Wednesday 29 June 2022

Quilt block patterns




The more names there are for a single pattern, the older the design, the more people have used it in their design work. This is my favorite half-square-triangle design. I love it in all scales and colour combinations. These are just some of its many names :- Big Dipper, Cotton Reels, Bow Ties, Envelope, Hourglass, Whirling Blades, Spider, Pork and Beans,  Aunt Malvernia's Chain, Yankee Puzzle. Malone, M. (2003) 5,500 Quilt Block Designs. New York: Stirling Publishing.


This set of paintings uses 'Slow Crafting'. 


The paintings came out of trying to make sense of the death of my parents who were musicians, jewelers and educators. The materials and processes of making these wooden panels are very important. The gold and lapis lazuli used on the boards are the materials my parents would use to create artisan jewelry. The process of painting based on the icon technique is steeped in a deep spirituality, every layer is a prayer. The patterns are calming and meditative and chime with my practice of praying with icons, meditating with an image, the gold representing time beyond time. The patterns are based on half-square triangle,  nine patch and four patch quilt block patterns I saw in South Carolina and the quilts made by my Irish grandmother. I am trained as a potter and apprenticed in a production pottery for five years in the Deep South. Music / art/ poetry/ craft/ spirituality/ education are the warp and weft of my life. My experiences and my heritage in the arts allow me to cross boundaries of the past make connections to slow crafting, slow looking, slow being. My life and art become an ontological meditation on what has been, what is and what might be.