Flying Quilts

Maria Fee

As a painter coming from a fine arts background I’ve always resonated with the craft of quilt making, so it was with great pleasure, if only for a short time, the wall between art and craft came down like a house of cards. This past week 650 red and white quilts, somewhat resembling playing cards, where visually stacked on top of one another in circular formations to create pied-color rooms in the vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory.

The installation, Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts or as I like to call it, “the flying quilt show,” conveyed a museum-like seriousness through its dramatic lighting and grand physique, yet the affair was whimsical, celebratory, and a homage to the collaborative work of women, past and present. This week the Park Avenue Armory did not displayed high art, or low art, it simply held art. For the installation touted what art does best, it made the mundane monumental.

Pieced together by hundreds of handmade quilts, the exhibition represented the particular, the collaborative, and foremost, it honored relationships. The majority of quilts were created by groups of women looking to celebrate a rite of passage for a community member. Knowing the initial impetus for these quilts deepened the meaning and scope of the show. Represented were hundreds of women, their marriages, childbirths and life stories, patched together and quilted in red and white. Through the grand scale of the Park Avenue Armory, the foundational, yet overlooked things in life were finally honored.

And here is where I tie in the gospel parallel of transformation. Just as Christ’s redemptive work ennobles, artists can pick up this God rhythm, take up the ordinary and celebrate it. Through Jesus’ actions in the world we can praise the small, the quiet, and the humble things of this world. The triune God also bids our work to be collaborative, communal, a celebration of the infinite variety of relationships we hold in our lives.

Piece together some art for the glory of God.