Saturday, March 30, 2019

Art Quilts - Part IV
Art Essay

Marie-Therese Wisniowski


Preamble
Art Quilts have featured on this blogspot and so for your convenience I have listed below previous posts in this series:
Art Quilts - Part I
Art Quilts - Part II
Art Quilts - Part III
Art Quilts - Part IV
Art Quilts - Part V
Art Quilts - Part VI
Art Quilts - Part VII
Art Quilters of the Netherlands - Part I
Art Quilters of the Netherlands - Part II
Art Quilters of the Netherlands - Part III
Four Selected European Art Quilters - Part I
Four Selected European Art Quilters - Part II
Four Selected European Art Quilters - Part III
Art Quilts of Jane Sassaman
Art Quilts of Michael A. Cummings


Introduction [1]
Quilts have been created throughout the course of history. However, the involvement of academically trained artists with the medium is relatively a new phenomenon.

What is now generally called an "art quilt" had its origins in the tumultuous social and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s. During these years, quilts and other hand-made crafts, which had been overshadowed by machine-made products, were rediscovered by a much younger generation eager to find meaning outside of the industrial revolution and so co-operatives, hippie and commune living became all the rage. It was important to rediscover folk activities such as the making of quilts.

Hippie Quilt of the 1960s (artist unknown).

Artistic endeavours were all the rage in the 60s and 70s since science created weapons, whereas art created inspiration. Pop artists like Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg broke barriers against the use of fabrics in their work. Rauschenberg's "Bed" even used a quilt as a canvas.



Feminist historians began to reveal and examine the unique stories that quilts could tell about the women who had made them, and sharp-eye collectors, artists and critics drew visual connections between modern art and powerful abstract designs created by American women.



In 1971 the Witney Museum of American Art's seminal exhibition "Abstract Design in American Quilts" introduced to a national audience that quilts were an art form. Hilton Kramer summed up the exhibition's revolutionary thesis: "For a century or more preceding the self-conscious invention of pictorial abstraction in European painting, the anonymous quilt-makers of the American provinces created a remarkable succession of visual masterpieces that anticipated many of the forms that were later prized for their originality and courage."

Whitney Museum of American Art from above at night.


Art Quilts - Part IV[1]


Title: The Writing's on the Wall.
Artist: Jeanne Lyons Butler.
Materials and Techniques: Commercial and hand-dyed cotton, silk, and synthetic fabrics; machine pieced and quilted.
Size: 56 x 60 inches.

Title: Women/Men, Chapter 1.
Artist: Petra Soesemann.
Materials and Techniques: Natural and synthetic fabrics; direct hand and machine appliqué by fusing, hand quilted.
Size: 75 x 76 inches.

Title: Circular Thinking.
Artist: Melissa Holzinger.
Materials and Techniques: Canvas that has been painted, drawn, and airbrushed with acrylic, pastels, and ink; layered, fused, and machine quilted, mounted and framed.
Size: 32 x 40 inches.

Title: Peculiary Pottery 4.
Artist: Dominie Nash.
Materials and Techniques: Cotton and silk fabrics treated with fiber reactive dyes, screen printing with textile paint and fabric crayon; machine appliquéd and machine quilted.
Size: 43 x 43 inches.

Title: Curse.
Artist: Stephanie Randall Cooper.
Materials and Techniques: Cotton, rayon, polyester, silk and blended fabrics hand embellished with acrylic paint; cut-and-paste construction, machine quilted.
Size: 58 x 47 inches.

Title: Indian Orange Peel.
Artist: Karen K. Stone.
Materials and Techniques: Cotton fabrics, mostly homespun, batiks, and reproduction fabrics; machine quilted with rayons thread.
Size: 63 x 63 inches.

Title: Remains of the Day.
Artist: Karen Perrine.
Materials and Techniques: Cotton, sateen, and nylon tulle treated with Procion dye, fabric pigments and felt marker, cotton and metallic threads; hand painted and airbrushed, hand appliquéd, hand and machine quilted.
Size: 44 x 43 inches.

Title: Catherine Wheel.
Artist: Anne Smith.
Materials and Techniques: Cotton blends and recycled fabrics; machine pieced and appliquéd, hand quilted.
Size: 52 x 53 inches.


Reference:
[1] Art Quilts A Celebration, Editors N. Mornu, D. Cusick and K.D. Aimone, Lark Books, New York (2005) ISBN 13: 978-1-57990-711-2.

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