Top:
Ellen Oppenheimer
P ir B lo c k
#5, 2003,
65 x 65 in.
Bottom:
Chris Wolf Edmonds
T h ro u g h th e T re e s:
S o ls tic e M o o n ,
2001,
39X67V2 in.
Newbury’s
m o o g
parallel the twilight pal-
ette and Cubist organization of a nearby
Marguerite Zorach painting. As evident
as the similarities, the contrasts between
these materially different works immedi-
ately reveal one of the principal formal and
expressive assets of the studio quilt. Sur-
faces that in the paintings can be conceived
only illusionistically as a composition of
separate planes are physically pieced togeth-
er in the quilts; the resulting dynamic sur-
faces complement the optical recession and
projection of color in ways the continuous
plane of a stretched canvas cannot.
This physical surface dynamism is ex-
ploited to heighten the crisp independence
of shapes in Deirdre Amsden’s pieced
composition
Colourwash Spillikins,
to sug-
gest the seething, insectile energy of disin-
tegrating color planes in Pamela Studstill’s
Number # 4 j
and to invigorate the pulse
of the projecting registers of folded triangles
of cloth and quilted bands in Teresina Gai’s
Pantelleria.
A subtler employment of sur-
face dynamism to induce tension between
two- and three-dimensional components
and heighten a carefully crafted optical illu-
sion occurs in Mary Anne Jordan’s somber
grayscale
Dot Flag.
Here the bleeding of dye
downward from a series of dots becomes
Opposite:
Pauline Rurbidge
W in d o v e r W a te r,
2003,72 x 71 Vi in.
shadow-like, and, in collaboration with
concentric stitching around the individual
dots and a slight swelling, produces the
impression of a composition in relief.
If surface stitching has its lineage in a
craft context and the utilitarian nature
of batting, the works in “Perspectives” sug-
gest that the studio quilt perpetuates the
technique principally for its expressive
potential. Pauline Burbidge’s
W ind over
Water,
deliberately eschewing vibrant color
in favor of a quiet range of gray and pale
blue, conveys the rhythmic, liquid motion
of ripples as much through patterns of
stitching as through painted elements of
the composition. Indeed, it is ironically in
those instances in which stitching is com-
bined with painterly effects—Chris W olf
Edmonds’s
Through the Trees: Solstice Moon,
Dorothy Caldwell’s
A Lake/A Bowl,
Ther-
ese May’s
Sawblade
or Barbara Wader’s
Autumn 1-4,
for example—that the studio
quilt seems most distinct from painting and
most concretely defined as a medium.
Glen R. Brown is professor o f art history and
associate head o f the art department at Kansas
State University.
*
The catalog is $9.95, quiltstudystore.net.
apr/may io amcrican craft 033
