A few days ago, American textile artist Kathy Loomis sent me a nice congratulatory note on reading that I’d been selected for QN21. Kathy and I have periodially exchanged letters down the years since we actually met up at QN09, and in 2015 I was honoured when she asked me to review her book “Pattern Free Quilts” (2015) Kathy’s email arrived just as I was thinking of her, anyway. I had been looking at a recent work by Margery Goodall in a Perth, Australia exhibition (which I hope to show in an upcoming post) and Kathy’s email prompted me to take another look at her 2009 award winning quilt, Memorial Day I was reminded how much it also has in common, constructionally, with some of the work of eminent Colombian artist Olga Amaral

If you check the detail pic of Memorial Day you can see that each little rectangle is a tiny postage stamp size quilt, about 1/5″ x 1″ layered and quilted, that by it’s use of colour suggests a US flag. Using several red and white striped fabrics and rectangles of navy blue, Kathy created 4085 tiny ‘flags’ to memorialise each US solder who had lost his life in Iraq up to the tme of her making it. Quilt National always opens on Memorial Day Weekend. For a fascinating account of the making and handling of that textile, go to the 18/10/2020 post of her blog, artwith aneedle.blogspot.com

The US flag, known as The Stars And Stripes, has always featured 7 red and 6 white horizontal stripes signifying the 13 original colonies that declared independence, plus white stars against a navy rectangle in the upper left corner that was originally 13, but has gradually increased since 1776 to the present 50 whenever a new state was brought into the nation.

Mike and I lived with our kids in Denver CO for 6+ years, and our kids are still in the US, and all our grandchildren are young Americans. So we are no stangers to US politics and elections, and this extraordinary year, 2020, we’re taking perhaps closer interest than we normally do. Recently I was really struck by how any arrangement of star+stripe+red+blue+white is a visual shorthand for a statement on that country. 

These are not depictions of the flag itself, but we all recognise ‘patriotic’ US theme designs of star+stripe+red+blue+white . If you’ve been to USA, you know it can be seen, year round, everywhere in the country. If you google ‘stars and stripes’ on Pinterest here you’ll find hundreds of examples under various categories, so I selected ‘July Crafts’ to find a huge page beginning with these decorating ideas for July 4th celebration parties: –

Every country produces souvenir and decorator items including fabric and clothing, coffee mugs, tea towels, biros, playing cards and clothing patches and more, decorated with our own national flags. And Australia has always been a bit conflicted about our colonial origins so enshrined in our national flag, but here I’ll step around that minefield. Many of our flora and fauna symbolise “Australia” internationally, but if you mix the elements of our flag – The Union Jack, navy blue and The Southern Cross constellation, it can be confusing because the flags of many other coutries contain some or all of these elements, too.

I am certain that no other country on earth can make such a consistent statement, “USA”, while at the same time moving so far from the formal graphic arrangement of it’s star+stripe+red+blue+white national flag. Which brings me to my final point – Kathy’s October 21st blogpost outlines her plan to explore how far she can go in design while still retaining the “USA” message – she has taken 2 steps and estimates there might be a series of 6 quilts coming out of this – it will be interesting to watch!