I once read that all art is about exploring a question. Some artists keep exploring the same question, or move from question to question, creating a series. But my attention is constantly being grabbed; I am like a dog, and I keep seeing a new squirrel. Which is a roundabout way of saying I am curious, and I have so many questions! The questions can start with something I read, something I’ve written, somewhere I’ve been, something I’ve seen, or an exhibit I visited.
Most recently I was struck by the retrospective of work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at Berkeley Art Museum. Specifically her interest and examination of language, something that has always fascinated me as well. In my bookwork I was always interested in ways we read, adding puzzles or words within words, and in general challenging our assumptions. Cha’s work jolted me back to those questions, a bit of nostalgia for wordplay, rub-on letters (Also known as “press type.” I sold Letraset in the Graphics department at my first job at an art-supply store) and Berkeley in the 1980s.
Cha also used commercial letter stencils, which I have continued to use since one of my first quilts in 2015. Inspired by her work and reinvigorated as well as reawakened, I started playing with language again, changing the colors of each of the stencil letter pieces so the words they spelled were not immediately obvious or known from a distance. I’m exploring how we perceive letters and start looking for patterns, sometimes creating words that weren’t intentionally there. This is the first of three painted letter quilts (so far). Read the Signs. Or if you substitute the red H: Read the Sighs.
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