Minimalism

 Cite by Ellsworth Kelly 1951  oil on wood, 20 joined panels, 56.5 x 70.5 inches

There is a SAQA global exhibition of quilts premiering this weekend at the Carrefour in Alsace France.  It is entitled Minimalism and it was juried/curated by Dorothy Caldwell.  

Dorothy wrote a juror's essay at the beginning of the catalog that reminisced about her visit to Jonathan Holstein's exhibition of American Quilts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971 when she was an art student and the dominant Abstract Art Movement of the time was Minimalism.  

In her essay,  Dorothy named key artists of the Minimalist movement such as Ellsworth Kelly (top image), Agnes Martin (see the two images below) and Donald Judd (see his wall sculpture in the next photo).  I apologize for the quality of these images, I got them from the web.

Summer by Agnes Martin 1964  watercolour, ink, on board and paper, 72 x 72 inches

 

Buds by Agnes Martin 1959  oil on canvas, 50 inches square

Minimalism emphasized geometric shapes, stripes, grids, solid colours and truth to materials.

When Dorothy Caldwell attended the Whitney show in New York, she writes in her essay that she had an epiphany.  She realized that quilts are minimalistic and that the quilts in the exhibition, (made by anonymous women) were stunning, sophisticated art.  She could see that quilts embodied Minimalism's essence.  

"This was a turning point, and I moved on from painting to textiles.  The Minimalist tradition inspired making art where the material carries the message."  Dorothy Caldwell

Untitled by Donald Judd 1967   lacquer on galvanized iron, 12 units each 9 x 40 x 31 inches

The Minimalist Movement of the 60's and 70's acknowledged material in its original form.

"Jurying SAQA's Minimalism exhibition was an invitation to revisit the Minimalist Movement.  The experience allowed me to consider Minimalism's relevance today, as manifest in contemporary art quilts.  It is refreshing to experience honest qualities of cloth.  Multiple interpretations of Minimalism, in the dynamic world of the art quilt, will challenge viewers to experience a movement rooted in the 1960s in a thoroughly modern context."  Dorothy Caldwell

Although there are 43 artists included in this exhibition there is space enough for only six in this post.  Please visit this link to view all of them.  (A printed catalogue is available from SAQA)

 Solitude by Margaret Black, USA, cotton and dye,
straight line machine quilted, 69.5 x 40.5 inches 2021

Seeking Simplicity: Threads 3 by Lynne Seaman, UK,  cotton, dye, fusible web, 
machine embroidery/quilted with coloured threads 25.5 x 25.5 inches 2022

Quilt Drawing #25 - String of Breaths  silk, hand embroidered and hand quilted
59 x 34 inches 2021

Polder Horizon by Petra Fallaux, USA   cotton, dyes, mono printed, overdyed, 
machine pieced and machine quilted  67 x 43 inches  2021

Total Solar Eclipse by Jeri Auty, USA  cotton, layered and pieced
machine quilted 47 x 31.5 inches 2022

Ode to Jan by Marjolein van der Eijk, Netherlands, cotton sateen
machine stitched and quilted, 36 x 36 inches 2022

I have a piece in this show.  Please see my update blog. There is also a photo of my quilt in the sidebar of this blog.   

A Red Hill A Green Hill by Dorothy Caldwell,  cotton with ink wash and earth ochre,
hand applique and hand stitched, 9'4" x 9' 8"  2012

The Minimalism exhibition will travel for three years.  It's in France right now, next stop Italy, so I hope that many of you will have an opportunity to view it as it travels to a gallery or festival near you.  

Lancaster County Amish quilts

Diamond in the Square by unknown Amish quiltmaker,
 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, circa 1920
pieced wools 78 x 78 inches
This is a very pure example of the simple Diamond, the essence perhaps.  Here we see the intense, glowing colours for which twentieth-century Lancaster quilts are known.  text by Julie Silber

This post looks at the 'Square in Square' and the 'Diamond in Square' quilts  made between 1890 - 1940  by Amish women in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The images include commentary by Julie Silber and are taken from the beautiful book The Art of the Quilt (1990).  Also included in the book is an essay by art critic Robert Hughes.  The book is a coffee table sized catalog containing about 80 quilts from the larger 350 piece Esprit collection and accompanied an exhibition at the San Francisco de Young museum.  At least 82 of the Esprit quilts have returned to Lancaster County and it is possible to visit them.   Read more    I've woven some of Robert Hughes' essay in with the 8 masterpieces in italics.  

I've long been inspired by these quilts and this is not my first post on the subject.  In 2010 my husband I visited Lancaster County and I posted then about seeing some Amish quilts face to face with close up photos of the stitching. here

To make a quilt you take 3 pieces of cloth and sew them together to make a kind of padded blanket.

These Lancaster County quilts are a warm, soft, swaddling minimalism.  These quilts are just a tad more aloof than most of the things that folk cultures produce.

Center Square by unknown Amish quiltmaker
Lancaster Country, Pennsylvania circa 1890
 pieced wools 78 x 78 inches
Very few early examples of Lancaster Amish quilts remain, so it is difficult to be certain of how design developed.  It is likely, however, that the Center Square represents an early stage in Lancaster Amish quilt design, preceded by the whole-cloth (unpieced but fully quilted) type and followed by the diamond in the square.  Few Center Square quilts were made after the nineteenth century. 
text by Julie Silber

Folk art, like vernacular speech, may be whimsical.  It is never inflated.  It wants to be understood by everyone who sees it, and so it tends towards conciseness and practicality.  

Virtually all Amish women were quiltmakers.  

Center Square by Unknown Amish quiltmaker,
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania circa 1890
pieced wools, 78 x 79 inches
Lancaster Amish quilts are characteristically made from a very few pieces - large geometric fields of solid-coloured fabrics.  None is as minimal as the Center Square, the purest of all their designs.  The simple box and surrounding borders are showplaces for their elegant, masterly quilting, which here covers the surface of the quilt.  text by Julie Silber

These things were not anonymous when they were made.  These quilts were the intense and focused expression of individual people who made them for their families and who were proud of their skills.

A fine Amish quilt has: 

a spare-ness of design, 

almost dogmatic rigor but not because of its inventive quirks,

a magnificent sobriety of color, 

a balanced amplitude of conception, 

a truly human sense of scale.

The quilts on these pages are like emissaries from a vanished world.

Diamond in the Square by unknown Amish quiltmaker,
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, circa 1920 - 30
pieced wools 74 x 74 inches
The daughter of the woman who made this quilt said that "the dark blue "henrietta" was from my mother's dress".  The Lancaster Amish use the term 'henrietta' to describe a variety of fabrics, but it usually refers to the fine wools they favor for their quilts. 
Lancaster quilts are most often square and symmetrically arranged, almost always ranging from 72 to 88 inches square.  text by Julie Silber

If folk art means images that high taste can condescend to in the very act of savoring them, then Lancaster quilts are not folk art.  The quilts radiate a fierce distinction, a forthright economy of means, a syntax that is governed by strict traditions and yet looks inescapably modern.

They are a high enclave within Amish quilts.

Diamond in the Square by unknown Amish Quiltmaker,
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania circa 1940
pieced wools and rayons 80 x80 inches
Later Lancaster quilts are often quilted in floral rather than geometric or abstract designs.  They are also typically les densely quilted than their predecessors.  One contributing factor may be that it is more difficult to make tiny, fine quilting stitches in the synthetic fabrics Amish were using in the later period.  text  by Julie Silber

Lancaster County quilts have large geometrical colour fields.  

They use deep, saturated colour but not usually black.  

Lancaster quilts have peculiar designs, like Diamond in the Square.  

Lancaster quilts use a central medallion structure. 

Lancaster quilts use elaborate quilting and contrasting thread and are made from fine wool, not cotton.  You look at them and think How Modern.  

But they are not modern.  They come from a culture to which modernism is anathema.

Diamond in the Square by unknown Amish quiltmaker,
 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania circa 1910 - 20
pieced wools 81 x 81 inches
Lancaster County Amish women loved the elegantly simple diamond in the square pattern and made it again and again from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s.   Because it was so popular with them and only they made it, Diamond is the pattern most closely associated with the Amish in Lancaster County. text by Julie Silber

What is the Theory of Amish quilt making?  It is too simple to say that they do it to keep warm.  There are much easier ways to obtain a blanket than by patiently expending hundreds or thousands of hours. 

Here is an activity that is part practical and part aesthetic.  Part ritualistic and part social binder.  It is not pure creativity, neither is it pure use. 

Quilt making falls under religious rules governing social customs, moral life and work.  It directs the Amish towards the cardinal virtues:  Humility, non-resistance, simplicity and practicality.

Lancaster Amish have saturated colors.   No white and no yellow.

Diamond in the Square by an unknown Amish quiltmaker,
Lancaster Country, Pennsylvania circa 1920 - 30 
pieced wools 76 x 76 inches
The Amish were discouraged from using printed fabrics and from engaging in the worldly practice of using many small pieces in their quilts.  among quilts of all the many Amish groups, Lancaster County's are especially spare.  text by Julie Silber

The quilts are made from dress and shirt fabric, but the Lancaster county Amish also bought cloth especially for their quilts.  They did not wait for suitable scraps.

Diamond in the Square by unknown Amish quiltmaker,
 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, circa 1920 - 1930
pieced wools 77 x 77 inches
This Diamond has a clear, almost sparkling feeling, which the quiltmaker achieved by her particular arrangement of colour.  text by Julie Silber

In their complexity, visual intensity and quality of craftsmanship, such works simply dispel the idea that folk art is innocent social birdsong.  They are as much a part of the story of high aesthetic effort in America as any painting or sculpture.  

They deserve our attention and abundantly repay it.  Robert Hughes.

beauty emotion spirit soul

This post is about the gathering up and the installation of  the 18 pieces for my exhibition in Sudbury this month,  beauty emotion spirit soul.

We hung the show last night with the curator, Cristina Masotti,  and two of her friends.  Afterwards, Ned and I found a place to eat and then we drove home.  It's a two hour drive and we got home at midnight.

I have not been able to do a thing today except an instagram and a facebook post about the show.  I'm blank.

I want to put a poem into the guest book, or a quote by Pema Chodron.

I read something about Milton Avery's paintings this morning.
About how he instilled emotion into his paintings.  And optimistm.  And wonder.
I think that describes the work in this serene exhibition.

There is a lot of positive feedback about my work on social media.
A 15 minute kind of fame.

It makes me glad that I live with the ice-covered lake in front of me and the deer
who come by every morning and every evening.

Simple and quiet things that ground me.

Tomorrow night is the opening reception.

heart ache and delight, both are gifts

everything that occurs is actually the path itself

the best I can do, the most and the least

walking barefoot in my house

grounding myself, keeping my energy balanced

and my vulnerable innerness

I am past menopause now and children have flown, but that does not mean that I have stopped my deep and powerful inner life

In fact, my inner life is immense

it is a cloud, a beautiful cloud

I am an emotional thinker

blessed and lucky to be  given time to

pour my love into these cloths

it is all a gift

the glittering water, the bird song, the trees

you can scream into your journals

I am making simpler and simpler quilts

I am enjoying the process more and more

we know nothing
even about ourselves

(virginia woolf)

quilts are the strongest art form to express intimacy

I become part of the cloth as I stitch

and then I cover you with me

nothing extra

just dedication

there is a horizon between reality and our ability to imagine

i want to be loved

i am here

use everything that happens as a means for waking up

wake up

the sun is available always

it shines on everyone with no discrimination

(pema chodron)

Abstract and Geometric

SYO 69  2013  39 x 53 inches by Harue Konishi

"In SYO 69 the design is extremely simplified in black on white with just two patches of coloured fabric for accents.  The squares are indicated by just two sides and the off-set shapes are also square. For this work I used white silk and navy blue striped silk.   My recent works, including this one, employ a process where I finish the whole thing in the first stage and then rotate shapes by cutting them out, changing their angles, and embedding them back into the original piece."   Harue Konishi

Memory's Playground  2014  found tablecloth machine quilted 27 x 54 inches by Paula Kovarik

 "Memory's playground is a study of the way we remember things and the way we imagine them.  I chose this tablecloth for its wavy edging and playful form.  I stitched a puzzle of odd images that connect in mysterious ways, just as our brains connect experiences and ideas.  The threads hop from one item to the next and are also tied to each other with small hand tied knots just as we try to lock in our memories and ideas."  Paula Kovarik

Quilt Drawing 16  2012  51 by 50 inches  by Daphne Taylor

 "All of my quilts are hand quilted.  Hand quilting is essential to me because it gives the fabric surface the mark of the hand, a human presence that cannot easily be achieved by machine.  The process slows one down and teaches one much about being in the moment with each thread and stitch, easily redoing each part until it is right but never knowing what the final visual presence will be.  Hand quilting is its own meditation, which I value.  It gives me the time to think about my work in a different way - slowly pullling out an image that takes months to achieve."  Daphne Taylor

Hope is the Anchor of the Sould Mt. Lebanon #3  2010  93 x 86 inches by Denyse Schmidt

 "I particularly love antique quilts that are spare or restrained.  It is much more difficult to keep to a simple palette or pattern, and it's very easy to give in to the desire to add more, to use that as a crutch.  So I have great respect for those makers who had or have the courage or discipline to stay the course, to let a single idea shine instead of throwing it all in at once."  Denyse Schmidt

Play of Lines XXIII  2010  45 x 18 inches by Uta Lenk

"When my son started discovering pens and pencils and making lines at age 2 and a half,  I watched how he chose the different colour and how he drew the lines.  It wasn't just scribbling; he seemed to be making deliberate choices about what he was going to do.
I decided that I would like to try to interpret in fabric what he was drawing.  It was the beginning of a large series, but only some of the pieces in the series are based on my son's drawings."   Uta Lenk

crazed 8: Incarceration 2010 82 x 79 inches by Kathleen Loomis

"I think the number of people who are working with elaborate piecing - that is, piecing using a bazillion seams and a fair amount of obsessive construction - is getting smaller all the time.  I feel an almost moral obligation to keep doing it, to help keep this skill alive, and keep this art form in the public eye.  I want my reputation as a quiltmakier to be as a fine machine piecer."  Kathleen Loomis

cover quilt by Pat Pauly, Mummy Bags Influence  2011  73 x 80 inches

This post highlights just six of the 29 featured artists in this new book by Martha Sielman, Art Quilts International: Abstract and Geometric.   Besides these, Martha also chose quilts for an exhuberant gallery from a further 97 artists.  In the introduction she says that she chose the quilts that 'stuck in her head" and that "it has been a real privlege for me to be offered this glimpse into the artists' lives and creative process".  I am proud that Martha Sielman wrote about my work and process and I have put her article about me online here and here.   Her questions were insightful and it was a pleasure and a challenge to be interviewed by her.  Thank you Martha Sielman.

painted ruin

It took twelve hours to drive home from Kingston yesterday. We had a lovely family visit with two kids, their partners, my father). I was also able to see my sister who lives nearby. The visit with my aging father seemed more emotional this time and once back in the studio today, I fell into my art as a kind of therapy. I may have ruined monumental simplicity. It's really hard to stay cool and minimalist. The paint did become lighter once it dried, and I am now in the process of removing months of red thread. The idea is to show absence.