Quilts: Art or Craft?

          Sometimes people are paying attention when you think they aren’t. On Saturday mornings, I try to squeeze in watching the quilting/sewing shows on KBTC-Channel 12, PBS. www.kbtc.org They air from 8:30 in the morning until 1:00 in the afternoon, so my viewing depends on if I’ve got errands to run, or what the football schedule is. I’ve been tuning in long enough that my family almost considers the on-air quilting ladies as friends who drop in on Saturday mornings. They walk through the family room, glance at the TV, and say things like, “Is this the one who taught Special Ed. before she became a famous quilter?” (Eleanor Burns) as they continue going on their way.  

Recently, KBTC has added a new documentary to the end of the Saturday lineup: Why Quilts Matter: History, Art, and Politics www.whyquiltsmatter.org. It posed a question that led to a surprising discussion and more questions in our family room: What is art? Are quilts art or craft? Those questions were running through my mind as the experts weighed in.

One of the art quilters seemed insulted at a common response she gets when she tells people that she’s a quilter. They tell her that their grandmother made quilts. She retorts, “These are NOT your grandmother’s quilts.”  

This one IS my grandmother's quilt!

I looked at my grandmother’s Hawaiian quilt hanging on the wall and thought, “Wow! I aspire to being able make quilts like the ones that both of my grandmothers made.” Maybe her grandmother wasn’t a very good quilter. Or, maybe the person sharing that their grandmother was a quilter didn’t seem very impressed with their grandmother. Who knows?

Other people on the show talked about the fact that once you took the quilt off the bed and hung it on a wall, especially of a museum, it was recognized as art. It had moved from being something utilitarian to keep people warm, to being something precious that should no longer be used, but admired instead. That was a valid point.

I have sewn a sleeve on every quilt I’ve ever made, no matter what size, so that it can top a bed, be snuggled under as a lap quilt, or hung on a wall. I’ve probably made more quilts as wall hangings, than bed coverings. They’re faster to make, and I have four places in my house to hang quilts. Several times when I’ve shown these wall hangings to non-quilters, they’ve said, “Well, that’s not a quilt. It’s not big enough for a bed.”

Does that automatically make it art? When it’s hanging, it is being used as art, but most of my wall hangings are made up of traditional quilt blocks. 

I think of “art quilts” as being landscape quilts, or abstract quilts with lots of embellishment, more like paintings. I’ve made a few quilts that fit that description, but I don’t consider myself artistic enough to be an “art quilter.”

The show moved on to talk about the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. “The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend.

 The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition has received tremendous international acclaim . . .on its twelve-city American tour. Newsweek, National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, Art in America, CBS News Sunday Morning, PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the Martha Stewart Living television show, House and Garden, Oprah’s O magazine, and Country Home magazine are among the hundreds of print and broadcast media organizations that have celebrated the quilts and the history of this unique town. Art critics worldwide have compared the quilts to the works of important artists such as Henri Matisse and Paul Klee. The New York Times called the quilts ‘some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.’" (The Quilts of Gee’s Bend™ Quilter’s Collective History.)

I was lucky enough to see these quilts when the exhibition traveled to the Tacoma Art Museum. The Gee’s Bend quilters break many of the “rules” of quilting. These women didn’t run down to their local quilt store to buy enough new cotton fabric to fit a recipe for a quilt. They used materials they had on hand. Some of the fabrics used were from polyester pant suits.  Pieces weren’t cut straight. Blocks within the quilts and borders aren’t squared off. 

They had a free flowing “plan” as they pieced their quilts. They wouldn’t have earned anything more than a participation ribbon at a county fair.

Images of the Gee’s Bend quilts flashed on the TV screen in our family room, and suddenly Johnny who’d stopped to sit down and put his shoes on said, “Didn’t they have rulers? Nothing’s straight.”

The Quilts of Gee's Bend.

John looked up from his laptop, “I don’t like them.”

Was this a “hey, the emperor is naked” moment?

I pointed out that the quilts are very graphic in a modernistic style. I preferred the ones that are just two colors. They are striking.

The show commentators debated again: art or craft?

Johnny wasted no time choosing a side. Gee’s Bend quilts were a craft. Part of his argument was that art is created intentionally. He felt that these quilters weren’t purposefully trying to make a statement. Yes, they looked modernistic, but it was an accident.

He is a music composer, so he has learned to view art through a composer’s eyes (and ears). He asked, “If the cat jumps up on the piano keys, is he a composer? It sounds like some modern music. Did the cat intend to make music?”

John added, “I wouldn’t hang them in my house. They look very primitive.”

I countered, “OK, but there’s lots of art I wouldn’t hang in my house. It’s still art.” And to Johnny, “Those quilters intentionally chose to put each of those pieces of colored fabric right where they are. They aren’t randomly placed.”

I had also thought of that old saying that you need to master the rules before you can break them. Did they know the rules? Were they purposely breaking the rules, or were they just not that great at quilting?

In the end, I didn’t turn either Johnny or John into fans of Gee’s Bend quilts. To tell the truth they aren’t my favorite quilts either, but I do think they are art as well as a craft too.

Quilting is very much like cooking.  There are cooks and chefs. The cooks can open their refrigerator and pantry and throw a tasty dinner together with what’s at hand.  They are practical, make it up as they go, on the fly, and don’t mind surprises. They are direct and want to put food in your belly.

The gourmet chefs spend time gathering just the right ingredients, carefully chopping, and sautéing, planning and striving for a sublime combination of flavors. They have a very specific idea of how they want their dish to turn out. They want what they create to be memorable as well as something to satisfy your hunger.

Cook or chef? Quilt crafter or art quilter? I appreciate both ends of the spectrum. Most of the time I’m a cook and a crafty quilter, but every once in awhile I create a dish or quilt that is art---  sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally.

Laura Keolanui Stark has solved her quilter’s identity crisis by calling herself simply a quilter. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.