Susan Carlson’s Specimens Exhibit
What: A group of cloth collage quilts that inform tales of their individual animal, insect, and human topics
The place: The Nationwide Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky
When: July 19–November 19, 2024
My Specimens Exhibit was most lately displayed in April 2022, on the AQS—American Quilter’s Society—annual present, held in Paducah, Kentucky. Throughout that wild QuiltWeek, I used to be launched to the NQM—Nationwide Quilt Museum—additionally in Paducah. I used to be impressed with their house and displays, and the individuals who run it. So once they approached me a 12 months or so in the past a couple of repeat Paducah displaying, I mentioned sure. Click on right here for NQM info.
So now I’m readying myself to ship off twelve quilts for 5 months. They are going to be missed from their houses, however I’m excited that they are going to be gathered and seen once more as a gaggle, at such a pleasant location and for a pleasant period of time. I hope that there might be various of you on the market who will have the ability to go to and say hello to those quilts and topics which are so particular to me.
You may click on on any photographs in a gallery to scroll by means of and see them bigger. Title of quilt and dimension will seem as you hover the courser over it.
Golden Temple of the Good Ladies, 50 x 58 inches
Gombessa, 70 x 43 inches
For these of you who’re counting, there are 9 quilts within the photograph gallery above. At earlier places, my Specimens present at all times had twelve quilts on show—it looks like an inexpensive quantity for a various displaying in any given house. Nevertheless, I now have three extra collages to incorporate on this assortment of specimens, these three are pictured beneath.
I made a decision that my Specimens assortment will evolve and revolve over time and site—letting it change, as all issues do. The three specimens that might be stepping apart for this present are pictured beneath.
Method again when, I wrote about my ideas in creating all these Specimen quilts. I embrace it beneath, and invite you to peruse the exhibit in particular person on the Nationwide Quilt Museum over the following few months, and on-line everytime you’d like—click on on the next quilt titles to take you to their Quilt Tales weblog posts:
Specimens
Crocodylus Smylus, Tickled Pink, Dixie Dingo Dreaming, Golden Temple of the Good Ladies, Gombessa, Million to One, Fructos, Kaloli Moondance, Polka Dodo, Matriarch (Winfrieda), Monarch Maia, Earthshine, Samuelsaurus Rex, Fireplace Beetle and Exuberance
With these quilts I hope to assist the viewer see all creatures—nice and small—with recent eyes. In contrast to these of a scientist, my specimens usually are not “lifelike.” A pink rhino, a polka dotted dodo, a much-larger-than-life-size golden toad: the liberties I take, the alternatives I make are meant to impress a response. Usually, I hope to invoke a way of marvel. I may have made my saltwater crocodile any dimension I wished. It will have been a lot simpler, belief me, to make it smaller. However I selected to make it twenty toes lengthy as a result of that’s what is actually superior about this species. The dimensions of the quilt is the purpose.
In some methods, my photographs are easy. The compositions are primary, easy profiles displaying as a lot of the animal as attainable, typically mimicking the posed figures of specimens in museum circumstances. In different methods my photographs are advanced. Seen up shut, the sheer variety of items of cloth used makes for a density of colour and texture. That, too, is a part of the purpose. Every of those creatures is definitely recognizable. As a result of we predict we all know them, our familiarity could lead us to dismiss them too simply. It’s solely once we look nearer that we perceive how distinctive every is and the way irreplaceable.
Nevertheless, political or social or environmental statements usually are not the primary level of my quilts, or let’s say that the statements are of the obvious variety: our earth and its inhabitants, together with us, are in danger. I make quilts as a result of I really like material for its colour and texture. I make quilts of animals as a result of I’m an unabashed animal lover. That’s it, actually. If my “Specimens” can communicate to others at a tactile stage and encourage them to take a look at animals at a deeper stage (to grow to be extra conscious of those animals and their tales), then that’s an excellent factor, I feel. I feel that’s sufficient.