One thing led to another, and there I was at the Museum of Modern Art, entranced in front of a wall of fabric panels, pages from a book by Louise Bourgeois. A book! A fabric book! And by Louise Bourgeois - the spider lady! Made from bits and pieces of her clothes, her linens, the embroidered napkins she received as wedding presents. Each panel with a line of button-holes along the left margin, where straps thread through to bind the pages of the book.
It's silly to walk into MoMA and say "I can do that" - because I can't. But quilting, incorporating bits of this dress and that shirt into a new object, isn't far off. Bourgeois put together her fabric scraps into a textured, sculptural, graphic book - I can capture my memories otherly. But the book? That book inspired lust.
If you'd like to see more pictures of it, the Peter Blum gallery has a slideshow of all the pages - and as you click through, you see the facing page, i.e. the back of the preceding page, where the stitching shows through. A blog post by Joanne Mattera has some other photos, including details of the binding edge.
11 comments:
LOVE this. I went to a quilt exhibit at Shelburne Farms in Vermont this spring and I was astounded at what beautiful and meaningful things people can do/think of. Thanks for sharing this. :)
I adore Louise Bourgeois. I would love to see this exhibit.
Inspiring! One thing I am looking forward to over vacation next week is trolling the art galleries.
ooh, that IS cool.
If you do it please post pictures?
and here's a link to the site of an co-worker who began (with ZERO experience) to make space quilts!
http://jimmymcbride.com/section/20609.html
so anything is possible:)
I loved that one too! I took my photo from the other angle, but that's one of the three pictures I took at MoMa.
how were they hung?
When will OI ever learn not to click any link that says "spider?" Even fake spiders creep me out!
Cool! Dusty and I saw a number of her scary spidery pieces in DC last year. I think she recently died.
Cool! Dusty and I saw a number of her scary spidery pieces in DC last year. I think she recently died.
That is fantastic.
Ohhhh. I must go see this!
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