Art Quilt Rant or Profoundly Annoying Discourse

Stop here if you are in a good mood and don't want to think about anything but fun today. Diane
and Deborah have brought up a great discussion based on Diane's teapot design. There have been great comments posted on what works for one artist also working for another. Deborah questioned whether feed/flour sacks were really art quilts even though she agrees they are art. Elle mentioned a shark trapped in lucite....yikes! Great discussions but here comes the rant so you can get outta here if you need.

We are all working so hard to be different that we are reinventing the wheel. What ever happened to the idea that a quilt should be quilt-like regardless of the imagery. Don't get me wrong I am all for avant garde but remember today's avant garde is tomorrow's ho-hum. It is timeless, classic work that holds up through the years. Currently, we are all into surface design which is perfectly wonderful by me but it is still cloth used as a quilt. Surface design is just another approach to putting imagery in cloth...another way to express our voice. Next week it will be something else that we have discovered to create imagery....but we are still going to be making quilts.

There is a big movement afoot in the art quilt world for us to find a different name to call our work so it will sell better....inference being nobody would want to buy a quilt...it is so old-fashioned and associated with women's domestic work. Huh? So you are telling me to call this something else and the viewer walks into the gallery and says,"Isn't that a quilt?" Oh no, it is fiber something fill in the blank. Folks, this is simply a marketing technique not a way to elevate the work. The work doesn't need to be elevated...it needs to be accepted....validated. To change the name is to say we aren't sure what we are doing is art so we need to call it something to make it art. Blast it all, who cares what the media is if it is good work.

Why are we trying so hard to move away from a perfectly acceptable art form. For my money, you are misleading the viewer if you call a quilt some fancy name and they can obviously see that it is a quilt. Just to drop some names: Jane Sassaman, Ruth McDowell, Velda Newman and so many others that there isn't enough room, are all quiltmakers. They, and the others some of who are members of our gang, make no pretense that the work isn't a quilt.

Proudly, I proclaim I am a quiltmaker. It is my media and passion of choice. How I do it, whether with line drawings, photoshop, monoprint or rust....it is a quilt...and by golly, that's what they will always be.

Boy, what a rant...but embrace your passion....don't apologize for it. Use whatever you need to get it done....but to quote Nike, "Just Do It."

Stepping off the podium, to go make some quilts.