. Fused and machine appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Another in a continuing series of quilts examining the urban landscape, language, and mannequins. The heartbreakingly beautiful cathedral in the extreme background establishes that we're in Florence, Italy. The sneering clothing mannequin--originally seen in a street market near the cathedral--parodies la bella figura (good deportment). While the street appears to recede in a plausible way behind her, it's all subtly distorted, combining details sublime or ridiculous of the city's historic center.
Stenciled in the border: "...beneath the great tessellated cliffs of the Cathedral...there was an almost ludicrous incongruity in seeing Pleasure leading her train through these dusky historic streets." Henry James, Florentine Notes (1874)
This quilt took three years and three months to make; several factors made it so time-consuming. My unarticulated decision to include a lot of photographic detail, especially of the cathedral, without actually having good photographs of those details made for an awful lot of research. Even after I found photographs--in some cases, years after I'd begun the quilt--at the beginning my Photoshop skills were so poor that I was unable to take advantage of time-saving manipulations. And even after I finished one part or another, either the scale of the part was wrong, or I discovered that the look I really wanted was the cutout filter in Photoshop, so I had to re-do the entire cathedral. And on and on and on. The technique is frankly laborious--but it was really all these other dead-ends that made the whole thing qualify as semper tedium.
Subtext, 2008
10" x 6" x 6"
Stenciled and pieced fabric; buckram; wire. Made for the Textile Study Group of New York's Intimate Eye exhibition. Photo credit: D. James Dee.
A small book-like sculpture with a deconstructing text spilling off the pages, adapted from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass."
Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk, 2006
38" x 36"
Stenciled, photo silk- screened, commercially available cotton fabrics; fabric paint. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
It's an impossible, noisy, invigorating, endlessly varied and fascinating city, with one of the most beautiful skylines in the world, but to work and commute and live here is often a far less grand experience. "Don't Even THINK of Parking Here," an old parking sign from the days of Mayor Koch, is as pure an expression of NY, with all of its frustrations and attitude and arrogance and wit, as one could possibly want. This quilt combines the official, rule-laden side of the polis--and
the anarchic presence of graffiti artists. The heart ("for pride, for country, for baseball" in Spanish) and the stomach ("Yonah Schimmel's Knishes," in Yiddish) are referenced, as well as the life of the mind (in quotes from E. B. White's classic essay, Here is New York and from Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson). There are bits and pieces of my own history, in the form of old phone numbers, and the small portraits of my husband and myself as movie projectionists,
Chinese Characters, 2006
67" x 93"
Stenciled, photo silk- screened, commercially available cotton fabrics. Hand and machine appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Collection of John M. Walsh III.
That suit, that hair, that mole: you immediately recognize Chairman Mao. But who--or what--are those pouty women, with their Western features, retro hairdos and dead-eyed stares? They're store mannequins, manufactured in China for the Chinese market, never appearing solo but always arrayed in chorus lines. Perhaps the discordantly comical images have a darker point: if you have that system of government, you get this kind of dehumanized citizen.
Mao's official portrait on Tiananmen--the enormous gate to the Forbidden City--serves as the "establishing shot": the viewer immediately knows that she's in Beijing. Why I felt compelled to combine his face with those store mannequins, I can't say, but they seemed to be everywhere we went, always in a row, and their oddness lodged in my head. They were one of those unexpected details that I'm drawn to when I travel.
A quote plays out, square by square, across the 'wall'. If you work hard enough at it, you can discover the full quote for yourself:
"China is the worst governed place on earth and has been for thousands of years. There is no such thing as a good emperor or a useful bureaucrat, though the Chinese, idealists to a fault, go on imagining that the next one, the best one, is around the corner or will appear tomorrow. The massacre in Tiananmen is remarkable not because it was unexpected but because it was part of a tedious routine thousands of years old. The Chinese have lived with a boot on their necks through five Egypts, three Romes, and twelve British Empires, and the heel is still ground in for the foreseeable future."
Bill Holm, Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays (Milkweed Editions, 2000)
Chatter, 2004
16" x 11.5"
Cotton fabrics, some stenciled with fabric paint; hand appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: D. James Dee.
Part of a series using deconstructed texts, with a tip of the hat to Kurt Schwitters and a little graffiti thrown in. Plays with the viewer's expectations of stenciled vs. appliqued lettering.
Beijing, 2003
77" x 85"
Cotton and cotton blend fabrics, some stenciled; hand appliquéd and reverse appliquéd, machine pieced; hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Quilt National Collection, International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE
Inspired by a trip to Beijing in December, 2001, this quilt combines details of photographs and souvenirs in the lowest-tech approach possible: elaborate appliqué and reverse appliqué and quilting, all by hand. Most of these details are from the hutongs of Beijing, the traditional alleyway neighborhoods, which are being razed in favor of "modern" chrome and glass behemoths. The color and humor of the finished piece reflect the happiness felt in the company of dear friends.
Time Runs Out, 2002
36" x 36"
Cotton fabrics, stenciled. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd and reverse appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Time runs out for our hapless hero Harold Lloyd, who clings desperately to the huge timepiece in "Safety Last." His drama unfolds, a twenty-fourth of a second at a time, in a series of images pouring over the movie screen. Our eyes and our brains are fooled by an illusion of continuous motion, but dividing time up in this way seems artificial. Real time flows and -- although philosophers and physicists may argue that this isn't true -- the pace of this flow seems to vary according to our emotional state.
Loose Using, 2001
34" x 28"
Stenciled and commercially available cotton fabrics; Lonni Rossi's original cotton fabrics. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd and reverse appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Part of the "Dancing Between the Semicolons" project.
Language provides a rich inspiration for my quilts. Here, the words themselves become the major decorative element. It was an opportunity to take a juicy quote--in this case, Ernest Hemingway's "All our words through loose using have lost their edge"--and play around, graphically. The grammar of the phrase "loose using" is odd, but it's so expressive; it could refer to anyone who twists the language to his own less-than-honest purposes. It seemed a perfect fit for Lonni Rossi's "Dancing Between the Semicolons" challenge, inspired as it was by the reaction to a politician's evasions.
Heroic Optimism, 2000
82" x 60"
Photo silk-screened, stenciled, over-dyed and commercially available cotton fabrics; painted polyester. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd and reverse appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
This is the third in a series of quilts inspired by a 1996 trip to Russia. Much residue, both physical and figurative, remains after the fall of Communism. The text (from David K. Shipler's 1983 "Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams") plays out across ripped wall posters on the crumbling façades, contrasting the party line of a Social Realist cityscape with the rich, interior lives of its inhabitants.
Izba, 1998
71" x 48"
Photo silk-screened, stenciled, overdyed and commercially available cotton fabrics; painted polyester. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
An "izba" is a Russian peasant's traditional wooden house, often decorated with elaborate fretwork. For Russians, the idea of "izba" has the same kind of mythic and sentimental associations that "log cabin" conjures for Americans. The text which stretches across the weathered "wall posters" in the lower section is from Gogol's "Dead Souls," and speaks of the compelling emotional pull of this troubled and complex land. The second in a series of quilts inspired by my 1996 trip to Russia.
The Flimsiest of Screens, 1998
9" x 9" x 3"
Stenciled cotton fabrics, silk-screened polyester fabric, embroidery floss, zipper, mat board. Machine pieced, hand quilted. Photo credit: D. James Dee. Private Collection.
This quilt explores an extraordinary event I experienced while looking out a jet window at the sunrise. The texts appearing in the work, by the artist and by William James (from The Varieties of Religious Experience), describe and comment on the experience. Both text and design suggest that there are different levels of reality, and many possible interpretations of those differences.
Strong Words, 1998
36" x 36"
Stenciled cotton fabrics. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Detective Frank Pembleton and William Shakespeare get in their licks on truthful self- examination, occasioning strong language. FYI: The foreground, appliquéd text is the beginning of Shakespeare's Sonnet LIII; the text stenciled onto the pieced background is an excerpt from "A Many Splendored Thing," an episode of NBC's late, great detective drama, "Homicide: Life on the Street":
Det. Frank Pembleton: "Okay, let me tell you something. We're all guilty of something, cruelty, or greed, or...or going 65 in a 55 mile-per-hour zone. But you know what? You wanna think about yourself as the fair-haired choirboy? You go AHEAD."
Det. Tim Bayliss: "All right. Okay, so, uh, what are you saying, huh?"
Pembleton: "I'm saying you got a darkness, you, [Tim Bayliss], you got a darkness inside of you. You gotta know the darker, uglier sides of yourself. You gotta recognize them, so that they're not constantly sneaking up on you. You gotta LOVE 'EM, 'cause they're part of you. Because along with your virtues, they make you who you are. Virtue isn't virtue unless it slams up against vice. So consequently, your virtue's not real virtue. Until it's been tested...tempted."
Vice Versa, 1997
34" x 40"
Stenciled, painted, and commercially available cotton fabrics. Machine pieced. Hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Created for a UFO-themed exhibit, "Up in the Air: A UFO Quilt Invitational," curated by Petra Soesemann, this quilt is based on an antique woodcut of a man breaking through the dome of the firmament. It's a perfect visual metaphor of moving from the known world into the unknown. We humans are reaching out to explore space, and UFO skepticism aside, there is something mischievous and poetic about the idea of other beings reaching in.
The designs in the landscape are crop circles, lovely patterns allegedly created by UFOs. The pattern on the soles of the shoes is those of the boots astronauts wore on the moon. All of the spacecraft on the left side are based on real ones from both American and Russian space exploration efforts--Sputnik, the space shuttle, the Hubble Telescope, Vostok, and a Mercury capsule. The classic flying saucers on the right are enlarged versions of a rubber stamp. The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel mentions "wheels within wheels" with "spokes and rims" that rose from the earth without turning. These are further described as "gleaming like a chrysolite" (a greenish mineral), with "rims were full of eyes round about." One of the original woodcut elements seemed to be based on this description, so I altered it and moved it into place. The "eyes" round about have become the letter "i"; allow me this little visual pun.
What Next?, 1996
74" x 38"
Photo silk-screened, stenciled, over-dyed and commercially available cotton fabrics; painted polyester; string. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
I'm still playing with language and layering. After Boris Yeltsin won the 1996 presidential election, the newspaper Izvestia ran the headline "Democracy Wins/What Next?". Having been in Russia a few months earlier, that phrase had a certain resonance for me. I hope this quilt--albeit with its surreal, floating shapes--captures some of the color and feel of Moscow.
Read between the lines, 1995
36" x 36"
Commercially available cottons and cotton blend, some over-dyed; machine pieced, hand appliquéd and hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Collection: Capelin Communications, New York, NY.
Based on the original haiku:
A flurry of words
puffs whitely into night air:
read between the lines
“A conversation on a winter’s night seems to end positively, but it contains the seeds of a friendship’s demise.”
This piece marks a return to my earlier style of complicated patchwork, but it has the limited palette of black & white with a few accents of color of much of my recent work. Rows of white and red squiggles suggesting handwriting or frozen speech contrast and alternate with a quieter subtext of appliquéd letters.
Lost in Translation, 1995
75" x 55"
Commercially available, photo silk-screened, dyed, and discharge dyed cottons, which were then stenciled with fabric paint. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, and hand quilted. A quilted noren. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
An attempt to describe an extraordinary event that I experienced while looking out a jet window at the sunrise. The story unfolds, one letter per 2" block, across the whole surface. Alas, the text fails to adequately explain what happened, the piece hardly resembles the beauty of the scene, and the Japanese ideogram ('sun' or 'day') is apparently not quite the right one, either: truly, the whole thing is lost in translation!
Hear the Difference,1994
48" x 36"
Stenciled, photo silkscreened, and commercially available cottons and silk, some over-dyed; machine pieced, hand appliquéd and hand quilted. Photo credit: Robin Schwalb.
A quilt carefully constructed to look deconstructed, inspired by urban walls covered with layered, ripped and weathered posters. This piece is full of references to sound, music, and sound reproduction. The lone Japanese ideogram means "ear" or "hearing." The quote stenciled on the bottom-most layer refers to a young tribal woman in Siberia who, in 1898, laughed and cried with excitement upon hearing her own voice recorded and played back. That same combination of fear and joy lights up Nanook of the North's face, in Robert Flaherty's 1922 documentary film, as he listens to a wind-up Victrola. Nowadays, we often take the machines in our lives so much for granted that we've lost the sense of wonder they ought to engender in us.
The Three of Hearts, 1993
28" x 18"
Stencilled cottons. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd and hand quilted. 28" x 18". Photo credit: Breger and Associates.
Part of A Full Deck, comprised of 54 individual quilts, each representing a card from a standard playing deck.] Collection: Originally purchased by Nancy and Warren Brakensiek, who later donated the whole Deck to Visions Museum of Textile Art, San Diego, CA.
Hearts are perilous things. They are prone to breaking; they are known to attack you. The heart, seat of emotions and blood pump of all animal life, suffers every indignity of clichéd and sentimental representation. Please remember that before the greeting card industry existed, hearts were the favored food of the Aztec gods. The Aztecs believed the gods were mortal. If not properly nourished with "precious water" (human blood) and "red cactus fruit" (human hearts) the gods would die, and all life would perish. Here, two victims have just made the ultimate sacrifice on the twin altars of the temple. A third victim is falling down the steep steps of the temple. His heart wafts towards the sun god, who eagerly awaits his ration of food and drink. The purposely naive style of the images is in imitation of manuscripts contemporary to the Conquest of Mexico. Many of the details are drawn from a variety of Aztec arts.
Although the subject matter is very different from my previous quilts, there are some common elements. Once again, there is a strong architectural motif. Things fall down: even as the third heart wafts upwards, it trails a stream of blood down towards the falling sacrificial victim. There is the oblique and uneasy reference to organized religion. And of course, there is writing, without which no quilt of mine would be complete.
First Dream, 1993
89" x 77"
Stenciled and commercially available cottons and cotton/linen blend; machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
At the time, this was a real departure for me--an actual bed quilt! I was interested in making a rather romantic quilt about sleeping and dreaming. I also wanted the chosen text, an excerpt of a poem by Alice Meynell, to be the major design element. Even though it is almost entirely hand appliqued, it is obviously of a piece with my other work: it shows the same fondness for gray and black, a limited palette, accents of strange, bright colors, and of course, writing.
One View of Mt. Fuji, 1991
54" x 44"
Stenciled, machine pieced and hand appliquéd cottons; fabric paint. Photo credit Karen Bell.
Upon arrival in Japan, I was shocked to discover how widely English is used for signage and brand names--but it is often no more comprehensible than Japanese. (“My Wet”--albeit more tasteless than most-- is a typically comic and surreal example.) This piece expresses my delight in the frenzied graphic variety of Tokyo, while considering the paradox of ancient traditions co-existing within a modern, increasingly westernized Japan. I think that the artist Hokusai, who created at least 136 views of Mt. Fuji, would appreciate this additional view.
The Gift of Tongues, 1991
98" x 54"
Stencilled, photo silk-screened, marbleized, and commercially available cottons and silks. Machined pieced, hand appliquéd. Hand quilted by Grace Miller. Photo credit: Karen Bell.
Collection of The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. Quote from Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (Viking: NY, NY 1987).
This quilt is the second in a series of meditations on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The randomly pieced, silk-screened text ("...language--the gift of tongues...has a rebellious and wayward vitality compared to which the foundations of the Pyramid are as dust...") forms the backdrop for a cascade of symbols. The repeated image of a dynamited, collapsing skyscraper and the seismic cityscape provide sly visual counterparts to the text. The composition reflects subtle influences of Japanese aesthetics and costume design, sources I find increasingly important. Although sometimes interpreted as grim or apocalyptic, the image informing this quilt is a fragile yet nourishing egg: the city cracking open to reveal its diverse human heart.
Babel, 1990
72" x 90"
Photo silk-screened, stenciled, painted, and commercially available cotton fabrics. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd. Hand quilted by Karen Berkenfeld, Margit Echols, Susan Ball Faeder, Katherine Knauer, Leslie Levison, Diane Rode Schneck, and Robin Schwalb. Photo credit: Bob Malik Studios.
The Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel explains that the proliferation of languages is a result of a sort of divine pre-emptive strike against an uppity mankind. In this quilt, a modern skyscraper undergoing demolition stands in for the biblical Tower. Flanked by a cityscape in the midst of catastrophic upheaval, it is surrounded as well by a wealth of symbols from more than 20 different scripts. These all serve as a perfect visual counterpart to a quote from Bruce Chatwin’s wonderful book The Songlines, wherein he asserted that the divine gift of “language...has a rebellious and wayward vitality compared to which the foundations of the Pyramid are as dust.” Completing the composition, asymmetric log cabin blocks radiate out from the central image, adding their rhythmic visual energy.
Introductory Japanese, 1990
45" x 45"
Stenciled and commercially available cottons; machine pieced and hand appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo credit: Robin Schwalb.
The written word has been a recurring theme in many of my quilts. Anticipating the calligraphic beauty of the signs in Tokyo, I was shocked to see English used extensively. However, one quickly discovers how fractured English a la Japanese is. (What does “I feel Coke” mean, exactly?) This piece combines many of the words and phrases which so amused me in Japan. The colors accurately reproduce those of the original signs. While red, white and blue are associated with the United States (and I have never felt so American as when in Japan), the combination of blue and white or red and white is equally Japanese.
PROJECTIONIST PLEASE FOCUS, 1989
59" x 43"
Photo silk-screened, stenciled, commercially available cotton fabrics. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd; hand and machine quilted. Photo credit: Rachael Dorr.
In 1988 I began a series of quilts that attempts to combine the workaday and creative halves of my life. Since 1976 I have earned my living as a movie projectionist" to: "Starting in 1976, for many decades I earned my living as a movie projectionist. While many people the world 'round have experienced the wonder and pleasure of the movies, my line of work has made me very conscious not only of the content of movies, but how they look and how they are made.
The leitmotif of this series is the two projectionists (my husband and yours truly) who earnestly project a 16mm film--alas, not 35mm or the really macho 70mm--through a 'contained' crazy field. While the imagery will be familiar to anyone interested in film, the fragments of words and phrases will be meaningful mainly to projectionists, and old-timers at that. This series records the sad twilight not only of a skilled craft, and the wonderful language developed by the people who used the machines to entertain so many, but perhaps of film itself: a victim, in its turn, of videotape.
An old-fashioned Academy leader with the legend PROJECTIONIST PLEASE FOCUS encircles its namesake. The images include the work of pioneering masters of the cinema, as well as familiar faces from Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin being chewed up in the gears of an assembly line; Dr. Frankenstein’s baleful monster; and the robot from “Metropolis” are but several of the filmic references to the perceived dangers of technology, to the ambivalence and sense of dislocation felt by many in the face of rapid technological change.
PCB Bop, 1988
41" x 55"
Cottons, some stenciled; metal studs. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd,, hand quilted. Photo credit: Michael Faeder.
Award of Excellence, Quilt National '89. Quilt National Collection, International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE
The initial inspiration for this piece was both sublime and ridiculous: a combination of an Edward Weston photograph and the sweat stains on Joe Cocker's brocade shirt during a rousing 1987 performance. The design evolved into the lovely patterns of PCBs--printed circuit boards.
While I hesitate to hang a lot of heavy ideological baggage onto what is essentially a lyrical, happy piece, the viewer is encouraged to maintain a thoughtful attitude towards technological innovation.
Rosetta Stone, 1987
71" x 40"
Cottons, cotton blends, some painted. Machine pieced, hand appliquéd, and hand quilted.
Collection of Ropes & Gray, Boston, MA
The 'Rosetta Stone', an ancient stela with a bi-lingual inscription in three 'alphabets', provided the key to the deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This fact gives it a monumentality far beyond its modest size. My quilted homage substitutes medieval industrial and post-industrial technological symbols and languages for the Greek and Egyptian of the original Stone. There are alchemical references hidden in the quilting in the borders, to remind the viewer that despite the explosive increase in scientific and technological knowledge during the 20th century, many questions remained unanswered. When faced with a particularly sanctimonious pronouncement about the latest discovery, it amuses me to think that once upon a time, alchemy was at the cutting edge of science.
Let X = X, 1986
39" x 72"
Cottons and woolen fabrics. Machine pieced, hand quilted. Photo credit: eeva-inkari.
This was my first quilt to use writing as part of its design. Begun simply to use the visually hot color combination of red and magenta, my interest in language emerged and came to dominate the surface. There are parts of English, Greek, Hebrew and Cyrillic letters, as well as astrological, electronic and mathematical symbols. There is no message spelled out by these symbols and letters. Perhaps they represent a naive and idealistic plea for understanding. The title is part of a song title by the American performance artist Laurie Anderson. It leapt into my mind as soon as I visualized the quilt’s design. The design also has great personal resonance: my father ‘had’ six or seven languages, in varying degrees. He died a year before this quilt was begun; it is a tribute to him and the love of language that is my inheritance.
California Dreamin’, 1986
39" x 39"
Machine pieced and hand quilted cottons. Photo credit: Sarah Wells.
Along the California coast grow wonderful succulent plants. I was very taken with one in particular, the sea fig, which looks like pointed green and red fingers sticking up out of the sand. These plants suggested the colors and shapes of this quilt.
The Breakup of the Nuclear Family, 1985
40" x 40"
Machine pieced, hand quilted cottons. Photo credit: Sarah Wells.
This piece is the first in a series of ‘contained’ crazy quilts, directly inspired by the work of quilt artists Jan Myers-Newbury and Dorle Stern-Straeter. There is only one printed fabric among the many solid colors. I bought that fabric in 1968, and I associated the clothing originally made from it with my full-blown teenage rebelliousness. As the oldest child, my imminent departure for college would indeed split up my nuclear family, and this is reflected in the fractured design.