Sketchbook: Quilt Vignettes

As January spirals to a close, our company is now ready to jump into two concurrent projects: 1) Our community outreach project with Young at Arts and the South Boston Boys & Girls Club, and 2) Our Threading Motion project with the New England Quilt Museum. Today’s “Sketchbook” entry represents the latter!

We are thrilled to be collaborating with the museum in sync with its Silk! exhibit opening this April, and have recently received a large grant from the Lowell Cultural Council to do so. Fantastic! What’s tricky about this project is explaining the concept. As the quilt-enthusiast who came up with this idea, I’ve found myself bursting at the seams with my excitement to explain: “We’ll select some quilt images, project them onto our dancers in the studio, and create little vignettes that will play as a film on loop in the gallery!” This is inevitably followed with a confused supportive smile and puzzled stare, until I show them my digital sketches of ideas, at which point they suddenly understand the look, feel, and concept I’m trying so hard to describe.

Below are three of the six quilts we will be working with, along with my original sketchbook comments for each image. I hope this can shed some light on the project, and gain a little excitement as we get ready to cast each vignette tomorrow night!

-Merli



This one is feeling pretty exciting to me. It hit me that I could project the image horizontally, have a pair of dancers tumble their way across, then flip it in FCP back to vertical so that they're tumbling down this vine of gingkos.
(Gingko by Sonya Lee Barrington)




This quilt is so intricately patterned and "busy" looking that I thought it could look really intriguing across someone's face and hands as a closeup.
(Cynthia Star by Janet Elwin)



This one is interesting because I originally didn't feel drawn to it for this project, but have since come to love its burst of color, and think some powerful leaping across could really bring this to life.
(Gilding the Arbor by Bethanne Nemesh)