Morning Glories for Georgia © Pam Geisel

Morning Glories for Georgia

Pam Geisel

Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA

Artist Statement

The hardest part of making this quilt was deciding what flower to use. As much as I love Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of skulls and skyscrapers, I think she is best known for her paintings of larger-than-life flowers.

So I looked at her paintings of flowers. And I looked at photographs of flowers. And I took my own photographs of flowers to look at. I considered Jack-in-the-Pulpits because there is a quilt square that goes by that name, but I didn’t like the colors in them.

I ended up looking through my stash of hand-dyed fabric and let the colors inspire me. Luckily there are many colors of morning glory flowers.

I decided to have two flowers in my piece because many of her morning glory paintings also had two flowers, but I did come up with my own composition.

When I drew the outline of the morning glories I did intentionally avoid any sharp edges trying to keep the shapes as organic as possible. And I focused on keeping Georgia’s intention of glorifying the humble flower without expressing any intentional reference to female genitalia.

Woman’s Groundbreaking Accomplishment

Georgia O’Keeffe was a famous American artist and is recognized as the “Mother of American Modernism.”

Techniques

Raw-edge machine applique, machine quilted.

Materials

Hand-dyed cotton fabric, cotton/polyester batting, hand-spun yarn.