Now, I am what is called a traditional quilter. I work with fabric, in a pattern based on a grid, and the finished quilt has a back, a front, and batting all sewn together. The whole works can be thrown on a bed. Or a wall.
The quilts on display were contemporary interpretations of quilts. They were made of paper, fabric, collage, lace, gouache, graphite, photographs, pastel, mica, colored pencil, masking tape, and/or gold leaf. Back, front, and batting not required. A departure from traditional quilting, yes, but I was game.
Game, but edgy.
I liked a lot of the pieces, even one that consisted of a video projected onto the back of a old, beat-up quilt: Quilt as Screen. The video showed a boy and then a man, wandering around with another quilt wrapped around them. As a conceptual piece, it worked. As a quilt, per se, no. According to me.
In the little booklet about the show ($3), I read this: "Aside from being an inviting, warm and humble medium, the quilt has an intrinsic capacity to connect people...this uniquely democratic folk art." It's humble I have a problem; I completely buy into "democratic." People who didn't go to art school can make art with fabric and a sewing machine and batting. Do we need quilting to be elevated via new materials and methods into something more than "warm and humble"? Can't we call this new species of collaborative art "collage," or "works on paper," or "mixed media,"? Leave quilting alone, I want to say. Let it be. And while you're at it, take a good long look at the Gees Bend and the Amish quilts. Their makers may have been humble, but they needed no more than thread and fabric to make art.
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| Tammy Rae Carland & Allison Smith Unititled (Sears Roebuck catalog), 2011 (detail) digital inkjet print on hand-sewn paper This piece had squares and lattice but was an utterly flat representation of a traditional quilt. My questions were "why?" and "what's new"? |
1 comment:
What part of quilt don't these jokers get? Dictionary says that word derives from old French for mattress, has nothing to do with sticking a bunch of crap together. As dear Gladys says, one might call a tuna sandwich a quilt and probably with more justification! Harrumph.
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