Sexy Amish and Quilt Engineering

My grandfather was from Western Pennsylvania before his family moved to Los Angeles in the 1920’s. When he retired, he and my grandmother bought a farm in the vicinity of his childhood home near Punxsutawney. They split their time between cypress-framed views of the San Francisco Bay and this soft, modest landscape. As children, my siblings and I would go visit The Farm in the summers, and sometimes spend time with Grandpa’s aged aunts and uncles. They had the smooth faces of those who have spent life under sun-bonnets and funny-sounding Pennsylvania Dutch names.

Orel and Bernice were well-preserved spinsters in their early ‘90’s who had lived all their lives on a farm with their brother Lon. They were skilled seamstresses who made all their own clothes and a number of traditional quilts. My grandmother told me that they made the quilts out of all their old dresses. I grew up loving the precision of the hand-stitching, imagining the 4 hands of the two sisters at work all winter on these disciplined creations. I still lie on my bed and wonder where all the now threadbare squares might have come from. The quilt is a garden graveyard for summer dresses.

No one would believe that making a quilt in opposition to the rectangular grid is a task fraught with risk of disaster. Realities of drape and weave lend themselves to square connections. (This is the basic architectural challenge behind dressing the curving, moving, extremity-laden human form.) Though flexible, fabrics exert strong directional will, each opposing thread throwing around its gravity and contributing to the personality of the swath. Stretch and knit alleviate some physical challenges, but pose others of their own.

When I heard that one of my dearest friends was engaged, the idea for the wedding present followed quickly. It seemed unavoidable to make a quilt for this couple, who are leaders of the artisanal food movement. I had recently seen an exhibition of Amish quilts and was amazed by their heat and brilliance. They were downright sexy: Constrained in pattern, but not in palette.

The implications of a quilt were both domestic and bodily; the process patient and filled with danger. Failure, crumpling, and over-the-top ugliness were real possibilities. But my conservationist spirit and appetite to understand the challenges of days of yore (ye shall make your own blanket if ye wish to sleep warmly) had been awakened. I wanted to make something beautiful using mostly stuff that I had laying around. I began planning and construction using my existing textile collection: scraps, gifts, sarongs and antique draperies. As the project grew, and I committed to it by giong public and telling friends what I was up to, people close to the couple gave me items of clothing to incorporate.  

I planned the piece in seven segments that fit together at irregular angles. The layout was based loosely on aerial views of agricultural lands, the vast patchwork of America. Each segment had its own grain and grid. The sound flatness of the whole would only be determined at the phase when all seven segments were married.

I began with a small drawing that was then scaled up on large paper with estimated seam allowances to form a pattern. I used this pattern to create the seven major sections in fabric, each with its own patchwork logic.

Spread on the floor of my studio, the work of building the finished piece was physically challenging due to its queen-sized scale. Working on a sewing machine, it is easy to get lost in such a vast pool of fabric. Losing your way with a seam can lead to real awkwardness and bunching. The weight of layers of fabric can make you think you should be sewing in one direction when you should really be pulling in another. Quilting was accomplished through some hand embroidery and some machine-sewing. Through a combination of faith and physical understanding, the finished object was finally produced. I hope it will last for generations.

Mole’s Perfect World

When I first moved to the neighborhood, Maple Town occupied just two shelves of a bookcase in Y and D’s bedroom. Over the next five years, the sisters and I would develop the settlement into a utopian civilization populated by families of Sylvanian animals. There were rabbits, mice, bears, one hippo, one elephant, a family of pigs and one mole.

Some families were interspecies, and efforts were made to approximate logical genetic outcomes. For example, Mole’s wife was a rabbit and their daughter, Sarah, was a mouse. This realistic mixing of features pleased us greatly, and made the Sage family the keepers of highest moral standards. They were the embodiment of Maple Town values.


Our interest in developing and improving Maple Town revolutionized our view of every type of scrap material. Each piece of trash or ball of lint had a potential use as a miniature version of something else: the aluminum liner tray of an eye shadow compact could be removed, cleaned, and stacked as a baking pan with the other pots in the Parsley’s simple but utilitarian kitchen; one half of the closure to a manila envelope could be a pair of scissors in Rosemary Gordon’s school; broken electronic devices were mined for useful bits of wire, tiny screws and other representational fragments. We were always on the lookout.

In its final stages, the village occupied the entire loft above Y and D’s bedroom on Bucklebury Lane. Most houses were delineated by a simple footprint. Walls and roofs were imagined, leaving the interior of the home completely visible and subject to arrangement. Mole’s house was a shelf board with a broken doll sleigh set at the south end. The runnerless sleigh was split-level and served as a bedroom for the family, one level for the parents, and the other for Sarah and baby Arthur, a tiny plastic bear who had been gleaned from a Christmas ornament. Arthur wore diapers made from a scrap of flannel expertly wrapped with masking tape to form a stiff but lasting garment. Mousy, their beast of burden, was a flesh-toned pincushion whose simple appearance relegated him or her to a life pulling plough and wagon on the family’s farm.

Y was a master of masking tape construction. Among her greatest triumphs was the public bus. Exposed film from a 35mm camera served as windshield and passenger windows, the rest of the vehicle, including interior seating, was entirely made from extra-wide tape sculpted sticky-sides in, forming a leathery and durable vehicle.  Mr. Pigley drove the bus before he was injured in a drunk driving accident. Forever after, he wore a neck brace and a cast on his arm. After a lawsuit and a string of scandals involving sex abuse and other indiscretions, the Pigleys met a bad end. The young daughter was sealed in a Ziploc bag and buried in the backyard along with her parents.

Each phase of Maple Town became a clearer articulation of our values. As in many utopian communities, both real and imagined, there was a confluence of the future and the past. Progressive values and scientific knowledge were paired with rough fabrics, earthen floors, and hand-made pottery. Over time, the Maples’ spiritual beliefs went from Christianity, to Judaism, to a Pagan earth religion. There was a trend toward making all furnishings and objects appear more and more handcrafted and artisanal. Cardboard and factory-made furniture was replaced with balsa wood, which eventually gave way to expertly bent and fitted twigs.


The Maples gave up premade items not because they hadn’t invented factories, but because they had moved beyond sooty industrialization. Enlightenment lay in this elective return to nature. Like sober and well-organized Flower Children, they were turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.

These values had been handed down to us. I come from a long line of idealistic seekers. My grandmother, daughter of a muckraking journalist and a Swiss intellectual, spent early childhood in the Little Landers commune near San Diego. My mother weaves world-explaining narratives with the efficiency of a totalitarian information bureau, and my father had designed several passive solar houses in the full-scale utopian neighborhood where I found myself in 1989.

It was no coincidence that Y, D and I occupied our collective imagination and playtime by building this planned community and devising its culture. In many ways, Maple Town mirrored our own neighborhood, with its common backyards, networks of bike paths, urban farms and modestly scaled, passively oriented houses. For me, Maple Town was a way to recoup an identity that had exploded when my parents got divorced. Those truths that the grown-up world had abandoned were maintained and perfected in our miniature universe.

The completion of Maple Town’s most architecturally advanced structure also signaled its end as a grounded place. The mixed-use dollhouse had a clinic on the ground floor and the home of the doctor and his family on the upper levels. Framing was accomplished with plastered plywood and the thatched roof was made with real bundles of straw over a twig lattice. Floors were paved with smooth beach pebbles. Doors and shutters were bright red and were operable on tiny hinges. Plans and construction began on a new house for Mole, which was to be carved out of a solid Black Walnut stump.

But by this time, we were well into Jr. High, and Y and D were moving to a house without a loft. Eventually, the objects and people that comprised Maple Town’s physical presence were removed from their shelf-floor delineations and packed carefully into a series of coffee cans and shoeboxes. The bottle-cap pies from Mr. Gordon’s windowsill bakery and general store, along with house linens, furniture, camping gear and tinily written postcards, all fit neatly into a single banker’s box. The footprint of Maple Town’s material culture was minuscule compared to its psychic impact.

As I draw portraits of the Maples today, I am struck by the depth of personality they still show me. All their tastes and back-stories are written on their plastic faces. They are as real as any people one might have known. The impact of their civilization can be seen throughout my life and work.

Drawings from top:
Mole and His Family, 2011. Ink and Colored Pencil on paper. 24” x 24”
The Parsleys, 2011. Ink and Colored Pencil on paper. 24” x 24”

Foothill Idyll

My current paintings depict my friends and our leisure against the allegorical backdrop of my childhood home. It was the perfect weekend away. We experienced a heightening of senses caused by the elemental nature of the landscape coupled with bare concrete structures and the absence of cushions on the furniture. The fact that the toilet was clogged with roots and had flooded the bathroom meant that every nighttime pee was an opportunity for psychedelic stargazing. It’s just Hills, sky, oak out there. Some rocks to house the rattlesnakes. Our typical lounging had never felt so meaningful.

I am an admitted hangout junkie, often congregating with ten or more familiar individuals on a night out in the city. I don’t usually want to go to bed. Many unexpected delights and hilarities take place after closing time, often in the mayhem of 22nd street, as people look for partners in snacks and sex on their journey towards a peaceful morning’s sleep. At these hours, the city most closely resembles the freedom of the foothills. Biology takes over.

On this weekend away I began to understand why people in the 70’s wanted to start communes. Before my eyes were the images I had seen in the photo albums from before I was born. Someone had brought a guitar, the palette of food and indoor entertainment had been paired down to iced coffee, booze, one board game, vegetables from dad’s garden and things from the barbeque, including a suicidal quail that had flown into the window of the straw bale house and was plucked and cleaned by yours truly. The air was dry and hot, leaving prime young skin exposed for sun kissing. My hair was long and matched the grass, like my mother’s used to be.

But we are less attached than those ‘70’s nymphs, more urbanized, less morally guided by Cold War dualities. My parents went back to the land while we went back to the city. We couldn’t be luddites if we tried, and hope for social media and market-based solutions. The 29 year-old boy who had long hair and worked on barefoot organic farms was also once cast in a Hollywood movie to as an extra pirate. He shows me stars with his Google constellation-mapping app as we catch the night breeze on the circular roof patio of the tower bedroom.


It is possible that we grew up as the most privileged generation in the history of the world. But our future seems less certain. We are the generation that will really come to terms with the fact that China has better bridges and symphony halls. We are post war Paris, and China is New York. But times are different. We’re all connected on facebook.

In the transition from 29 to 30, I began to think of myself as a millennial flâneur, a girl/woman/dandy becoming more and more herself. Baudelaire and other white men started down this path to modern feelings. But I’m a New World woman. I grew in the California sun with dirt-clods between my toes and dry grass-seeds in the hems of my jeans. (I also like New York.) My personal cosmology is built out of this urban / foothill idyll as America is grows old and storied like a snobby grandmother.

Paintings from top:
29 Year Old Girls, 2011. Oil on Panel. 36” x 36”
30 Year Old Boys, 2011. Oil on Panel, 36” x 36”

Bill’s Debut

Bill the bunny was a real pet. His coat was so soft that it was hard to tell where the thin air stopped and the rabbit began. His motionlessness and his empty gaze betrayed either thoughtlessness or deep wisdom. He was the embodiment of cute, a canvass primed for projection.

Last Friday night, I rode my bike down to Valencia street to see my drawing, Bill (XL) hanging at Incline Gallery. Bill was created to be auctioned off, along with pieces donated by an impressive list of artists and collectors, to benefit the John Avalos for mayor campaign.

When I arrived at the opening, he was there. Tall and staring, with shiny black eyes and spotted fur. I had wanted him to be impressive, a big, big bunny in black and white. A tattooed and mustached skateboarder in a flat-brimmed Giants cap gestured up at him and said, “Sometimes I feel like Bill.”

Among other causes, I credit being near the Avalos campaign with a recent upsurge of my creative energy. And even more with my renewed desire to express and telegraph that energy. As my mother says, there’s nothing like community action to invigorate productive and purposeful feelings.

There’s an unjaded hopefulness in the office at 1750 Market street that has rubbed off on me. My former roommate and soul sister Heather Box was the first hire on the campaign and served as finance director until she left for Hanoi last week to launch the Million Person Project with her boyfriend Julian Mocine-McQueen of Green For All. When our new roommate and fast friend Sacha transplanted to San Francisco after a stint in Paris, she too was recruited by team Avalos and has had her marketing and production skills put to good use as communications director. You might say that I’ve been surrounded by the Avalos camp, but I’ve been a happy prisoner.

Free form events like Andy Blue’s Everywhere for Avalos day have inspired me to interact with my city in a new way. Things seem possible in a place where citizens create their own happenings in the name of a publicly-funded candidate, talk to their fellow San Franciscans in face to face interactions while flying kites, swimming in the bay, having lowrider parades, lemonade stands, and dance parties in the park, all while sharing their events and comments on facebook and twitter.

On a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago I was in my kitchen spooning out the flesh of an over-ripe watermelon that had been ignored in the face of an overabundance of CSA boxes at our flat. I wanted to make some watermelon juice with leftover limes from my Everywhere for Avalos lemonade stand.

As I served up some of the juice, Heather walked in and said, “Hey. So, Campaign Headquarters needs a sign for the awning out front. Can we commission you to stay up all night making it?”

I sipped my agua fresca and went to put on overalls.

There’s nothing like an unexpected design-build project to get to that concentrative creative high. The world falls away. You’re not sure if you know what you’re doing, but you will see if you can pull it off. We rushed to FLAX before it closed to get corrugated plastic board and consult with the guy behind the counter about which pens will be most durable for a semi-permanent outdoor installation (assuming there’s not much rain between Oct. 15 and Nov. 8.) This dude loves the markers. I can’t blame him.

After taking measurements of the naked awning armature, I set up shop on the concrete floor of campaign headquarters as Heather and Julian plan their first SF workshop for the Million Person Project, a practice run for the storytelling trainings they will be leading in Vietnam and Uganda. The fact that I’ve forgotten my exacto knife and that the box cutter at HQ is broken makes the job physically challenging. As always, however, there are advantages to working within the parameters of discomfort.

“J-O-H-N” (in small script) “A-V-A-L-O-S” (in leggy block caps), “Mayor”, smaller, below.

I finish stringing the letters together with fishing line long after my friends have gone home. I feel drained and excellent, like when I was a pre-teen working with my friends Yvonne and Dee Dee on the miniature city we built over years in the loft above their bedroom.

When I was told I should contribute something for the Art for Avalos event, I decided I would make a new drawing. I had developed a crush on the fat black Sharpie and the paint markers during my work on the sign, and the desire to draw something large and graphic led me back to Bill the Bunny, who I had created during an undergraduate projects class at NYU.

The original series of watercolored paper dolls was based on my little sister Rebecca’s dwarf rabbit, who was exactly like a stuffed animal besides the fact that he ate, breathed, pooped and peed sometimes, and hopped around very infrequently. He maintained a serene and unchanging appearance throughout his relatively long life in spite of the fact that his cage was located outdoors on the stairway leading up to Rebecca’s room in the tower. It’s hard to say how much time the wildlife on the foothill ranch spent watching him and licking their lips, but they never got him. Maybe he never noticed, or maybe he committed early on to living in the present.

As a paper doll, I brought him out into the world and gave him some face time as his alter-egos. The first being the Virgin Guadeloupe, with her flowing robes and crescent moon pedestal. He also appeared as a Florida voter (on the heels of the Bush/Gore election), a soccer player, Thomas Jefferson, and The Easter Bunny. To accompany his new XL persona at Incline, I produced a small zine of the paper dolls, co-branded for John Avalos for Mayor and with short biography of Bill, a shoutout to the flesh and blood original.

By the end of auction night, Bill had stood amongst his fellow artworks. He had introduced himself and he had introduced me. The campaign made some money.

I thought to myself, “Stop wasting time. Just make drawings and show them to people.”

I love Bill.