To the top of my imagination rose an “end of bolt” piece I had been compelled to purchase last summer from a home design workshop in Rhode Island. This fabric was calling my name. It has a creamy background with machine embroidered fish, starfish, and shells scattered on the sand. After cutting out several fish and shells, I went hunting for their environment among the treasures in my stash. Many fabrics auditioned, but only eight made the finals. I began to see this project as a banner with horizontal slabs of fabric studded with sea creatures—a cross section of sea floor.
I placed the last hand stitch almost exactly two months from the first cut. The banner is called “Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” Without the burlap sack that once held organic coffee beans, it would have been called simply, “Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” The word “organic” printed in large block letters hints at the ironic tone that evolved along with the project. In addition to composing the piece with hunks of odd fabrics, I added—along with the fish and shells—scraps of other fabric images appliqued on each of the eight layers of sedimentation. For example, a small Santa Claus sank to the bottom layer. Images of planets, cars, lizards, and a kitten settled down through the sediment and stuck at various levels. I selected a backing fabric chosen by a child’s bright imagination long-ago. Each layer of sediment was machine quilted with different thread and in a different pattern as if time—not color and texture—separated them. The binding is a tale of sedimentation itself with various hues and patterns following one another.
As I was machine quilting the heavy banner, I felt a strong desire to add small objects to raise the sedimentation of human detritus above the nearly-flat surface of the quilted banner. Two dimensions were not enough to express the three-dimensional scene I envisioned. In about an hour, I collected from closets, attic, shelves, and drawers what I needed: lanyard plastic tangled with beads, tiny lego blocks, shark teeth, lace, bits of Christmas tinsel, pink buttons, small metal clips and bolts, and a plastic horse and rider. Junk? We humans are really good at it!
Once the binding was hand sewn, I moved my tax documents off the dining room table and spread out the banner to place and attach the objects. My collection was excessive and only about half of the items made it onto this piece. I am not sure if the placements are fanciful or cynical; maybe a bit of both. A red plastic cowboy about the size of a seam allowance now stands astride the planet Saturn with a nano-revolver in each hand. Is this humor, or is it a commentary on aggressively competitive space exploration? Fresh water fish leap to consume bright bits of trash, and a sardonic starfish sports a nautical button in the dead-center of its body. Not far off, a disembodied head smiles blandly on the multilayered scene. My (least) favorite piece might be the yellow plastic band that actually tripped me up on a sidewalk in New Jersey recently. I took a five-point dive and I bear the scars of this object’s innocuous/hazardous/careless placement in my path. The same could happen to any fish or mammal or bird anywhere on earth; there is yellow plastic enough for all! The banner is very personal, not at all pretty, quite heavy, and possibly unique in the history of the planet. My gremlin desperately wants me to hang it in the laundry room and forget about it.
Last fall I created another “environmental art” piece—a banner inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I wanted to suggest devastation with a theme of broken glass and destructive winds. I cut heavy brown paper shapes and then found fabrics to bring color to the glass and menacing heft to the wind. I gave this piece to my son, an environmental engineer who lives in New Jersey. He hung it in the third floor hallway right outside the room where I sleep when I visit. I love it, but my gremlin thinks I am the only one.
If you knew my father and mother, you would recognize elements of their crafts in my work. He was an upholsterer and she grew up in the garment industry in New York City. I’ve lived my whole life around sewing machines, fabric, paper patterns, and big shears. Buttons were the best rainy Saturday amusement we could imagine! As they started a family, my mother continued to sew clothing for me and my sister, until we were old enough to create our own dresses and suits and gowns. My father found recreation and relaxation from upholstery by collecting shells, driftwood, and leaves and creating unique objects with them: vases, baskets, mirror frames, ornamental magnets, and small sculptures. He was a master of improvisation! We often laughed at my father’s “projects,” as he called them, and this has been fuel for my gremlin. If I laughed at what he made, I deserve the same for my “projects,” don’t I? I see the similarities now, and I regret not appreciating his art more fully while he was alive. The creative inheritance and skills I learned from both my parents are alive in my work. Perhaps I am not improvising at all, but simply living and creating in the family tradition.
