A pet peeve rant coming up today !

M & J’s Quilt, 1999.

There is far more to any kind of art than expertise in a technique and the use of particular materials.  Very few gifted individuals have a natural sense of good design and colour usage.  The rest of us need to put in time and effort making our compositions work, perhaps studying along the way from people who can teach us more about the theoretical aspects of design.

Frequently, a quiltmaker discovers or learns a new technique, well new to that person, anyway, and, because it differs markedly from the more traditional ways of making quilted textiles they’ve been using up to this time, they get carried away with how they’re now ‘making art quilts’.  Then, since the internet does allow some of us to be very clever, the instant expert will often choose to go online with photographs or a short video tutorial on this marvellous technique they’ve recently discovered. Traditionally, quiltmakers have shared knowledge, advice and tips generously, but when a tutorial purports to teach how easy it is to ‘make an art quilt’ I feel a bit sad for someone who will view it, and then think they, too, can so easily be making an ‘art quilt’ just like it without spending time on matters of design and colour theory.

Dropping a few modern art names into a blog post about one’s latest completed project doesn’t elevate the quality of the art, either, and one of my very pet peeves is those who title their works to include well known names, and/or sprinkle their artist statements with references of influences by popular favourites such as Klimt, Mondrian, Picasso, Rothko, Matisse et al – in sort of self-glorifying critique mode, and this kind of thing is not confined to quilt makers, either.

The Gees Bend Quilters are very often referenced by modern quiltmakers once they adopt the improvisational style of piecing that characterises these and other historic Afro American textiles and similar textiles from other countries; and what people often mean by it is that they’re now using improvisational cutting and piecing styles instead of putting together precise geometric patterns.  I’m totally in love with this very free way of working, and have been piecing improvisationally/freehand/template-free since the early ’90’s,  but I would never dream of describing my work as anything  ‘like Gees Bend quilts’.

It bothers me every time I come across it.