Back to Quilts, Kind of a Short Tour

Good place to start, one of my earliest 'favorite artists', Romare Bearden. Here is a collage of paint, fabric, and stitching that has influenced so many artists since his death in 1988. The simple shapes, the patterning, the layering of different surfaces are all iconic to the art quilt world today.

Margaret Killgalen, at her current show in SF has a back room full of pieced and sewn painted work very similar to the quilt tradition. Love the graphic quality of the combined patterns.

and a detail:

Also of interest is the direct pinning of these pieces to the wall, no 'presentation' effects at all. This is in light of all the discussion of hanging systems and framing suggestions currently being bandied around on the SAQA list. Sometimes simplicity is the right route, I'm going to take note.

Ben Venom makes quilts out of heavy metal band tee shirts. This one is 12' x 15'! Go to the link and see some of his others, quite wonderful use of the medium, if I do say so.

Joan Schultz is one of the early devotees of mixed media collage quilts. There are few who have attained her level of expertise using photographs, image transfer, paint, and layering along with stitching to make it quilt-like. As they say, 'often imitated, never equalled'.

Enough for now, there are so many other amazing artists out there doing interesting thongs loosely tied up with the quilt tradition, admittedly some not even realizing it. This is the thread of work that most interests me so I'll be dragging out new work I find from obscure sources as I go along. It would be nice if I tried doing more work myself! Oh well.