Coverlet 1935 - 1942

This is a drawing of a coverlet made by Charles Roadman. It’s a rendering of a textile in simple coloured inks; the kind of thing that gets called ‘folk art.’ What strikes me is the dedication to process, the way the textile is built up row by row with all those little dashes. It’s like looking at a painting made from tiny brushstrokes. Thinking about the rhythm involved, the patience! You get a sense of the maker’s hand in the way the blocks of colour shift and change, never quite regular. The red and green, not quite complementary, shimmer off each other in the central panel. It reminds me of the work of Gee’s Bend quilters, where an abstract composition emerges from the constraints of the materials. The imperfections in Roadman’s weaving pattern are where the art is. There is a similar impulse to make something beautiful and functional at the same time. It’s an ongoing conversation between the handmade and the conceptual.