STORM AT SEA
Katherine Knauer
New York, New York
2008
Commercial and hand stenciled cotton fabrics, Japanese noren; machine pieced, hand appliquéd, hand quilted with embroidery thread.
90 x 93 inches (h x w)

Katherine Knauer comments: "Storm at Sea is one of a series of quilts dealing with environmental concerns. Each quilt focuses on one of the four element –Earth, Air, Fire or Water–that were once thought to comprise all of the earth, and on how those elements relate to current concerns about environmental degradation.

"This quilt uses a traditional “Storm at Sea” pattern in two different size scales with a very large appliqué addition of an octopus. The suction cups on the tentacles of the octopus are hand appliquéd letters of the alphabet that spell out eight different consequences of global climate change relating to the oceans. The quilting stitches are done in embroidery thread and spell out quotations from Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth. Fabrics used include a noren (Japanese door curtain) of Hokusai’s famous colored woodcut "The Great Wave" and underwater-theme fabrics that I hand stenciled years ago."

$10,000

Note: This quilt is committed to be part of the exhibition "Semper Tedium: The Slow Art of Quiltmaking" at the Texas Quilt Museum January-March 2014. Please contact us for information about availability.

Contact Robert Shaw for more information or to purchase

More quilts by Katherine Knauer

Photo by Karen Bell