PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
John Lefelhocz
Athens, Ohio
2003
Aluminum roof flashing, glass marbles, hand painted fabric, orange optic fiber (weed whacker line), fluorescent lights, wood, nylon netting.
29 x 52 inches

John Lefelhocz comments: "This is the third work in a series where I explored the limits of what I considered a quilt. I wove my own fabric-like material from wide strips of aluminum. I stitched with non-traditional thread. I illuminated the works from the back side. I pushed the envelope."

the envelope-shaped (and colored) quilt carries an image of the famous 1918 "Inverted Jenny" stamp in which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design appears upside-down, a printing mistake and probably the most famous(and valuable) error in American philately. Only one sheet of a hundred of these misprinted stamps has eve been ever found. Because of the rarity of the mistake, single surviving stamps have brought as much as $977,500 at auction, and a block of four sold for $2.7 million in 2005. In direct contrast, the quilt's backlit background mage is of a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, a single seat "air superiority" fighter plane that the US Government Accountability Office estimated in March 2012 cost $412 million per aircraft.

The quilt raises questions about art, rarity, value, and perception. It is also intended to push the envelope (and buttons) of quilt show jurors, who are often befuddled by Lefelhocz's decidedly non-traditional materials and imagery. With puns in place and tongue-in-cheek, Lefelhocz addressed the "envelope" to:

Isthisa Quilt
Jurors' Prudence Ave.
Quixotically Int.

The return address is:
Art F. Ornot
Lost Way
The World 02003

View the sister quilt Breaking the Barrier.

$3700

Contact Robert Shaw to purchase or for more information

More quilts by John Lefelhocz