Nora McKeon Ezell created this quilt out of cotton in Alabama in 1977. He used the eight pointed Bethlehem star and changed the shapes of the points in order to create this piece. It is apparently endowed by the Great American Quilt festival (I guess quilts are a genre of art!), so I’m assuming it’s one of the more famous quilts out there. I saw this alone at the American Folk Art Museum, which has quickly turned into one of my top two favorite museums.
But back to the piece. It struck me because I was raised with Christmas stories of Jesus being born under the Star of David. The piece of art I helped create was a Nativity play in which I played a magi, following the star to Jesus. With Christmas time so near, looking at the colorful variations of this star from my childhood awakened many memories. Another reason why I liked it so much to put it on my blog is because I grew up underneath a blanket (old and torn but totally mine), and yet more memories were evoked.
This piece of art made me feel as if I was home. Its intricate design absorbed my eye, and its shape and genre led me into my memories, and I felt as if I was a kid lost in another world. I feel that successful art uses memories and familiar shapes to usher us into the grander world within the piece of art. And I feel like all art has a duty to bring us into new worlds, be them worlds that are more exciting or safer or just plain more beautiful than what we are experiencing now. Quilts and stories and paintings should all provide some sort of solace or stimulation.
When I saw that quilt, the world I was ushered into was one in which I was sleeping underneath the blanket of the starry sky. I felt safe with the constellations warm around me. I felt comforted in the world of art. Being an aspiring novelist, I need that sort of homelike feel in my art. So many of my favorite writers have committed suicide from depression, perhaps because the worlds they created were grim, and they became stuck in there. I want the exegetic space that I create to be cheerful and joyful, because I know that there’s a chance that I won’t come out of it. I want to create a world that I wouldn’t mind being trapped in.
Artist: Nora McKeon Ezell
Title: Star Quilt
Date of Work: 1977
Materials/Medium: Cotton and Synthetic
Duration: December 2011
Genre: Quilt
Venue: American Folk Art Museum
Friends? I was alone.
