Connections/Grids

My name is Robin Schwalb, and I work with the film and media archive at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and install media equipment in exhibitions.

I am also a quiltmaker, and today I'm going to talk about grids. I think grids excite me because

they're a very visual manifestation of making order out of chaos and

organizing natural forces. I think that a lot of patchwork is about that.

I mean as an artist, you have to set some parameters. And, for me, a grid is a good place to start.

One of the things, I think, that appeals about quilts is that they are very two-dimensional in appearance. You know, the motif is right up there at the picture plane, and then

because they are layered and stitched, you have this additional layer of design that's going on, and meaning.

Even though grids can be very rigorous, and mathematical, and exacting

can be prison bars, chain-link fences, they also can be so

lively. I don't, I don't see anything ominous about them at all. They're a means to an end and then

through color and arrangement, you can work against the tension of that

extreme rigor with something quite lively and personal.

One doesn't think about the dead white males as having a sense of humor, but clearly the painter Joseph Albers, who is seated posed in front of one of his many, many paintings, Homage to the Square, is allowing himself to have some gentle fun poked at him. He does look for all the world like Whistler's mother.

This one just got me in the guts right away. As soon as it went on display, I just froze in my tracks and I thought, "I have to translate that into a quilt." I think, "Okay, I'll use hand-dyed fabric to get the kind of mottled appearance of the colors. Maybe I'll do freeform piecing. Is it cheating if I use fusible web?" I mean, I really go through this whole quiltmaker's approach to it, about how exactly would I try to translate it.

There's an African mask from the Bwa people. It has such a rhythm to it. And the grid is fairly regular, but it seems to me that the sculptor has tried follow the

curve of the tree branch from which the piece was carved. And so there's this slight wiggle to it, that it looks like it's dancing even when it's standing still.

Grids are mathematical; grids are regular; grids are stable. But when you start to

deviate from that, when you start to make some irregularities, there's tremendous energy released by them.

I look at the Navigational Chart from the Marshall Islands. And it has such a lovely rhythm and flow to it that it's easy to imagine the ripples of the ocean.

I'm not sure if I'm able to sort out, you know, which came first.

Was I a quiltmaker and then I loved the grids? Or did I love the grids and become a quiltmaker? And I think the answer is yes.

After making quilts, you start looking at them and thinking

it's so interesting how everyone works within these so-called limitations

and makes such extraordinary work that's so different, each from the next. And that's really very

moving and exciting to me.