Love and Loss
2017
Cotton fabric scraps · Improvisational construction
Completed in an intentionally unquilted and unbound state
Overview
Love and Loss was completed in 2017 as an intentionally unresolved textile work. It moves from saturated color into muted greys and black, tracing a gradual passage from love, connection, and possibility toward absence and loss.
Its irregular dimensions and unquilted, unbound edges are deliberate. Rather than conforming to a conventional finished format, the work makes formal incompletion part of its completed state. Like a life, it has no promised symmetry or predetermined length; it ends where it ends, holding love and loss within the same changing field.
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Size:
Non-standard, irregular dimensions (intentionally unfinished)Materials:
Cotton fabric scraps, primarily solid and near-solid colorsTechniques:
Improvisational construction, intuitive color placement, abstract compositionPiecing:
SST (Slapping Shit Together) — an intuitive scrap-piecing approach where fabric is joined without a predetermined plan. Seams are intentionally disrupted and redirected to break up visual pathways, forcing the viewer to spend time tracing how the piece was constructed rather than immediately understanding it.Quilting:
Not quiltedBacking / Binding:
Not applied
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Love and Loss was completed in 2017, with its irregular dimensions, unquilted surface, and unbound edges retained as deliberate final decisions. Although the object is complete, it resists the conventional visual language of completion. The work reflects the experience of moving through life with no guaranteed outcome and no predetermined length.
The composition shifts from dense, vibrant color into muted greys and black, tracing a quiet progression from connection and possibility toward absence and loss. This transition is not abrupt or dramatic, but gradual, mirroring how love fades, changes, or disappears over time. What begins with energy and optimism slowly gives way to restraint, silence, and uncertainty.
The quilt’s irregular, non-standard size is a deliberate choice. Just as our lives do not follow a uniform or predictable timeline, this piece resists a fixed format. Some lives end early, others stretch long, and most fall somewhere in between. There is no promise of symmetry or balance, only the experience of moving forward until movement stops.
By allowing Love and Loss to remain formally unresolved within its completed state, I acknowledge that loss is not something we finish or move past. It is something we carry, quietly reshaping how we remember love and understand time. This quilt exists in that in-between space, where color lingers, edges remain open, and meaning continues to shift.
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Love and Loss was assembled through my SST (Slapping Shit Together) approach, joining cotton scraps without a predetermined plan. I disrupted and redirected seams to interrupt obvious visual pathways, asking the viewer to spend time tracing how the work was constructed.
Color moves gradually from saturation into grey and black. In 2017 I chose to stop without adding quilting, backing, binding, or a regularized edge. That decision completed the concept: the work’s open physical state carries its ideas about uncertainty, mortality, and the absence of a promised ending.
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Exhibitions
—Abstractions in Fabric
Castleton Bank Gallery, Rutland, Vermont — 2018Awards
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Publications
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