|
Written by Martha Marques
|
|
Saturday, 02 January 2010 14:57 |
 |
Ahi o' Pele (Flames of Pele) is my very first Hawaiian quilt. This is a scan of a photograph, which is all I have as an image of this quilt. It was purchased by the State of Hawaii for it's Art in Public Places program and I was blown away by the fact that a piece of my work would be left in Hawaii after I was gone. The background is black cotton and the foreground is cut from one piece of red fabric, like the snowflakes we used to cut out of paper in grade school. The stitiching is done in red thread and echoes around the image. It evokes the red lava glowing in the cracks between the folds of the pahoehoe lava. |
 |
Imagine my surprise when Lau Puka Puka (Leaf With Holes) was purchased by the State of Hawaii for the same Art in Public Places program and was hung outside the governor's office in Honolulu! I have a better image of this one since we had upgraded to slides. This quilt is 7 feet square and the leaves are about two feet across, which is exactly the same size as the leaves are in nature. In fact my son Blake and I went for a walk and picked a few leaves to use as patterns when I designed this quilt. It is a winter quilt, and the tiny green specks of the echo quilting stitches suggest the winter rains falling on the vibrant green of the wet leaves and the shiny black of the lava rock. |
 |
Li'i Li'i Ahi Pua o' Lehua (Little Flame Flower of Ohia) is another winter quilt and was my third Hawaiian quilt. It, too, is 7 feet square and I used the green stitching as I had in Lau Puka Puka to suggest the winter rains. The Ohia trees have little paintbrush flowers that glow bright red against the olive green of the leaves and the greyish black of the Ohia trunks. This quilt was the last time that I used commercially dyed fabrics for my work. After this I switched over to hand dyes. This quilt is also the point at which the Hawaiian women in Hui Kapa Apana o' Hilo (The Quilt Group of Hilo) gave up on getting me to do Hawaiian quilting properly. My black backgrounds were non-traditional and the use of a third color is also not orthodox. This is when my friend Sharon Balai said I did "Irish Hawaiian" quilting. |
|
|
Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 11:55 |
Comments