I always had the idea of working in a gallery where my work was installed. It seemed the best way to understand the viewer’s point of view. With Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life I am doing just that- sitting at the work table in the History Center.
Here are some of your most asked questions and my answers:
Question: How old is this artist? Answer: You mean me? I am the artist. I am 74. 74 in Hebrew letters means Witness and that is how we came to name the installation quilt in the exhibit The Witness Quilt.
Question: Those French Knots are amazing.How do you do that? Don’t you find the work tedious? Answer: I approach it like a meditation. Each knot is singularly precious. Doing the portraits is an exploration of my heritage and all that it has offered me. I use a double strand of regular metrosene sewing thread. Each hue includes 5 values from light to dark. If you want to see more about the Through the Generations piece you can us this link to learn more.
Question: What are you working while you are there? Answer: The Witness Quilt is a Community Quilt. We will be adding individual patchworks to the piece until 8 weeks before the end of the exhibit when we start to disperse all of the pieces to the viewers coming through the exhibit. When the exhibition closes on April 6, 2025, The Witness Quilt will be totally disseminated to the community.
Question: Can you explain the piece The Home Coming? It seems important in the story. Answer: This was the first piece where I realized I could apply meaningful concepts to my stitching and in doing so add more meaning to my work.
Question: How did this exhibit come about? Answer: I began a series of discussions with the History Center in 2021. After that, the curator, Eric Lidji, and I began by going through all of my papers, then writings, & then quilts. Eric established the basic themes and developed the initial script, fitting my life into an historical timeline of major changes in crafts, women, Judaism, & reuse. Then the History Center teams of curation, script, archives, design, preservation, installation, education, programming, & communication, built and mounted the exhibit.
Question: Are you at the table all the time? When will you be there next? Answer: I come twice a week, as it fits my schedule. If you want me to be there at a certain time, email me at louise@silkquilt.com and I will try to accommodate your request.
BubbeWisdom 