Young Leaves

This quilt evolved from a painting centered on the kanji (Japanese character) for red, (?). I had been looking through art books featuring Ukiyo-E, and when I realized the painting wasn't going anywhere, I picked up a paint brush, loaded it with black acrylic paint and began painting the elaborate lacquered hairstyles of Japanese court ladies and geisha over the original painting. At that same time, I was also going through a period of heavy influence by surface design techniques, AND was experimenting with shibori and dyeing fabrics. It all came together in this large quilt. I painted the faces that went with the hairstyles, cut the original rectangular painting into sections which I recombined, fashioning them into a circular motif. I appliqu�d the resultant circular motif onto the center of a length of cotton which I had dyed and painted. At that point it seemed to require a haiku, so I studied many, many haiku before finding one by Miura Chora that fit. A Japanese friend transcribed the printed haiku into handwritten kanji and kana, which I practiced a long time before I felt competent to brush it onto the quilt face. Translated into English, it reads:

Reflected in the
Crystals of my Rosary
Young Leaves

As you can probably tell, Young Leaves evolved organically. I did not begin with a sketch or even an idea of a finished quilt in mind. As a long time painter who was evolving into an art quilter, I was playing, experimenting with the magnificently varied toolbox of techniques I was learning. That pretty much characterizes the way I worked in my first decade of art quilting.