Coverlet 1935 - 1942

This striking indigo and white Coverlet was made by Suzanne Roy, who lived an impressively long life, from 1855 to 1995. The pattern is intense, full of plants and stars. It's evenly distributed, but it's not hard to imagine her process involving all kinds of small decisions. I’m thinking about the kind of focus it must have taken to weave this dense configuration of symbols, and the way the image slowly accumulates through repetition and small variations. What was Suzanne thinking when she created it? The evenness of the pattern suggests she was in a groove, thinking about other things, maybe, like how this piece will eventually keep someone warm. I think of the textile as a form of embodied expression. There are related ideas in the quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins, who also used textiles to explore a world of themes in improvisational and highly personal ways. All these artists are in conversation. It's like, in the studio, we're all just bouncing ideas off each other.