cARTography Quilts: Traveling with a needle and thread
It all started with Little House on the Prairie.
As a child, I was a voracious reader. Like many children, I used literature as an escape from reality and as a means to craft a rich fantasy life. I have always had my head in the clouds, easily shifting from one reality to another.
I meandered from genre to genre--biography, historical fiction, fantasy, anything I could get my hands on--always eager to take in new locations, diverse personalities, and fantastical situations. The settings were the most important characters in my developing mind. I saw prairies of the Midwest, mountains in Germany, islands afloat on a cruel and mysterious sea with my mind's eye. My actual world was so small, encompassing such a small slice of all that was out there. Northern Pennsylvania and Southern/Central New York were all that I knew. I had the urge to explore as a wee six year-old and the feeling has never abated. The desire to have new ground under my feet and new sights before my eyes has only grown and deepened as I have aged.
In order to feed my passion for new locales, I have always been enamored of aerial photography. I often sat for hours with an antique atlas in my lap as a girl.The birds' eye view reveals features often unnoticed hidden from the "street view." Images and maps stir my creativity and inspire me to pick up a pencil to sketch out a potential design.
While I may not make have the ability or opportunity to travel to every continent, my mind is still free to travel and explore. My soul is feed with a needle and thread, so I will be combining my three passions to design a quilt representing each continent. I am also designing a series of smaller scale studies that highlight specific geographic or atmospheric attributes.
As I travel the world, my designs will continue to evolve and mature. I look forward to the journey. Thank you for traveling with me.
As a child, I was a voracious reader. Like many children, I used literature as an escape from reality and as a means to craft a rich fantasy life. I have always had my head in the clouds, easily shifting from one reality to another.
I meandered from genre to genre--biography, historical fiction, fantasy, anything I could get my hands on--always eager to take in new locations, diverse personalities, and fantastical situations. The settings were the most important characters in my developing mind. I saw prairies of the Midwest, mountains in Germany, islands afloat on a cruel and mysterious sea with my mind's eye. My actual world was so small, encompassing such a small slice of all that was out there. Northern Pennsylvania and Southern/Central New York were all that I knew. I had the urge to explore as a wee six year-old and the feeling has never abated. The desire to have new ground under my feet and new sights before my eyes has only grown and deepened as I have aged.
In order to feed my passion for new locales, I have always been enamored of aerial photography. I often sat for hours with an antique atlas in my lap as a girl.The birds' eye view reveals features often unnoticed hidden from the "street view." Images and maps stir my creativity and inspire me to pick up a pencil to sketch out a potential design.
While I may not make have the ability or opportunity to travel to every continent, my mind is still free to travel and explore. My soul is feed with a needle and thread, so I will be combining my three passions to design a quilt representing each continent. I am also designing a series of smaller scale studies that highlight specific geographic or atmospheric attributes.
As I travel the world, my designs will continue to evolve and mature. I look forward to the journey. Thank you for traveling with me.
You are a talented writer, artist and so much more, I am so proud of you, daughter
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