The age old question

Warning – this is a wordy post, but the subject has always intrigued me.

Frances O’Roark Dowell of Quilters Alliance posed an interesting question on The Quilter’s Alliance Story Circle Facebook page today (here). Her question was “Is quilting an art or a craft?”

I had written an article many years back about this very subject and since it is far too wordy for a Facebook post, I will publish it here. Grab a cup of tea (or two!) and if you make it all the way to the end, let me know what you think about the subject.

I wrote this in 2004 in response to a lecture on “art quilts” that I had recently attended. I was most assuredly one of the only (if not the only) traditional quilter in the room. The only “traditional” quilters named were African Americans whose fame has sky rocketed in the last few years with the Gees Bend exhibition. Amish quilts were noted as being the quintessential art form with their simple designs and striking colors. Very little was said about today’s traditional quilter and how we are struggling to keep traditions alive. The focus was more on the statements that today’s art quilters are making.

Artist or Quilter?

By Wendy Caton Reed

It finally happened to me! Someone asked me one of the most intriguing and perhaps complex questions posed to today’s quiltmakers; “Do you consider yourself an artist?”

I’ve always considered myself to be a quilter. My mother’s an artist and although I’ve often thought some of her talent should have rubbed off onto me, I can’t sketch a rock with a kindergarten crayon. So maybe there is more to it than just the ability to draw. I decided to seek help from my local library. I picked up the largest dictionary I could carry (c 1910) and this is what I found:

Art n. 1.a. The use of imagination and skill to create beautiful things. b. Works, as paintings, which result from this creativity. 2. A field of artistic activity, as literature, music, or dance. 3. A nonscientific branch of learning, esp. one of humanities. 4. A craft or trade and the methods employed in it. 5. A practical skill or knack. 6. The quality of being cunning: artfulness.

Quilt n. A padded bed cover. - quilt v. – quilting n.

Being the highly analytical person that I am, I took it step by step to see which word described me best.

We’ll start with “Art” (since it comes first alphabetically).

1.     a. The use of imagination and skill to create beautiful things. I don’t want to “toot my own horn”, but I think I do create some beautiful quilts and I have one of the most active imaginations of anyone I know, so I guess we can put a check by this one!

b. Works, as paintings, which result from this creativity. Even though I don’t see the word “quilt” in this definition, I certainly have plenty of “works” around the place (in one stage or another), so this is a check too.

2.     A field of artistic activity, as literature, music, or dance. Wow, this is

      a weird one! They don’t even mention painting, let alone quilting.

      Maybe they just ran out of room or they figured 3 examples were

   enough and people could draw their own conclusions, so we’ll put a

   check by this one as well.

3.     A nonscientific branch of learning, esp. one of humanities. This could be a tricky one because although there are thousands of people out there teaching “quilting” and even a few institutions of higher learning that have quilts and quilt history as part of their curriculum (usually lumped in with women’s studies or material culture studies), there usually is some math involved. I don’t think there is enough math involved to take it out of the humanities column, but I’m going to leave this one blank anyway.

4.     A craft or trade and the methods employed in it. Gee, I think this fits best of all. I spend more time quilting than I do anything else. When I don’t have a needle in my hand, I have visions of the next quilt dancing around my brain (even in my sleep!). There are hundreds of new ideas each year in our “trade or craft”, and although I have learned a new trick or two over time, my “methods employed” haven’t changed much in my 50+ years of quiltmaking. This is a definite check.

5.     A practical skill or knack. Can’t get much more practical than something to cover the bed and keep you warm on those cold Maine nights and some people say I have a natural knack for it. Check again.

6.     The quality of being cunning: artfulness. I don’t think this one has anything to do with the subject here, but I don’t want to leave anything out so I’ll answer it anyway. My father used to say I was cunnin’, but that is Maine for “cute” (or at least that’s what I was always lead to believe). However, since it really doesn’t have anything to do with art or quilts, I guess we’ll have to leave it blank.

Now, we’ll go on to the word “Quilt”:

1)    A padded bed covering. Granted this dictionary was dated 1910 and things in the quilt world have certainly changed since then, but I just can’t believe that “art” gets 7 full definitions (don’t forget #1 had an a. and b.) and this is all they can find to describe “quilt”?

If I had to choose a title based on a dictionary’s literal definitions, I would be a fool not to pick the more substantial and far more romantic “Artist” (heck, “Quilter” isn’t even a word in this dusty old book).

So, I think I would have to say that I am an artist who creates quilts. I make them because it makes me happy. I love the whole process; designing, color choice, fabric shopping, pattern play, piecing, appliqué and quilting. I love giving my quilts to friends, relatives and people in need. My grandfather used to say that wood warms you twice: once when you chop it and again when you burn it! That is the way I feel about my quilts.

And as far as quilter vs artist, who says you can’t be both!

So, what do you think? How far have we really come? How far do we want to go? My feeling is there is just as strong a gap between “traditional artist” and “art quilter” as there is between “art quilter” and “traditional quilter”.

Have a very quilty day!