Sometime in the first part of 1983, to the best of my recollection, someone from TIME Magazine phoned, explaining that they had a feature article about studio craft in the works, and were in the process of getting photographs of some of the makers the article would consider. Would I be agreeable to their sending up from New York a photographer to shoot some images in my studio? Naturally, I was very agreeable.

I no longer recall what the prompt for that article might have been, though Paul Smith, then the director of the American Craft Museum on W. 53rd Street in Manhattan, and his curatorial staff were energetically promoting the diversity and inventiveness of craft practice across the US as well as internationally. Their efforts, including the many exhibitions they organized both at the museum and at touring venues, had a major impact on the growth of craft media at that moment. Many second-generation makers like myself, not long out of art school, benefited enormously by Paul Smith’s advocacy. Whether or not he’d put the idea before TIME, the magazine’s interest was exciting and potentially game-changing.

The photographer drove up to Massachusetts from Manhattan and spent a couple of hours in my studio. I remember the quiet young Asian man as being very professional yet matter-of-fact. (I lost his name decades ago, and regretfully can’t properly credit him here). We moved furniture around a bit, hung a couple of quilt options on what was serving as my working wall at the time, and foregrounded a work-in-progress, Metamorphosis. As he packed up his equipment after the shoot, he handed me two Polaroids he’d taken in setting up some of the shots.

La Tempête, now in the collection of the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE, hangs on the wall behind me, and Metamorphosis, on which I’d just begun the machine-quilting, is moving under the Bernina’s needle. I’m not sure what I was pretending to do in the topmost photo, but it seemed to require that I look appropriately serious. No problem, I can do serious. Even without a gray hair on my head.

The TIME feature never ran. Something at the international level took over the news unexpectedly, and there were likely many competing story lines on the editors’ front burners. Whatever the reason, no readers saw these nor any other craft artist photos in any of the Spring or Summer 1983 issues of the magazine. Assuming other artists were visited in a similar way for the same purpose, I’m likely not the only one who still wonders what effects this kind of broad public exposure might have had on our careers at that point. It might have been just a “fifteen minutes of fame” event, but may have led to important connections, whether with institutions or collectors or galleries. We’ll never know.

Two nice photos, though, that I’m happy to have still.

Interestingly, five years later my work would brush up against TIME magazine again, albeit indirectly. At a benefit auction for the American Craft Museum held on October 31, 1988, Rhythm/Color: The Concord Cotillion, completed in 1985, was purchased by Henry Luce III, one of the sons of TIME Magazine’s founder, Henry R. Luce. Luce fils, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, died on September 7, 2005. I have no idea of the quilt’s whereabouts.

Rhythm/Color: The Concord Cotillion is one of a group of works begun in 1985, all of which evolved out of experiences with and reflections on music for dance. The Concord Cotillion was inspired by just that: an annual “cotillion” held by a traditional American contra dance association in Concord, MA, in January of 1984 or 1985. A friend, the accomplished cellist Abby Newton, longtime accompanist to Scottish folk singer Jean Redpath, was one of the instrumentalists performing that evening, and I recall with great nostalgia the historically costumed dancers, the temperature rise they effected in that tightly packed community hall, and the unexpectedly sharp sting we felt when we stepped out into that frigid Concord night. The surface of this piece brings it all back to life. Photo credit: David Caras.

Rhythm/Color: The Concord Cotillion hanging alongside Pamela Studstill's "Quilt #53" at the American Craft Museum, NYC, at the opening reception for the exhibition CRAFT TODAY: POETRY OF THE PHYSICAL, organized by Paul Smith to celebrate the inauguration of the museum's renovated space, October 1986. After that ACM installation, the show would tour the US for two years and later be shown in Europe in revised and expanded form. R/C: The Concord Cotillion was one of a number of works from the original exhibition to be sold in 1988 to benefit the museum.