Thursday, February 10, 2011

Art as a Function of Availablity of Raw Materials

Quilting more emblematically so than any other artistic medium is influenced by the availablity of raw materials. See, e.g., the Gee's Bend quilters' use of scraps of corduroy leftover from making pillows for Sears - those "gold", "avocado leaf", "tangerine," and "cherry red" colors in quilts by different quilters starting in 1973 are the same because they all had one source for scraps. (For more information see Lauren Whitley's piece "'Avocado Leaf' Corduroy, Remnants of the Seventies" in Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt by William Arnett, et al). So what is going to change about quilts today because of the increase in the price of raw cotton? One can read the news that quilting cotton fabric is going to go above $10 a yard and cry, "The sky is falling." But the real question is does it change what you make?

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1 comment:

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