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.