The pieces in my series, “Conversation”, capture the fleeting dialog between clouds and waves at twilight, where reflected color and mirrored forms reveal a quiet exchange of light and motion. The rectilinear forms suggest a desire to capture the moment as it slips away toward night.

These art quilts are composed of hand-dyed white cotton fabric. I used arashi shibori dying techniques with fiber reactive dyes to achieve the rippled designs, sometimes over dying 2 or 3 times to apply several colors. Various sections are raw-edge appliqued in an overlapping pattern, layered with cotton batting and backing, and machine free-motion quilted.

Above: “Conversation I”, 45″x26″

This whole-cloth art quilt is made of hand-dyed cotton fabric, embroidered by hand with perle cotton thread. It reflects my sometimes dark, always shifting journey through the early months of the COVID pandemic in 2020-21.

31″h x 21″w
NFS

(noun \ˈhwȯr(-ə)l, ˈwȯr(-ə)l, ˈ(h)wər(-ə)l\) something that whirls, coils, or spirals or whose form suggests such movement.

Whorl, 22″x 25″, silk, cotton, glass beads, silk floss. All rights reserved

This small art quilt started as an exploration of texture. As many of my pieces, it was prompted by a monthly challenge from my Art Quilt Group.

I first hand-dyed a length of fine china silk, then started tucking and gathering with matching thread. I didn’t have any plan for the final outcome; it evolved organically into the nautilus shape. The silk was backed by a double layer of cotton batting, then embellished with glass beads and my favorite variegated silk embroidery floss. Finally, I finished the edges in the naturally irregular shape it had become, and mounted it on a crisp-cornered pillowcase-finished eggplant Kona cotton base.

Bonus! See this piece, three others of mine, and many other fine works by my Art Quilt Group at the June 2016 Art Hop at Ninth Wave Studio in Kalamazoo. June 3, 2016 5pm-8pm.

“Synapse” 20″x30″ hand-painted silk, hand embroidered and beaded.

“Synapse” detail

The challenge was to create an art quilt depicting “connections.”

My response is entitled “Synapse.”

This is a wholecloth quilt. I used Jaquard Green Label silk dyes with the serti resist method to paint this 20″ by 30″ piece of china silk. I machine quilted along the cell walls and dendrites. I embellished by hand with silk floss and glass beads.

“Synapse” detail

The brain has trillions of synapses.

At synapses, neurons release neurotransmitters that are picked up by their neighbors, carrying signals from cell to cell. These signals form memories and thoughts. The long, branchlike projections of brain cells are called axons and dendrites. These projections carry synaptic messages, integrating all the information a cell receives.

Intelligence is dictated by a brain’s underlying organization and molecular activity at its synapses.

Damage to dendrites is associated with depression and despair.

Alzheimer’s disease disrupts both the way electrical charges travel within cells and the activity of neurotransmitters between cells.

The Guatemalan legend has it, that these small colorful handmade dolls will take away the worries of the child who places them under her pillow.

I fell in love with these 2 inch tall dolls on a recent trip to Central America, and brought home a couple dozen of them with the intention of challenging my art quilt group, and myself, to use one or two of them in an art quilt.

I wondered, “What do the worry dolls do with the worry they collect? What do they do when they have their own worries?” Maybe only other worry dolls could take all this away. And so I arrived at this infinite cycle — each doll a pillow for the next.

I wanted to present my extension of the myth with the color and style of the cloth that comprised the dolls’ dresses. I had no handwoven Guatemalan cloth (why didn’t I bring some of that home from C.A.?)  So I mimicked it with running stitches embroidered with colorful perl cotton on black cotton duck.

“When Dolls Worry”,© Carolyn Zinn 2015. 17″x17″ cotton duck, perl cotton floss, imported dolls.