For many years, taking in the International Quilt Festival was as much a part of my autumn traditions as handing out candy on Halloween. Sometimes I was lucky enough to score a Preview ticket so that I could check out the vendors and the exhibition the night before the official opening. After my parents moved to Texas, my mother and I often enjoyed the exhibition together.
The quilts that are juried into this international exhibition are exquisite examples of fiber art. As beautiful as the quilts are, I was equally impressed by the underside of the quilts, which were often stunning works in their own right. I took this attention to the unseen detail to heart when I worked on my next fiber art piece, which was a collaborative project with a poet.
The theme for this collaboration was SPACE. For our project, we chose Hiding SPACE, which explored how we so often hide (or express) our thoughts with emojis. For the front of the piece, I printed one of my lumen prints on canvas and then embroidered over the image. Hidden in the embroidery, I wove outlines of three commonly-used emojis. For the back, I covered the canvas and stretchers with fabric printed with a design based on the original image.
I can’t share the two sides of the visual portion of Hiding SPACE without sharing the literary portion of this project–a poem composed by my talented friend, Ann.
Hiding Space
Ann Reisfeld Boutté
Why bother with
vocabulary, syntax, linguistics?
Why struggle with
complex construction
to convey nuances
of thought and meaning,
shades of angst
and ardor, degrees of loss,
pain and despair?
Or strive for humor,
levity and whimsy
all delivered with
the power of
music and grace?
When you can
summon emojis,
yellow circlets
punctuated by lines,
dots and squiggles,
insert, embed or thrust
them into the text,
launch them into cyberspace,
sit back and hide
in the enigma.