An artwork titled Missive from the Piecework Series, in which mailing envelopes are used to create intricate paper quilts based on traditional and historical American quilt patterns.

Missive, 2010

 
 
 
 
An artwork titled Delivery from the Piecework Series, in which mailing envelopes are used to create intricate paper quilts based on traditional and historical American quilt patterns.

Delivery, 2011

 
 
 

 

Piecework combines aspects of two outmoded technologies, used mailing envelopes and traditional American quilt-making, to create large scale works on paper. The project begins to integrate the sentimentality and rational structures which coexist in some of my earlier work.  

Intimate handiwork and geometric precision are both present in traditional American quilt-making patterns. My use of those patterns references homemaking, childhood, the bedroom (romance, etc), but also reticence and privacy (covering), while embodying a geometric abstraction that pre-dates the 20th-century painting practice of the same name.

Mailing envelopes, like traditional quilts, exist at a blunt intersection between communication, decoration, and privacy. Their contents are often banal yet fiercely guarded. Private thoughts mingle with business records and utility bills. The security patterns that sometimes hide an envelope's contents bear a surprising similarity to the printed fabrics used in quilt-making and sometimes reference the woven nature of fabric itself. The bright colors and privacy strategies of these envelopes, now increasingly replaced by digital transactions, disguise their contents while hoping to distract us with references to a comforting domestic past. 

In researching Piecework I found that other visual strategies present in modern and contemporary art, including abstraction itself, had been put to use much earlier in American patchwork quilt-making. Collage, color fields, the grid, optical devices, and the graphic use of language are all there to find. I decided in some cases to refer to the strategies of both painting and quilt-making. 

Later I found myself captivated by particular historical quilts. In these cases I felt compelled to step outside of the flow of the larger project to see what I could do. Based strictly on the catalog reproductions I found in my research, and working within the limits of my chosen set of materials, I decided to approach these originals as scores or sets of instructions. Each 19th-century quilt would dictate a new version with both an attempt at mimicry and the inevitable failure of that attempt built into its fundamental conception.

Learn more about Piecework, and see working materials and drawings connected to this effort through the project’s Related Material.

All Image Credits: Tom Powel Imaging

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