Call it art about art and the lives of others. One of the new exhibitions pulling us into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art bears a self-revealing title, Remixed: Entwined Histories & New Forms, showcasing the work of artists bringing new conceptual art ideas to the ancient art/craft of quilting.
Quilting is a natural referential feeding source of inspiration in this selection of art, regarding quilting as a grassroots and early form of the art-world impulse of appropriation. But there are also natural allusions to the art of the remix, which relies on reshaping and retooling existing musical and sound content, as well as jazz, in which improvisationally riffing on established tunes and structures — “changes” — is part and parcel of the art form.
One fascinating early strain of quilting culture in America goes back to the Gee’s Bend quilters, originated by Black women in Alabama in the 19th century, and involving dazzling abstractions going beyond the decorative. An acrylic and gold leaf piece, Adia Millett’s “Patchwork Gold,” nods towards the influence of Gee’s Bend art. The image imagines a sunrise, underlaid with wave bands of stripes and vivid color, punctuated by echoes of the sun motif, to hypnotic effect.