Blanket Statements

Psalm 23 Quilt, Lena Moore

An exhibit currently on view in New York at the American Folk Art Museum explores the visual texture of language through a selection of approximately twenty quilts made by women over the last 150 years. Here, words become fabric and fabric becomes narrative through textiles that command our attention through poetry and personality. Syntax is as varied as form, style, structure and perhaps most of all, content. Throughout, the typography is giddy: primitive and playful, untethered by copyfitting or editorial logic. Instead the work is whimsical and rich, lyrical and loopy, occasionally sobering, frequently exultant: it’s a celebration of identity, intention and the flexibility of the imagination. I was reminded of a wonderful passage in a book I recently came across, by the late Czech writer, Bohumil Hrabal, who described the sentient beauty of language: “Because when I read,” he wrote, “I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence in my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through veins to the root of each blood vessel.” To envelop oneself in such magical textiles is to imagine a similar experience. (Through September 5.)