Quilt c. 1937

Daniel Fletcher, who lived from 1855 to 1995, made this "Quilt" with who knows what. I mean, who knows when, or how, or why. It is all about the what! The surface shows a grid that traps these images of eagles and floral arrangements into a kind of domestic space, the space of home and comfort, or something like that. The eagles' wings are spread wide but they are stuck. In the lower half, to the left of center, there's a flower with a dark center, like an eye. Is that eye looking up at the trapped eagle, or is the eagle looking down at the eye? I love how Fletcher makes you work for meaning, without ever really revealing it. The trapped eagle reminds me a little of Philip Guston's hooded figures—these ordinary figures trapped in plain sight. It speaks to the everyday condition of being human, the way meaning gets caught in the grid of our lives.