Quilts and imaginary landscapes
Plastic Quilts
My love affair with plastic quilts (later, laminated quilts) started in 1973, because Nixon resigned. Bill Martensen, David Savage and I had a company called the Tasteful T-shirt Co. We made anti-Nixon tees that we advertised in Rolling Stone and High Times, which were exciting new publications. We made a cool label that was a rose but also looked like someone flipping you off. We bought a heat sealer, not for freezing corn, but for shipping our t-shirts in black plastic bags.
We got orders, but Nixon resigned too soon. Our high hopes of fame on Johnny Carson came to nothing. But we still had the roll of the black bag stuff and the heat sealer from the Tasteful T-shirt Co. In 1975, all packaging made of plastic was suddenly printed in red, white and blue because the bicentennial was coming up. I realized I could use the heat sealer instead of a sewing machine to put plastic together. The potential to make new art was irresistible! I started collecting plastic from dumpsters and having stores save packaging for me. I made an all-plastic quilt, the Bicentennial Quilt,
and I entered it into a serious bicentennial quilt show. They didn’t quite know what to do with it but they gave it an honorary mention for “creativity”. That was the beginning of making things out of discarded plastic.
After that, I spent several years constructing quilts from plastic bags and wrappers.
Super Market- from around 1978, is about the big change to plastic wrapping. It seemed that suddenly everything on the shelf-if it wasn’t in a can-was newly wrapped in plastic with graphic branding. The quilt is a flat representation of the super market. The black squares are the aisles.
I made A Rose Window for the Mustang Ranch quilt out of the packaging for stockings, the kind that has a cut-out showing a leg shaped color cut-out. Squared up like desert trailers…
Security Envelope Quilts
Thinking like a pioneer woman, I looked around my tiny, covered-wagon shaped house boat for surplus materials I could use to make art. I noticed the piles of security envelopes from my many bills. It turns out there are hundreds of patterns! All my friends sent me envelopes. I began using the printed patterns to fabricate laminated paper quilts. Here is a close up of one using a traditional pattern, but made entirely of security envelopes.
I made Maze for a Charmer in 2003. It is an homage to African American quilters, who designed quilt patterns which would confuse evil spirits.
Hawaiians Do It Differently is an homage to island quilters, who traditionally use two colors in their quilts. The cut-outs on top are based on flower shapes.
The Space Elevator
I read about the Space Elevator in the NY Times around 2003. It was an Arthur Clarke sci-fi story that a scientist decided to try and make real. It seemed like such a fantastic idea; a nano-tube technology elevator to carry objects into space without rockets. My studio mate Susan Lockwood had rented space from someone working on both perpetual motion and nanotechnology, so that real-life connection really fueled my interest.
I started to imagine the landscape looking back at the earth from various elevations or platforms along the elevator. The large laminated security envelope quilts imagine various views from the Space Elevator. Engineers is the view enjoyed by the engineers as they take a break and talk about fishing.
Pulsating and Exploding Stars was STOLEN from our studio at 619 Western Ave in Seattle on Christmas Eve, along with paintings by Susan Lockwood. If you see it-drop a dime!
