Hand-painted silk; commercial cotton fabrics; machine pieced, appliqued, quilted.
With nods to Gustav Klimt, to the Progressive Era, and all the women whose work in textiles went unacknowledged for centuries, this self-portrait looks to the future of textile art while showing reverence for the past. There are quilters going back generations in my family, and I have included two star blocks and two Dresden Plates that were made by unknown grandmothers and left incomplete in a cabinet in our house. The portrait itself, as well as the two cats, owes much to my Narrative Portrait Painting classes at the local Art League. The modern pieced blocks feature classic Half-Square Triangles, and have found an exciting new life instead of sitting in a bin of UFOs. This quilt takes pieces of the past, experiments of the present, and hard-won skills to look to the future.
This quilt was part of “The Power of Women” exhibit at the International Quilt Festival Houston 2019.
72 x 24 inches
2018
