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A Bridge too far?

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Well, the Pixeladies are back in the studio trying to finish the quilt for the Faith Ringgold exhibition in October (we hope to be posting link information here soon). Faith titled her memoir, We Flew over the Bridge, so we thought we should put ourselves on a bridge with Faith and use our text technique to sculpt out the image. We wanted to pay homage to Faith not by copying her style (we couldn’t do it anyway) but by working on some of the same issues she did. We admire her work in which she engages with the icons of Western art like Pablo Picasso. Since Deb and I both love German art, we wanted to look again at Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and specifically his work on prostitutes. We really like this woodcut by Kirchner:

The Five Coquettes 1914

Kirchner led the Expressionist art group, “Die Brücke,” which means the bridge, so we thought it particularly interesting that Faith had a body of work about bridges. Hmm, why not put us on a bridge with Faith? And while we’re at it, let’s make it a German bridge – like the beautiful Kaisersteg in Berlin:

Kaisersteg in Berlin-Oberschöneweide 1910

Now, you really can’t expect the Pixeladies to leave things well enough alone, so here’ a shot of Deb manipulating the color of our text quilt once we had the whole thing “texted” out – that means we glued words and phrases cut from magazines and newspapers onto a large piece of paper to “redraw” the (now) three coquettes on a bridge as we decide how to move toward our vision. At least that’s our story for today. Stay tuned.

Deb working some color magic on the image before printing.

 

6 responses to “A Bridge too far?”

  1. I love that you explain the genesis of this quilt and the process you are going through to create it. It makes me appreciate your work and the skill and care that goes into its creation even more. I hope you can share a picture of it here for those of us who won’t be fortunate enough to visit the Faith Ringgold exhibition this October.

    Where did you get the magazines and newspapers for this project? Just wondering….

  2. . . . Deb’s house looks like a hoarder’s house ’cause we have magazines from the dentist, friends, family, and, oh yeah, our friend Barb’s suitcase after her trip to Berlin. Thanks!

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