Since I’m on vacation I’m republishing a post from 2014. I did meet Gwen in California and can say she was shyly elf-like.
Original Post:
Gwen Marston has been recognized for many decades as an influential quiltmaker. She developed her style early in her career or, as art quilters like to say, found her voice. Amish and what I call primitive quilts have been huge influences on her work. She quilts much of her work by hand.
Gwen’s most recent focus is minimal quilts. These are featured in her latest book, Minimal Quiltmaking. This is a process oriented book that articulates an approach to quilt design, not a quilt pattern book.
By minimal Gwen means quilts that have been stripped to their essence – sparse shapes done in solid colors. She divides her chapters into hard edge, minimal color, and art inspired quilts. While she features many of her own quilts, she also gives space to quilts made by others in a minimal style. This is helpful as it shows other quilt personalities.
Gwen’s process is partly intuitive, but not improvisational. She often begins with a traditional basic form – medallion, log cabin, strippy – and builds from there. She also uses pencil and fabric sketches. While she may begin with a plan, she believes one should remain open to opportunities that present themselves during the construction process.
As Gwen points out, designing a minimal quilt is hard, and it gets harder when you set limits such as using only one color or only pale neutrals.
Minimal in Neutrals by Gwen Marston
In the two quilts above, you can really see the difference in texture created by hand quilting versus machine quilting. The neutrals one was hand quilted, and I just want to run my hands over it. You can see how much hand quilting adds to the piece below as well. I can’t believe I’d be advocating hand quilting, since I do only machine quilting, but there it is.
Minimal Purple by Kristin Shields (above) is an example of a hard edged quilt that combines hand and machine quilting. That may be the way I end up going on some quilts I have in process.
To get to the bottom line, is this book worth spending $24.95? The answer may depend on where you are in your quilting journey and what inspirational resources you already have. If you don’t have many, the photos are well worth the money. And if you want examples of stunning hand quilting, you’ll want the book for the last chapter alone. If you already have lots of quilt calendars that feature glorious old quilts or books of Amish quilts, you may want to borrow rather than buy this book, though I hope you’ll have the chance to spend some time browsing through it.
Viral Reading
It’s a good thing I had lots of reading material checked out of my local library before it shut down. I’m a compulsive reader who will read jar labels if nothing else is available. And thank heavens one of the books I have now is the last part of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell series, “The Mirror and the Light.” It clocks in at 700 plus pages, but every word is worth reading.
Two of my books pertain to art: “Rex Ray” and “Landscape Painting Now.” As I wrote a bit ago, I’ve made three Rex Ray inspired pieces.
Because Ray was so prolific with commercial and fine art projects, the book I have covers only so much of his work. It’s broken down into collage on paper, collage on panel, and collage on canvas work. Ray made at least one small collage on paper every day for many years.
“Landscape Painting Now” casts a much wider net. The opening essay by Barry Schwabsky notes that landscape painting hasn’t gone away in modern times, but has been reinvented by contemporary painters.
I’ve chosen my favorites from the book, though I’ll note that one of the artists, Jordan Nassar, hasn’t painted his work but has used tatreez, a Palestinian mode of cross stitch embroidery. The book’s authors note his “works are more akin to art than craft – with his use of a needle and thread in place of a paintbrush.” I heard that sort of special pleading before. I know the book’s title is landscape painting, but I wonder why this one exception was made.
Share this:
Like this:
11 Comments
Filed under Books, Commentary
Tagged as "Landscape Painting Now", books, collage, Rex Ray