Artist Statement

I love working on puzzles: crosswords, acrostics, cryptograms, and other teasers that challenge the mind.  This sense of solving problems also extends to family, community, and the world at large.  In my community, I help to make sure that those in need of quilts get them: flood victims, veterans, children, women's shelters, etc.  I also donate quilts for fund-raising groups: my guilds, schools, San Francisco's Gay Men's Chorus, to name a few.

Quilt-making gives me that outlet to make poetic statements.  Sometimes it's simply a way to provoke a question, such as: "Why is that pig in that quilt?" and the response is: "I date my quilts by the year of the Asian animal - made in the Year of the Pig."  I may include other literary elements: puns, metaphors, riddles, personal history, rebuses, and plain ole jokes - do you know the joke about the three-legged pig?  Ask me.

I also make rugs using the twining method.  And I make tin people out of recycled cans, lids, wire: any tinware!  On weekends I run a tasting room at a winery in Capitola, CA.

Back to quilt-making - sometimes I like using the block design.  Sometime I layer fabric, and just cut out the block and mix the layers to recreate the blocks - no measuring.  I also like to reinterpret a common block, such as Double Wedding Ring, Lone Star, Sunbonnet Sue, Pickle Dish, Broken Dishes, etc.  People often ask me where do I get my fabric?  My response: "It comes to me."  And finally, I feel as though I've made a successful quilt if it makes people laugh, or if it makes people say, "Hey, that looks like kids made that quilt."  I love kid art.

 

 

© 2014 Mike McNamara, All Rights Reserved