Quilts

Worn beyond repair and discarded quilts are the raw materials for this work. These artifacts are overdyed and then preserved in their current state of deterioration with an acrylic medium.

New images are then worked into the existing pattern. They are drawn from personal experience and ancient and universal symbols. The juxtaposition of painted imagery and needlework celebrates both the ingenuity and utility of quilts.

The earliest examples of quilting were in ancient China, where people, believing that the spirit of the wearer remained in the clothing, stitched worn out fabric fragments onto new cloth, making new garments from the old.

In Pioneer days in the United States quilts were created out of necessity, a thrift of ideas, the saving of scraps to make a whole. Patterns evolved from an inherent beauty that rose from utility—into quilts for dowrys and housewarming. . . witnesses to acts of love and birth, life and death.

It is in this vein that these quilts are given new life and their spirits are allowed to live on in a new form.