Influence, 2003
the flight patterns video from last week reminded me of the quilt work of artist Anna von Mertens, which I saw at Southern Exposure gallery in 2001 or thereabouts and wanted desperately for the atlas(t) exhibition (alas, it didn't work out).
The piece was a quilt of solid dark blue, with dark blue stitching. The stitching depicted the pattern of bird migrations in North America. It was stunning, and so very subtle that I won't bother showing you the image from her website. You can't see it properly. To the left I've pasted a detail from a related piece (Glacial Blue/ Bird Migration Patterns of the Arctic, 2001), which is a little easier to see, but not nearly as high impact as the real thing.
The artist has remained consistent with the quilting thing between 1999 and last year, producing bed-sized quilts which she displays horizontally on hard bed-frames on the floor of the galleries where she shows. Her most recent work (bottom) is proportioned differently and displayed on the wall, but still consists of quilts. Her quilts are made of hand-dyed cloth, with colors she mixed herself, and hand stitched in hand-dyed contrasting or same-color thread. The stitching patterns and colors always have one meaning, the color of the cloth and pattern of the cloth pieces another. These meanings complement and converse with each other. Her projects always chart or diagram something using the cloth patterns or colors; and then chart or diagram something else using the stitching patterns and/or thread colors. The two diagrams form a counterpoint, layering the commentary and creating resonance. It is a simple concept with infinite and profound variations.
Right about here I'd normally start analyzing the artist's body of work and talking about its cultural implications. But to be honest, I really don't feel like it. This is just beautiful work of the sort that we, down atlas(t) way, love to geek out about, and I just want to present some of the work here now. Of course, you must understand immediately that the images are completely inadequate to convey the real experience of the work, so if you're around the Bay Area and ever get a chance to see her work, you must go do it in the flesh (or in the cloth).
An early piece that exemplifies both the self-obsession and female-body-obsession of student work, and the special, smart qualities of Mertens' work, Self-Portrait (at right), displays a white thread on white cloth stitching pattern that follows a topographic schema made of the quilt with the artist's body underneath. The inevitable red square represents both menstruation and deflowering.
The piece depicted at top (Influence) is the first in an installation of five quilts, which, together with a floor schema, comprise the installation Suggested North Points from 2003. The piece at top is a black-on-black image of the map of the continental United States, picked out by contrasting diagonal bars (in case you can't see the image well enough. Her documentation is really rather abominable). The other four quilt "sculptures" (as she calls them) are of the four directions, or the four quadrants of the country: North, East, South, and West. Each direction is a design of stripes of colors that represent the stereotype of that part of the country, "while their stitch patterns illustrate the use, exhaustion, and regeneration of energy in the cosmos and the human body."
And the final piece here (directly below), which represents a departure from her "sculptural" display style and bedspread dimensions, is one of a series of quilts depicting the trajectory of stars directly overhead the site of important historical events for the duration of the events. The title makes them self-explanatory.
2:45 am until sunrise on Tet, the Lunar New Year, January 31, 1968, U.S. Embassy, Saigon, Vietnam (looking north), 2006
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