Old Fabric, New Life: How Quilts Heal Us
Family History
My Dad died in 2012. We didn't have a great relationship toward the end of his life. Those of you who have experience with addiction and/or toxic family members will probably know what I'm talking about.
My Dad experienced a lot of pain during his life. Some of it was buried so deep that he refused to talk about it. (And, if you knew him, you know that he was a talker.) At one time, his father sent him to military school. That's all I know: that my grandfather sent my dad to military school. No other details were forthcoming. But I have an interesting relic from that time: a laundry bag.
Dad's name was printed on the bag and the ink ran through it or something. I've held onto it for a number of years, and decided to finally use it.
SYNESTHESIA
I was invited to work with Factory Obscura to help launch their 2022-2023 installation SYNESTHESIA at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, OK. (The town where I was born, as it happens.) Factory Obscura gave me the opportunity to make some items exclusively for the show's popup shop.
SYNESTHESIA is inspired by the work of Olinka Hrdy, a little-known Oklahoma artist who was way ahead of her time.
The artists were given a specific color palette for inspiration. I made some fabric choices, including the canvas laundry bag.
Make Something Beautiful
Quilting is a form of alchemy. Raw materials are combined and transformed, creating new meaning and new possibilities. I took a thing that hurt Dad so bad he couldn't talk about it, and turned it into something beautiful.
The Fuchsia table runner is available in the Store; click here to purchase.
Commissions Are Open!
Are you interested in ordering a custom-made quilt like the one above? Check out sarahatlee.com/commissions for more information. Table runners are, if you will, on the table. So are placemats!
Let’s connect.
You can also find me on my website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Pinterest, and Linkedin.
All Things Fowl for A Hiding Place
All Things Fowl
Scratchboard, 10 x 8 inches, 2016 by Sarah Atlee. $330
For purchase inquiries, contact [Artspace] at Untitled at info@1ne3.org or by calling 405.815.9995
This post first appeared on my Patreon page.
A Hiding Place: Artists Respond to Poetry
"As children we all played hide and seek. We learned through that game: the stillness of hiding and the necessity of being found. Both are essential to living the communal life. this collaborative project expolores these themes through poetry and art. We have generated a creative conversation of the senses, of image and movement and language, so that what is hidden can be known."
- From the statement by curator and poet Jane Vincent Taylor
All Things Fowl is based on Jane Vincent Taylor's poem, "Being Little Catholic Girls." A snippet:
We lit candles. It was dangerous. Incense smoked out all things foul.
About the Imagery
The composition is based on traditional Byzantine icon paintings. Guillem Ramon-Poqui's book The Technique of Icon Painting (Amazon) is a great resource on this topic.
Who's that hen? The nun's habit and background images are inspired by the early Christian mystic and polymath, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). You can read about her remarkable life on Wikipedia.
Among her accomplishments, Hildegard invented an alphabet and language known as the Lingua Ignota. The little hula doll in the corner is using Hildegard's Litterae Ignotae to say "Aloha."
Scratchboard is a wonderful process of reductive drawing. It's all about what you take away. And the level of detail I can get with my x-acto knife is so pleasing.
A Hiding Place opens at [Artpsace] at Untitled on Thursday, July 28, and will be up through September 10. Visit the gallery website for more details.
Sunday In the Park With George: An Appreciation
Update: The videos linked from this post have been removed from YouTube. (Yay, lawyers! Happy now?) But the original production of Sunday is available on DVD from Netflix and Amazon.
Sunday In The Park With George is a musical play written by Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd) and James Lapine (Into the Woods). It's a largely fictional retelling of the life of French post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891). George is played by Mandy Patinkin. Bernadette Peters plays the other principal character: in Act I, the model Dot, and in Act II, the elderly Marie. Other standout cast members include Brent Spiner, Charles Kimbrough, Barbara Bryne, and Dana Ivey.
(For those of you who saw the word "musical" and felt your stomach turn, let me be the first to say that Sunday is not that kind of musical. No chorus lines, no men in tights, no 'nother op'ning for a-nother show.)
The bulk of the story takes place during 1884-86, the years in which Seurat worked on his masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Seurat's light burned very brightly, but not for long. He created some of the most important works of modern art and died suddenly at the age of 31. La Grande Jatte hangs in the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I first saw Sunday In The Park With George in 1986, the summer after I finished kindergarten. My Dad and I were vacationing with his parents on the lovely Vancouver Island in British Columbia. One evening in our cabin, Dad and I were watching television when we came across Sunday showing on PBS.
Video removed.
Sunday excerpt via YouTube, about 8 minutes.
I was immediately enraptured by Bernadette Peters "concentrating" out of that heavy dress (a visual metaphor for letting her mind wander). Being five, I didn't sit through much more of the show after that. (I recall we flipped channels between Sunday and Grease.)
When we got home to Albuquerque after our trip, I was so excited to tell my Mom about the lady that thought her way out of her dress. Not only had my clever Mom seen the broadcast, she'd taped it. Over the next ten years I watched that tape so much I nearly wore it out.
Act I of the play takes place during the two years that Seurat spent painting La Grande Jatte. The principal state setting of Act I mirrors the composition of the painting, presenting the story as it unfolds in the mind of the artist. In the opening sequence, scenery slides into place as George sketches their shapes on his pad. (When he says , "Hmm. I hate this tree," one tree is pulled back into the wings. Another character soon wonders where "our tree" has gone.) All of the play's characters, except for the artist, appear in the painting. Their relationships unfold as the painting's composition falls into place. The costumes shimmer with subtle color variations, recalling Seurat's pointillist technique.
Video removed.
Sunday excerpt, "Color and Light," via YouTube, about 9 minutes.
Act II finds Seurat's great-grandson, also named George (also played by Mandy Patinkin), presenting his own work of art to a contemporary audience. Afterward George takes us through a (stereo-) typical art gallery reception. All the familiar faces are there: the critic, the family members, the fellow and/or rival artists, the collaborators, the museum board member, the guy who doesn't get it, the art administrator and his colleague who comes to court the artist to his next opportunity. Having now seen Sunday as a professional artist, this is the scene that resonates most with me. Just as the George of Act I constructed his painting one dot at a time, the present-day George explains that "The art of making art / is putting it together / bit by bit."
Video removed.
Sunday excerpt, "Putting it Together," via YouTube, about 15 minutes.
A recurring theme in Sunday is the loneliness of an artist's life. Most creative work requires prolonged retreat into one's interior. We see George alienate others, accidentally or intentionally, resulting in isolation. George's art is a break from convention, widening the gap between his community and himself. This separation from others may allow him the objectivity to comment on society through his art, but his solitude is not a happy one. He tells himself, "Connect, George. Connect."
Sunday is available on DVD from Netflix and for purchase from PBS or Amazon.