controversy - Quilters Club of America

controversy
I have yet to read an article in any quilting magazine that addresses the controversial
issue of art quilt content and how far is “too far” in the genre. But Quilter’s Home
will! Heck, I had my hand slapped for planning to have two shirtless musclemen in
black slacks walk my quilts around my mega-sold-out lecture at a Des Moines event
because showing “flesh” was considered “over the top!”
The truth is that controversial quilt themes have been causing a firestorm in
quilt shows across the nation and in untold numbers of Internet quilting chat rooms.
The angst is further fueled by frustrated quilt artists, who cry out that their “art” and
“free speech” are being blocked by what they view as conservative quilt guild boards
and venue sponsors who appear all too happy to become the morality police, the
ultimate standard bearer in all things patchwork.
If you can believe it, even I was turned off by the overt impropriety of some
of the quilt images sent to my office. But who am I to judge? Luckily for Kitty Wells,
Nikki Giovanni, Doris Day, Isadora Duncan, Lillian Hellman, Daria Fand, Carol Rama,
Sylvia Plath, Maqbool Fida Husain, Harper Lee and a gazillion other banned entertainers, activists, writers, and artists, they were not quilters. xoxom
COLOR BALANCE.
Helping Hand by
Mary Beth Bellah
features penis designed
fabric that resulted in
this quilt being banned
from a solo exhibit of
her work.
Shocking
quilts
How far is too far?
By Jake Finch
24 Quilter’s Home March 2009
The Jesus Get Your Gun
quilt by Shawn Quinlan
was met with shock and
gasps from Pittsburgh
quilt show attendees
where it was exhibited.
S
ex can sell anything, honey!
(I mean, have you seen a Bratz doll
lately?) Even with quilts, a smatter
of shock can spice up a fiber art
statement or wake up a quilt show
exhibit. “T” and “A” aren’t just
describing patchwork arrangements,
that’s for sure.
Susan Sanborn North is
one quilter who knows all about
shock value.
The Troy, Mich., art quilter
regularly exhibits her erotic-themed
quilts at art galleries, yet — perish the
thought! — she would never let them
hang in a national quilt show because
she knows most folks would consider
her work X-rated.
But when her online community, QuiltArt, debated about how a
slew of cornflower quilts really did
nothing but hang there and look pretty, Susan issued a challenge that took
thought-provoking quilts in a, well,
different direction.
The result was the Yoni
Challenge. (www.quiltart.com/
challenges/yoni/index.html) Yoni is the
Sanskrit word that, loosely translated,
refers to a woman’s genitalia. Quilts
for the challenge had to depict or
represent yoni, be pro-feminist and
positive in nature. Thirty quilts and
one quilted box (called the Hot Box,
and we’re not kidding) were turned
in, including quilts made by men and
women, and representing graphic
and abstract images of vaginas, vulvas
and other parts of female anatomy
(finally, a use for Angelina fiber!).
Quilter’s Home March 2009
25
A provocative political
and social statement is
highlighted in the
Southern Heritage/
Southern Shame quilt by
Mississippi quilt artist,
Gwendolyn Magee.
“I remember thinking
QuiltArt never does this,” Susan says.
“That was the year (2006) when
everyone was making a cornflower
quilt. I thought, ‘Those are so banal.
They’re pretty, but there’s no meaning to it at all.’ Many of the Yoni quilts
had deep meaning for the quiltmaker.”
For obvious reasons, and
despite the popular and critical success of plays such as The Vagina
Monologues, the Yoni quilts were never
exhibited at any quilt show — major
or minor — but instead were “exhibited” online. The in-your-face nature
of the quilts, (some were too graphic
even for Mark to dare publish!) would
definitely curl a few toes at your standard venue.
Of course, many quilts displayed at local and national shows
do intentionally poke a stick at the
sensibilities of some viewers. Quilts
don’t have to live on a bed, you know,
so a growing number of fiber artists
are using their textile-tweaking skills
to make statements. What’s said ain’t
always pretty.
Some quilts are blatantly sexual. Others include provocative political and religious statements and outright violent depictions. Any thought
or emotion that can be slapped into
paint or scribbled in text can certainly
be worked into cloth. It’s all about the
maker, baby!
Shawn Quinlan is one such
master at making strong statements
in fiber. The Pittsburgh, Pa., quilter is
also a television news cameraman, and
26 Quilter’s Home March 2009
he uses quilting as therapy for dealing
with the troubling images he films
each day.
“I’m always editing something
that gets my goat and I go home and
vent my frustration. I don’t set out to
be shocking,” he says.
His out-there quilts are often
serious criticisms against a hypocritical
society, but he says he does try to stitch
in some humor, too.
In the “Secret Gay Quilt”
(see Shawn’s Web site at www.shawnquinlan.com/GAYQUILT.html), a large
penis plays the leading role in a
collage quilt whose images make fun
of gay stereotypes.
In Jesus Get Your Gun,”
Shawn responded to a National Rifle
Association convention he filmed,
where someone was holding up a
cardboard sign saying, “Jesus for
Guns.” That image struck him as
comical.
So he found one fabric with
an image of Jesus and another fabric
with an image of John Wayne,
swapped heads and ended up with a
True Grit cowboy version of Jesus
(halo, too) holding a rifle. The resulting quilt was shown at a local show, to
great gasps from some show-goers.
Another quilt that’s gotten
Shawn some attention is, The Quilt
That Won’t Comfort. Created in the
aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attack,
the quilt shows Jesus and his apostles
at the Last Supper, surrounded by
images of bomber jets, anthrax
references, skulls, heroin poppies
and anything else Shawn felt he was
over-absorbing from the news in the
months following the attacks.
“Being at work that day —
and months and months after it —
and how it was in the news all of the
time (was too much.) I just stuck in
everything that was happening. That
was definitely getting out nervous
anxiety. That mostly is what my quilting is, getting out the anxiety.”
Shawn’s quilts usually are
accepted at quilt shows, a fact that
always pleasantly surprises him.
Not every show likes to walk
the razor’s edge, though. Quilt artist
Mary Beth Bellah of Charlottesville,
Va., had an interesting rejection for
one of her quilts, which often hang
in galleries and special exhibits. She
has a fascination with hands and
communication.
“Most of my work is conversation. It’s interactive with the individual. I really want to say something,”
she says.
Well, Mary Beth was given
a fat quarter of blue fabric printed
with little bitty line drawings of
penises and sperm. It was fairly subtle
and she decided to use the fabric in
one of her dimensional quilts featuring hands.
She called the quilt (ahem),
Helping Hand, and says that she was
inspired by the combination of the
fabric and the deluge of Viagra ads
she was seeing at the time.
When Helping Hand was
included in a solo exhibit of her
work at a Charlottesville hospital,
Mary Beth says she laughed when she
was told the quilt was too risqué for
public viewing.
“It seemed to me that a hospital was the perfect environment for
this work!” she says. “It really should
eventually belong in some doctor’s
office where their treatment specialty
is erectile dysfunction issues.”
The story doesn’t end here,
folks. A few days after the show, the
curator called Mary Beth and told her
the censored quilt — which had been
stored in his office closet — had had
numerous private viewings when word
got out. A steady parade of people
apparently made excuses to visit his
office just to see the banned quilt.
“I am betting more attention
was paid this quilt, stuffed in a closet,
than to all my other ones on display,”
she says.
How far is too far (or too
boring) when it comes to shocking
quilts? I mean, a bare tushy or a
bleeding body start looking pretty tame
when you see ‘em all over the place.
Stevii Graves, an author and
juror for international quilt shows,
says in general that large venues are
open to almost all quilts, as long as
they have a little class.
“It’s got to have some taste
to it. Political quilts are fine, but you
don’t want to see a sitting president
being assassinated. It depends on how
graphic the depiction is,” she says.
Still, Stevii says, most show organizers
don’t want to discourage people from
coming to their shows.
“Their livelihood depends
on the number of people coming
through the door,” she says.
Martha Sielman, executive
director of the Studio Art Quilt
Associates, an organization supporting
art quilters, says sometimes the quilts
she thinks might be censored are not,
and other times quilts she doesn’t
think of as over-the-top cause a kerfuffle.
“When does it become erotic?
I don’t know the answer to that,” she says.
Charlotte Warr Anderson,
whose work has graced quilt shows for
years, also serves as president of the
International Quilt Association. The
IQA manages the judged quilt show
held at the Houston International
Quilt Festival every year.
Charlotte says IQA jurors are
sensitive to a quilt’s content, but their
general attitude is to avoid censorship.
The issue came up a few years ago
when a quilt that the IQA board
thought was in poor taste was submitted for the Houston show.
“We all decided we didn’t
want to be involved in censorship. So
we decided to send it to the jury and
the jury didn’t select it. I don’t think
it was content. It was more a quality
issue. But it just was not an attractive
quilt at all. I feel like you can deal
with tough subject matter in a tasteful
way,” Charlotte says.
Determining what makes
a quilt vulgar or offensive can be
difficult even for the quilt maker.
Two years ago at Houston, Randall
Cook was surprised when his quilt,
I Remain was accepted. The 55-inchby-81-inch depiction of the rippling
backside view of a naked man caused
quite a stir.
“I had never seen anything
like that get in before,” Randall says.
“I was very concerned that it wouldn’t
even be accepted. I submitted it anyway. It was a graphic piece, but it wasn’t
showing anything obscene.”
Randall loved eavesdropping
on visitors’ comments about his quilt.
“There were a lot of comments like, ‘I’ve never seen anything
like this here before.’ I think there
were probably more interesting comments when I was there. It prompted
people to stay and ask questions …
Sometimes people would round the
corner and say, ‘Oh there it is. The
red naked butt.’”
This year, Randall submitted
two quilts also depicting nude men.
Reflection and Escape were received
by viewers with a little less surprise,
he thinks.
Sometimes a quilt’s shock
value doesn’t come from titillating
images, but from a viewer’s unexpected
or emotional response to the quilt’s
subject. Most people might be able
to view the work with nary a pang,
but someone connects with something
in the image and is put off or disturbed.
Quilt book author Sue
Astroth remembers walking through
an exhibit of Alzheimer’s quilts at a
major show and having trouble
absorbing the images presented.
top
Randall Cook’s
sexually charged I Remain
quilt, hung in the
International Quilt
Festival show in Houston
in 2007 much to his
surprise and the shock
of many attendees.
“I was very concerned
that it wouldn’t even
be accepted,” he says.
bottom
Gayle McKay’s
Uncertainty quilt,
represents the doubt
that intrudes on her
in her day to day life.
She writes,“Uncertainty
makes me want to
crawl in a hole. Crawl
back to my Mother’s
arms.Crawl back inside
her Yoni. Mother’s love
is the one constant in
life.…My Mother is
gone. Uncertainty is the
one constant in life.”
Quilter’s Home March 2009
27
God of Our Silent Tears 1
quilt by Mississippi quilt
artist, Gwendolyn Magee
(www.gwenmagee.com), may
make some viewers uncomfortable,
but “is designed as a forum for
dialogue and communication.”
“The people pouring their
souls out to you — sometimes it’s too
much! Quilts can move you. While I
know it was all done out of love, it was
still more than I could continue to
walk through and watch, because no
matter what, I could relate it to some
personal situation. It didn’t take me to
a good next place. It left me feeling
uncomfortable and itching,” she says.
A little itch can be a good
thing, though. Gayle McKay, one of
the participants in the Yoni Challenge,
says dealing with a controversial
theme really pushed her artistically.
“I’m pretty conservative and
I didn’t want it to be in-your-face in
any vulgar way, or my perception of
vulgar,” says the Sandy Lake, Pa.,
resident.
Spurred by the death of her
mother that year, Gayle created an
image of a child being born, which
she named Uncertainty. The graphic
image is sweet and interesting, not crude.
“My intent as an artist is never
to make you walk away. My intent is
more to make you think and suck you
in,” she says.
The debate over “how far is
too far” in quilting may have no conclusion. I mean, defining “shocking”
is a little like defining “red.” There
are just so many shades! You have to
pick the one that works for you. Yet
as the rapidly growing quilt artist
community continues to pump out
amazing, cutting-edge sexual, political, religious and social commentary
in fabric, hopefully we can look forward to quilt shows where a gaggle
of “I-know-what’s-best-zillas” won’t
be making that decision for you or
narcissistically believing what they
allow you to see is aQHpersonal reflection on them.
QH
28 Quilter’s Home March 2009
The 2004 banning of The L
Word quilt by Diane Johns
from the DeKalb (IL) County
Quilters Guild show, received
widespread local and national
attention. Banned for its use
of the Sapphic empowering
words ’lesbian,’ ‘diesel dyke’
and ‘butch,’ an entry on a
salon.com blog from that year
reads “Quilts have traditionally been the way that women
could express political opinions. “The L Word” quilt can
be seen as a serious piece
about an important social
issue.....and the Guild
wimped out. From their decision, the DeKalb County
Quilters Guild has shown
that they believe that quilts
should just be for decoration.”