Design Tells Us about a Place: Texture and African American Quilts

Design is a multi-sensory experience and the African American Quilts Show at the Richard L. Nelson museum at UC Davis lets us enjoy both the visual (optic) and tactile (haptic) nature of these beautifully hand-made quilts. The binaries, haptic and optic, make a design or artwork more relatable because we as humans need to look and touch objects in order to understand them. Part of the need to touch an object is to know what it feels like so we can not only comprehend it but also connect it to similar objects, emotions, situations, times, moods, tastes, experiences etc. So often an artist or designer uses this principle in their piece to evoke a connection in the audience to any of the examples listed above. However, this phenomenon doesn’t necessarily have to be achieved through the explicit act of touching an artwork or an object; it can be achieved through an implied feel of an object: texture. In Untitled 77”X 76” a cotton quilt in the show the artist, an African American slave, uses the texture of the quilt to transport us to a place and time, the Marymount Plantation near Lewisburg, Tennessee during slavery (pictured above).

Texture according to David A. Lauer is when a surface arouses our sense of touch. And touch can tells us a lot about a place or time. The repeated stitches around the flower-like shapes in Untitled create a bumpy texture and it is almost as each one is a trail through which you can trace the artist around the maze of the plantation field. Further depicted is a crop or something that grows on the plantation that inspired the quilted to incorporate it very stylistically into the quilt. This idea is bolstered by the repetition of the flower-like shapes in alternating colors suggesting a grouping which could easily be cotton or any other crop picked by the artist. Furthermore, the texture on these “crops” is distinct of that of the maze; it has a cross-hatching which makes the surface feel like it’s rough or coarse.

These observations of texture might seem shallow, but they are necessary to understand how cleverly the artist was able use the rough texture of the structured shape and only in the structured shape to connect us to the feeling of the rough an often very restricted life slaves led while working and picking crops, with the smooth and flowing texture of the plantation in the background where slaves had the most freedom to roam; the plantation becomes a space that was their own, even if they didn’t own the place!

So, when I began this blog with the statement that the African American Quilts show lets us enjoy the visual and tactile quality of the quilts, I meant that the textures of quilts evoked our sense of touch not that we could actually touch the quilts because I’m pretty sure that touching these antiques was prohibited!

Credits:

Design Basics 7th edition by Lauer and Pentak

Photo taken at the Richard. L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Arts collect in the Art Department at UC Davis

Photo by Prerna Dudani

Design Tells About a Time: Rhythm, Pattern and African American Quilts

*Photo and arrangement by Prerna Dudani

Hanging strong with rips and tatters in the Nelson Gallery, Silver Medallions, a silk and cotton quilt, made during the 1880s makes a powerful statement about the time it was created in (see image above left). It accomplishes this feat by the use of pattern and rhythm. The dynamic patterns in this quilt are arranged in such a way that a fast paced rhythm is created. This is in tandem with the times of the 1880s when freed African American slaves were trying to make their mark in the predominantly white society. This quilt and many more can be found in the African American Quilts show at the Richard. L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Arts collect in the Art Department at UC Davis. This show tells the story of African American women (and men) who while working with limiting materials were able to create masterpieces that not only were functional but would later go on to be viewed for their aesthetic and informative quality.

Silver Medallions is a quilt made by Mrs. Longmire, an African American woman who was the seamstress of her town in Maryland in the 1880s. The quilt is arranged in a grid system which holds a colorful variety of patterned and solid rectangles. This variety can at first seem overwhelming, but is actually held together due to repetition of four or five solid colors: red, blue, black, tan, and white that hold the other colorful patterns in place. Actually, the re-occurrence of these dark and bright squares establishes a visual rhythm, and the irregular spacing of the different shaped patterned squares causes the pattern and rhythm of the quilt to be lively rather than monotonous. This type of abrupt change with a dynamic contrast is known as Staccato rhythm (Design Basics David L. Lauer).

This rhythm captures the dual essence of a time when newly freed slaves were still being repressed in the way of convict leasing another form of bondage, but also individuals were trying to establish themselves through their jobs and careers. There was also an emphasis on African Americans getting educated (Wikipedia). Times were changing at a fast rate and so does our eye when we look at this quilt. These ideas were further displayed by Mrs. Longmire by her pairing of a multitude of “frazzled” patterns next to the “rock steady” placement of the solid swatches of color balancing the idea of the wrongs that were occurring to African Americans (the patterns) with their zeal to succeed (solid colors). The nature of times and the essence of the African American people during the 1880s are encapsulated and documented in the rhythm and patterns of Silver Medallions.

Links:

http://nelsongallery.ucdavis.edu/

http://art.ucdavis.edu/

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Basics-David-Lauer/dp/0495501816

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

Photo by Prerna Dudani, quilt on display at Nelson Gallery.