The title "Calligraphy Quilt Collage" describes the materials, the method and the source of inspiration of my artwork.
Drawing on more than twenty years experience as a commercial lettering artist and calligrapher, I started my personal "quilt project" in the early 1990s. By cutting up pieces of my own hand-painted calligraphy and combining them with variously colored and textured papers - including marbled, metallic, Japanese and other Asian papers - I recreate and redesign traditional patchwork quilt patterns, in many cases the same patterns that have been used for centuries to make bedding and wall-coverings.

Although the patterns may be traditional, the materials are not. Made entirely of paper, these quilts contain dozens and sometimes hundreds of meticulously cut pieces, often no bigger than 1/8", pasted into position using bookbinding materials and techniques. The construction process is precise and labor intensive, and the resulting miniature quilts are intensely colored and often sparkle with silver and gold lights. Apart from traditional log cabin and star quilts, I have also produced a series of sampler quilts made of several different patterns, as well as triptychs, multiple block quilts, and miniatures. In 2002 I completed a series of 60 quilts based on monochrome tones, which were exhibited as an installation in a museum in the Netherlands.

My current project, dating from 2002, is a "Stained Glass" series, quilts based on the forms and colors of church windows, notably the great cathedrals of France. These were exhibited in solo shows in the Netherlands in 2004 and in New York in 2005.

The calligraphic element in the quilt collages ranges from total abstraction, i.e. letters that have been reduced to their component strokes or curves, to legible quilts, some of which contain fragments of poetry or entire alphabets. Although the quilts communicate with the viewer largely through color, shape and pattern, the alphabetic element adds an additional level of meaning to many of these works of art.
Eleanor Winters