Priscilla Read – Art Journey

Yellow Shoes

I photographed this pair of yellow mismatched shoes that I saw in a shop window while walking on a rainy day in San Francisco’s North Beach. The shop was filled with great vintage and hand tailored clothes and shoes. It served as an inspiration for my quilt with the image of the shoes superimposed over an appliquéd background. My silk tie scraps seemed the right choice to go along with the men’s shoes, so I played with color combinations and techniques until I settled on this one employing raw edge appliqué to combine strips of fabric. When I originally took the photo, I had no intention of creating a quilt, but after playing with the colors in Photoshop, I felt that it would make a more interesting statement as a quilt.

This little 9″ x 9″ quilt will be part of SAQA‘s 2011-2012 Traveling Trunk Show.  The goal of the show is to help explain the definition of an art quilt.  SAQA defines an art quilt as “a contemporary artwork exploring and expressing aesthetic concerns common to the whole range of visual arts: painting, printmaking, photography, graphic design, assemblage and sculpture, which retains, through materials or technique, a clear relationship to the folk art quilt from which it descends.” This definition is purposely broad to accommodate the wondrous and exciting art quilts SAQA members are creating.