When I was in Art School I spent a lot of time in the art section of the library pulling one book after another off the shelves, discovering artists. In this way I discovered Frank Stella. He's an American painter, born in New England in 1936. When I discovered him around 1974, I was entranced. If you do a Google images search on Stella, you will be presented with hundreds of images of his work. You can see some other images here, here, here, here, and here.
This painting, which is ten feet in diameter (3.048 m) now hangs in my local art museum, the Currier Museum of Art.
So what does this have to do with quiltmaking, aside from the fact that I'm always harping on you to get out to your local art museum regularly and look around?
Go on over to the sidebar and read the "About Me" section. Notice how I write "I love working with abstract shapes and color," and "I love the graphic quality of quilts." Now go back and look at Sinjerli, Variation 1 (the painting).
Yeah.
Because I am always interested in how we get from A to B, I wondered if what it is I like best about quilts was directly influenced by Frank Stella's paintings, since I didn't start making quilts until 1977.
That's a very interesting idea. I am going to have to think about it.
3 comments:
i loved frank stella in college, years before i became a quilter. makes so much sense now!
Very striking . . . wish I had taken MORE art classes (and less science that I didn't like)
I always loved the Impressionist Art period when I took Art History in college. When I discovered that Gai Perry's had applied the style to quilting with her "Impressionist Quilts" techniques, I knew quilting was something I had to try.
And I love that now quilts = art as much as utility or comfort.
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