SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY
Katherine Knauer
New York, New York
2011
Commercially printed fabric, fabric digitally designed by the artist and printed by Spoonfeather.com.
Machine appliquéd, hand embroidered, hand quilted
36 x 36 inches

The Second Avenue Subway, the first phase of which is currently scheduled to open in 2016, has been a plan and occasional construction project since 1929. The reasons for the line's many "false starts" and delays are numerous and complex, and it is sometimes referred to as "The Line That Time Forgot." Katherine Knauer lives on Second Avenue, so her experience of the intermittent but intense underground drilling and seemingly never-ending construction delays is direct, personal, and visceral. She comments: "I live directly on the site of the new Second Avenue Subway construction. I photographed some of the equipment, including a huge drill, and scenes of traffic disruption, and transferred them to fabric for this quilt, as well as a map of part of the subway system. Commercially printed subway fabric is also used, and the announced dates of expected completion of the new subway lines were embroidered on the surface."

$2400

Note: This quilt is currently traveling in an exhibition of works by the Manhattan Quilters Guild and will not be available for delivery until after that show closes in 2014.

Contact Robert Shaw for more information or to purchase

More quilts by Katherine Knauer

Photo by D. James Dee