Night Sky 1994
wool, appliqué, pieced and quilted, 260 x 240cm (102 X 94”)

The appliqué shapes in “Night Sky” originate in drawings made by grade two students at Banff Elementary School. Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Darkness Music” accompanied this quilt. The two-line poem reads:“The days grow and the stars cross over/ And my wild bed turns slowly among the stars.”

A Bed is a Boat 1996
installation view, Galerie Oboro

Adam’s Boat 1995
wool, appliqué and quilted, 245 x 243cm (96 x 95”)

Read from the epilogue of Ornament: A Modern Perspective, by James Trilling, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2003, 228-231.

Dark Star 1995
wool, pieced and quilted, 100 x 95cm (39 x 37”)

This work is pieced, with a central eight-point star motif. The quilted lines comprise an asymmetrical detail from a Welsh marriage quilt made by Rosamund Lewis in 1885. The asymmetricality calls into question, however subtly, the authority of the star.

Mouthful of Stones 1996
wool, appliqué and quilted, 224 x 220cm (88” x 87”)

Afflicted with a severe speech impediment, the classical Athenian orator Demosthenes, would fill his mouth with pebbles and practice speaking in order to cure his stutter. The 20th-Century poet Paul Celan, considered a mouthful of stones as a metaphor for all poetic utterance.

Moon Resting 1994
wool, appliqué and quilted, 160 x 140cm (63 x 55”)

A Bed is a Boat 1996
Installation view, Galerie Oboro

A Bed is a Boat 1996
Installation view, Galerie Oboro

Pelt 1996
wool, appliqué and quilted, 223 x 223cm (88 X 88”)

The appliqué shape on this quilt equivocates between the image of an animal skin and an F-15 fighter jet. The lines of quilting echo the patterning on the clothing, depicting furs, or feathers, or even quilting, of a 5,000 year-old alabaster carving of a Sumerian Worshipper.