I have finally finished the hand quilting on this 75" square velvet and cotton quilt. It has been in the works since December 2002 (about six years). It has seen me through a lot of life; a birth, a marriage, three deaths, career changes, and my nest emptying. I have not worked on it every day, there have been months when it lay abandoned. 
I go back and forth about this passion of mine. It's not art I think. It doesn't speak a modern language. Many art quilts our there resemble abstract paintings. They steer clear of traditional patterns. This piece is based on simple first shapes, squares, diamonds, crosses. It calls out to be touched. It wants to wrap you up and keep you safe.
I can't stop making these bed-sized wall pieces. I have decided to call this piece, Slow Art.
"For four decades craft artists were misguided in trying to make painting and sculpture often forgetting or disparging what was useful and valuable and distinctive about crafts. Some of the distinctive qualities of craft that Janet Koplos identifies are attention to surface and its subtleties, scale that is keyed to the human body, and tangibility. Koplos suggests that craft's best route to art is to capitalise on its strength, its own character, doing the things that other art mediums can't do." Ilze Aviks in reference to Janet Koplos' 1992 essay "In Considering Crafts Criticsm"
2 comments:
It is beautiful. Slow art is such an apt name. One look at these works inspires great admiration. There is such a tactile force here.
Thanks Karen
The title came up in conversation with my daughter on the phone. She said that my quilts were slow art.
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