Quilt above made by Vanessa Brisson of Pennsylvania. From the exhibit "In Full Bloom II: Floral Quilts Honoring Helen Pearce O'Bryant" at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.
We've sort of had an ongoing discussion about watercolor quilts lately, so here's something that's sort of generally in the watercolor genre, but that's a little bit different. (How do you define "watercolor quilts" anyway?)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Sunflower
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5 comments:
Love it - it is so unexpected... (I like the realistic floral quilts, o.k. but I so prefer the ones that own up to being quilts!)
My definition of an H2O quilt - small squares in lights, mediums, darks, wide variety of density in pattern... arranged in a gradiated manner... (Something that I did ONCE - & that was enough.)
OK, now see, I would have said something like that, too, if you have just asked me out of the blue (although I can't say the part about density would've occurred to me!) - but then why do I think this quilt is a watercolor? It doesn't fit that definition a bit. I think it has to do with florals being used in a way they weren't really intended to be used. At least, that's the best reason I've been able to figure out so far!
(And I agree about the super-realistic florals - I don't quite see the point.)
Oh man..... That is soooooooo good. I Googled the artist; she's got lots of other great stuff on her website, www.vanessabrisson.com.
I can see why you are saying "watercolor" but it doesn't quite seem "watercolorish" to me. Wishy-washy enough for ya?
This sunflower doesn't say watercolor to me mostly because the shapes of the individual pieces are so prominent in the design--all those irregularly shaped petal parts.
In my head, watercolor or colorwash quilts:
1) Are constructed from pieces which are all (or predominantly) the same size and shape. Usually squares, but not always--I seem to remember Deidre Amsden using triangles in some of her colorwash quilts.
2) Obscure the boundaries between pieces by having those similar in value (and sometimes hue, but mostly value) next to each other.
3) Have gradations from dark to light across the whole quilt or whole sections of the quilt.
4) Use low contrast prints, but not so low contrast that they read as solid or nearly solids.
I wouldn't say the density of prints should vary widely--too much variety and it's hard to get them to transition nicely from one to the next.
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