Revisiting a quilt from 2009 12-04-16

Here is a post from 08-16-09.  I have always been especially fond of this quilt - atypical of what was happening in "art quilts" at that time.  And it has a nice story! 

I don't know why I had such a hard time cropping these images. What I think is perfect doesn't come out the same when I 'file' the image. So, I am showing an un-cropped and a cropped image of this quilt.

 

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

[NOTE: Yachats, a chrming beach village, is pronounced "YAH - HOTS"]

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

In the summer of 1996 I drove down Hwy 1 from Seaside, OR, to Mendocino, CA. Before this drive my uncle and aunt had driven me down I-5 at night to see the "Electric Horses". These temporary neon sculptures were located on private land (in the style of Christos fabric works) and lit only at night. It was enchanting and now one of my favorite memories of these loving relatives. A few days later as I drove south I had just a glance of a horse by the same artist outside the (now defunct) Triad Gallery in Seal Rock, OR., and I quickly found a place to turn around so I could more closely see the horse. It happened that the gallery was having their annual textile show - did they know I would be coming? This depiction of tall trees along the Oregon Coast is described by its maker,

"A found piece of fabric printed with forest giants, coupled with cottons and cyanotype prints compose this piece. It is hand and machine quilted and has an embellishment of hand couched yarn. Being a child of the [Pacific] Northwest, I have always been awe struck by the majesty of the huge old trees. This quilt honors them."

I also am an Oregonian and I could not resist this interesting quilt. The first thing is that she used one of what I always thought of as the ugliest prints ever made that came out sometime in the 60s. There were a number of different images and I suppose the trees were the least offensive. Several friends had these fabrics on stretcher bars over their sofas - I always sat on the sofa!

Bonnie Jean combined an assortment of fabrics including some of her own cynotypes, hand-dyes and shibori, along with the Nancy Crow fern print. I like the subtle additions of texture and color with the couched rusty hued yarns.

And her hand stitches to depict the rain. Hand stitching of this type was not so common in 1995.
 

The khaki and white shibori fabric creates additional trees and shadows - very cleverly used.
 

An integrated border of muted color seems to show the cratered bark of the Douglas fir trees that are native to the Oregon coast.

I have not seen any work by Bonnie Jean since about 2005, I don't know if she is still making quilts. Prior to her 1980 venture into fabric she was a watercolor artist and sold her work in galleries along the coast. One of her quilts was in Quilt National -1987.

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