Monday I will be shipping Apron Strings: Moments of Passage, to the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY. It will join many other art quilts for Quilts=Art=Quilts 2022. In the artist list, my name is linked to an interview with Davana Robedee from Q=A=Q 2021. I was beginning the Apron String series when we talked. The exhibit will run from October 29, 2022 - January 8, 2023.
Apron Strings: Moments of Passage 43 x 57”, cotton, linen found quilt, buttons
Moments of Passage was built on the foundation of a rescued antique quilt. The quilt top was too damaged to be salvaged, but the back was in excellent shape and an interesting pink color. I backed the poncho shape with a medium weight linen. The “apron strings” are long, improvisationally embroidered strips that were appliqued to the quilt (you can see me working on a few in the sidebar photo), and I added a contrasting dark section of cotton gauze to temper the pink. Then I stitched the whole thing together and added those quirky little tassles. That is the technical description. There is more.
Motherhood is a theme that many women artists avoid. There are many reasons for that, but I realized that I had spent thirty years raising children and though that was not my sole purpose on the planet, it was a sizable chunk of my life and of my energy during those years. So I embarked on a journey to explore the complexities of our relationships with our children. The metaphors of “tied to her apron strings” and then “cutting the apron strings” seemed an interesting place to start and I began stitching long strips of improvisational mark-making—lots of strips. I made two rectangular quilts (recently shown together in New Legacies at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, CO), and then experimented with actual apron forms (one of these was in Form Not Function 2022 at the Carnegie Center in New Albany, IN) but I didn’t feel these were the best expressions for what I wanted to say. Eventually I decided to create robe-like pieces, and I think these (there are three) are the most successful.
I was thinking about the time we spend with our kids, the important milestones, and all the other moments in between. We keep our sons and daughters close, hoping to protect them from dangers and disappointments, knowing we can never fully do that. And then, gradually we untie the strings and set our offspring loose into the world as independent adults. That is a huge oversimplification of parenthood, so maybe the complexity is conveyed by the rudimentary symbols and rambling stitches of the strings themselves—and all those remembered and forgotten moments of passage.
Recent Reading List
Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus; Dark Earth, by Rebecca Stott; The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by NK Jemisin; The Crocodile Bride, by Asleigh Bell Pedersen; In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz; The House of Fortune, by Jessie Burton. *
* This is a sequel-like novel based on her earlier novel, The Miniaturist. I loved The Miniaturist and recommended it widely. I enjoyed this latest book as well. Read both!