My recent work focuses on similarities and points of tension between the traditions of American football and American quilting. Football is a fascinating way to examine both masculinity and “American-ness,” but from a limited viewpoint that manages to be simultaneously flamboyant and repressed. The quilting tradition is similarly misleadingly gendered, an incomplete portrayal of feminine pursuits and feminine aesthetics.
There is nothing inherently female about quilting or inherently male about football. Both are rigidly structured, repetitive to the point of ritualization. Both are highly decorative. In these paintings I am playing up the elements of ritual, decoration, and adornment, while letting the structures collapse.