The Canadian Haida carver Robert Davidson is quoted as saying "The only way tradition can be carried on is to keep inventing new things." That statement, one that seemed very obvious to me when I first came across it while I was still an undergraduate, became a kind of mantra that helped me to gird against a bit of resistance that I felt as I made my first steps into the quilt world. I'd famously (or infamously) called on quilt makers to set aside the familiar and timeworn patterns that formed the catalogue of possibilities for what we called "quilts," in a letter to the editor of a quilt magazine of the time, Quilters Newsletter, published out of Colorado by Leman Publications. Its editor, Bonnie Leman, offered my thoughts to her readership. While they garnered some "yeas," the "nays" far outnumbered them and provoked a sometimes heated debate in print that continued through several editions. A tempest in a teacup, you are probably thinking, though at the time it perhaps unnecessarily branded me as hostile to the quilter's enterprise, a male intruder intent, as one writer put it, on "...tearing down everything he considers old or old-fashioned."

Now that I am myself indisputably old (though, I hope, not old-fashioned), I can see that my naïveté at the time deceived me into thinking that of course, everyone would agree with me that it was time for a visual revolution. Time to discard the tried-and-true and venture into unfamiliar territory. Over time, the quilt world would assimilate some of the perspectives and strategies of the young upstarts (I certainly wasn't alone!) and what would be called "the art quilt movement" would eventually solidify and find widespread acceptance. The back-and-forth between the conventions of the tradition and the progressiveness of the new wave would continue–they continue still–though today the field has settled into a kind of quiet détente. It is, though, a very conservative milieu, regardless which side of the fence you're on. It's no accident that artists who've appropriated the quilt and set it to different conceptual and expressive purposes – I have in mind people like Tracy Emin, Lucas Samaras, Faith Ringgold, Sanford Biggers, and Bisa Butler – have steered very clear of the "quilt world."  Context is key.

It was actually great respect for and admiration of the conventions of quilt design and the ingenuity they embodied that motivated people like me to adopt the quilt form and to align with the quilt community. Elaborated Tangram, a piece I completed in 1976 in the midst of the Bicentennial and its many celebrations, is as traditional, and as admiring, as it comes. Basic geometric shapes (squares, triangles, a parallelogram), a grid structure set square, the repeat blocks arranged four-by-four, 100% cotton fabrics, and the entirety – piecing, quilting, binding – done entirely by hand. Three simple departures from accepted quilt design strategy – a block module composed asymmetrically, then turned so its sides meet up irregularly with neighboring repeats; the blue values modulated to super-charge the spatial illusion – introduce an assertive energy and complexity that had, in fact, characterized many 19th and early 20th century quilts, and that this quilt aspired to emulate. 

Elaborated Tangram was simultaneously informed by the art historical exposures I'd had in art school; specifically, by the work of Josef Albers and his "Interaction of Color," and by the graphic art of his wife, weaver Anni Albers. If the two of them had ever collaborated on making a quilt, it might have looked like this. I was intrigued by camouflage and dazzle patterns and how they challenged the mind's eye. If space could be activated and manipulated in flat surfaces, the quilt's surface struck me as fully eligible to assume that capacity.

When not hanging in the occasional exhibition or traveling with me to workshop gigs or lecture presentations, Elaborated Tangram served for a number of years as our main bedcover, and I always associate it with that function.  Shown above in situ, Somerset Village, MA, Fall 1979. Immediately below, a view of a design workshop-in-progress at Textile Worshops Inc., short-term summer sessions that were organized by Mary Woodard Davis in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the course of many years. E.T. hangs, shadowed, on the far wall. By the time I was leading these types of workshops I'd figured out my calling and developed enough confidence to feel it would sustain a full-fledged career. And it did.

Bottommost, an installation view with E.T. at the far end, from the 1977 exhibition "Fabric Geometry" at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, MA. The works in that show were for the most part too large for the available walls, but their novelty excused the poor fit. E.T. is now part of the collection of the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE.