I made “Maelstrom” for a 2009 exhibition with fellow members of a small group of Australian and New Zealand group of art quilters. Themed ” A Change in The Weather” the works on global climate change opened in Wellington NZ in June 2009, and travelled to Christchurch NZ before crossing to Australia where it was seen in several places after that.
My inspiration was the cartographic symbol used by weather forecasters to represent on maps the location and progress of the most violent storms – cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes in their relevant regions of Oceania, Asia and the Americas. The Earth is represented by the very dark green base fabric. The huge variety of colours translates into the gathering swirl of information, problems and expert opinions on what needs to be done to help the world deal with and adapt to the changes in climate now taking place at an accelerating rate. Red is a colour warning of danger, hence my choice for the hand quilted grid pattern. Interestingly, this statement written in 2009 could have been written today, suggesting change has been slow around the issue of climate change, according to reports from the recently concluded COP30 conference.
I’ve always loved this piece, even though I always felt it was an awkward shape we all had to make our pieces to, but think that was because some limitation of the display area available to that number of wall quilts in the gallery with which our organiser arranged the show. So in the next few days I’m going to re-size it to 50cm x 50cm, and mount it on a white canvas stretcher, and include it in my upcoming January 2026 exhibition. I personally love things mounted on white or painted stretchers without further framing, but with a standard size a new owner has the option to choose a frame that goes with their particular decor style or that matches a colour in their own couch, so to speak 🙂