Alcatraz II

This is the second art quilt created from a photo I took at Alcatraz.  Cracked and rusty drips on walls.  It is printed on canvas which I heavily embroidered - tough on the fingers - and appliqued with hand dyed threads and ripped fabric strips.  It is part of the  Incarceration series.

 

Brown - Needle Lace

Thrilled that I could get all these bits to become a strong, durable 48" fabric panel.  And the piece was just juried into Art Cloth Network's 2017 exhibit to tour for a couple of years.

Encircled/Ensnared

Hand dyed fabric, scads of colorful fabric bits hand stitched over the surface, then the whole covered with hand dyed, somewhat unwoven cheesecloth.  Add French knots and surface stitching galore and there you have it!

 

Receding Figures I and II

RF I is an art quilt, and RF II is an installation and collaboration with my long time woodworker friend Steve Mandell. The pair reference the global refugee crisis, and how lost people are when forced from their homes.  These are tattered figures adrift in a landscape of the unknown: displaced, faceless to most, unsafe and without a place to rest and rejoin a community.    Human identity is deeply tied to place and without its anchor we are untethered.

Because the figures appear to be floating across the terrain we cannot know where they’ve come from, from what tribe, family, not even their age or gender.   We don’t know their aspirations, their strengths, what contributions they may make to the place where they land.