Talking Hope

Hope
36" x 36" 

"HI. This is Kathleen Turner, in Tallahassee, Florida. I’d like to tell you about this quilt Hope."

That's how I began an audio intro to my piece in the Sacred Threads exhibit, in Virginia near Washington, D.C. in July. Visitors will be able to dial a number on their cell phones and hear me talk. I think there's a separate number for each piece. 

I'm one of those people who wander through museums wearing a headset so I can hear the tour. But this is more intimate. I encountered it a couple of months ago at the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. Several pieces had a phone number, and when I called I heard Rothko's son tell me about the art in front of me. 

Sacred Threads people asked us to talk about symbolism and what the piece says about our lives. Here's the rest of what I said:

In my studio I keep an orchid nearby as I work on my art. Orchids inspire me to make beautiful things. In the room there are two tables. One is for paint and other messy processes, and the second is for sewing. The orchid sits on my painting table.

This quilt Hope started with an orchid blossom that fell onto the table. I didn’t want to throw it away, so I pinned it to my bulletin board. At first it was pink and lovely. After a while the blossom shriveled and turned brown. For some reason, I still thought it was beautiful. After several months, I made a sketch of the blossom, and the sketch turned into this quilt. I started with the lines of a beautiful flower, but one by one my creative choices turned it into something else. In the end it resembled a bird.

Then I traced an orchid leaf and made many of them so they could circle the bird in a kind of mandala. But I saw that the leaf shape also could be flames. My orchid had turned into a creature like the Phoenix, the bird that rises from its own ashes, more alive than ever. It also reminds me of the shining, elusive Firebird from the Russian fairy tale.

The swirls below the central figure resemble an orchid’s aerial roots, but I think they could also be a spiral of confusion.

Even so, the whole image speaks to me of rising.

I didn’t consciously set out to make such things, and in fact when I started this quilt my heart was not exactly hopeful, but kind of heavy with family concerns. But by the time the quilt was complete, with its triumphant bird shape rising on a spring green field, it shouted HOPE.