Planar Perception Essay

Quilting in “Everyday Use” symbolizes family heritage. They are a history of papers in fabric that vary over generations. They symbolize the family’s history of pride, poverty and struggle. Mama and Dee have different perspectives on what the quilts mean to the family heritage. As to Mama, the quilts have a special significance; when she goes to touch them, she is feeling the people who represented them, the ones who worked on them in her family. It represents the bond between women of different generations in their family. The quilts to Mama don’t only represent her understanding of heritage but also shows how she’s connected to them with her family. “I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands

On viewing her work, I am reminded of the traditional art of quilt making, an art once dismissed as “women’s work” but reevaluated by the Pattern and Decoration movement during the second wave of feminism during the 1970’s. Historically quilt makers have used its qualities to communicate political and social messages. For example, the Abolition quilts made during the US Civil war era were inscribed with messages decrying the evils of slavery. However, Gower uses the repetitions of the motifs and tessellations of quilt making practice to draw attention to the excesses of mass

physically and mentally, quilting has acted as an art that transcends racial barriers and to bring

Quilting can also be used for expression of oneself or for social commentary. Back in the 1800’s when there were many wars women would usually make quilts because they were what was needed in those times and the fabric was often hard to come by and it was usually saved for clothes making.” It was a means to escape from the isolation of their lifestyle and it allowed them the artistic freedom to express themselves. The quilts produced by our ancestors told stories about their lifestyles that could not be captured by pen and paper. Every quilt we see today, regardless of when the quilt was made, relates a story. The types of fabrics, the design of the quilt, the signature of the quilter, all reveal an intimate story of the woman or man who made the quilt.” (Meeske,Quilt Me a Story) They used quilting to get out of the bleakness and horrible things that were going on in their lives at the moment and put how they felt in the quilts. Around the mid-1800’s women quilted a lot more to show artistic talent, political views, and even their emotions. “Prior to a woman’s ability to vote, some women used their artistic talents and expressed their political views through a quilt. The issue of slavery in the United States in the mid-1800s led to quilt patterns called Slave Chain

The quilts are used in the representation of what heritage means to Mama and Maggie versus Dee’s view of them. Mama describes that:

Quilts have had many purposes and meanings all throughout history. They were used to shield individuals from the cold in the harsh winters, they were used for fashion, or they were made just to pass time. Over the years the purpose and meaning changed for the making of quilts. In early modern times women expressed their feelings and love by making quilts, which they had the pleasure to pass down to their sons or daughters. Quilts that have been passed down through generation to generation have some of these meaning; love, bond, and trust. My Avid class is making a quilt to represent the bond, respect, and trust we all formed together. We have all been entrusted to make a piece of decorated fabric with symbols that represents my class and I.

I used color to best show this because I used colors that I have an emotional connection to. For example, one emotional color I used was red. I used dark shades of red in the background because red, to me, represents chaos and fighting. Me and my brother do not always get along and some of our fights can get very heated and result in a lot of pain to either person, however I feel that more recently we have been able to rely on each other more regardless of the disagreements. Another color that I feel represents me and my brother is yellow, a happy and carefree color.

In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”, two homemade quilts become the center of conflict between the narrator of the story, Mama, and her two daughters, Dee and Maggie. Dee is fascinated by the two homemade quilts and wants to use them as art or to display. For Mama, the significance of the quilts represents a deep family history. The quilts were made from pieces and reminders of passed family members. Mama had previously promised the quilts would be handed down to her younger daughter Maggie.

Culturally, the symbolism of a quilt is understood to be an heirloom piece that is closely guarded and highly prized. The ownership of the quilt and the generational lines it passes down is known before the piecing is begun. Stitching the pieces together is done by groups of women. The tiny bits of cloth each carry a memory, one from grandpa's shirt, one square from an aunt's Christmas dress, a piece from the flannel nightgown a mother wore as she pulled her sick child close to her bosom. The pieces are carefully and artistically pieced together into a collage of

Linear perspective was created in the fourteen and fifteenth century during the Renaissance time. Renaissance artist had the greatest advantage because that's when there was a lot of people that were studying math, science, and art. When they would paint they would paint two dimensional and what artist wanted was to paint in a three dimensional, so they would start off at the vanishing point and make objects that are far and make them appear small and objects that are near appear big. Filippo Brunelleschi and Masaccio were the first to create a painting using linear perspective that was created in 1415, Giotto was also one of the first ones to use linear perspective.

The concept of linear perspective is simple to understand. There is a horizon line, which is the point where the sky meets the ground. There is a vanishing point, which is where all the lines of the painting run inward to meet the horizon line (Exploring Linear Perspective).

When used well, the arts are the cement that brings all the disparate curricular areas together. In the best schools, this is often the case. The arts are valued for their interdisciplinary potential. The result is a more cohesive curriculum in which students explore relationships across disciplines. . . . the arts in conjunction with other aspects of the curriculum afford students more complete and compelling conceptions. (p. 7)

She further analyzed many artworks based on the process of toning. Though some artists paint with one layer, those that paint with multiple layers enhances the objects in the painting. The color that appears on the surface underwent multiple shades in order to obtain the desirable color. After analyzing Ship Carpenter at His Hobby, 1872, Helena’s second group approached the artwork Women Embroidering, 1904. Two differences I distinguished from the comparison of these two artworks are the time period as well as the visual context. I had paid less attention to the story behind this portrait because there was less detail. Women Embroidery, though looked unique because of its lack of details (which could have been intentional), did not have much space. Helena described it as “flat.” She infers that as time period increases, artists were becoming more focused on flatness, painting on the surface and ignoring the layers of tone and landscape space. Another artwork that we analyzed was the Back Surgery. Dating back to the 1600s, this portrait was created with underpaintings and a few touch ups. It could be inferred that the artist intended to leave the underpainting in order to bring out the procedure. On the surface lies a realistic, colored curtain that seemed to have been drawn by the audience, and staring straight at the artist/audience was the patient. With these observations, I

A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber, just like the United States. The United States is made up of three important factors, language, religion, and race. “That's because it was built of bits and pieces that seem discordant, like the crazy quilts..” (Boorstin, 3). Quilts can have many different patterns

Linear perspective is a form of perspective in drawing and painting. Parallel lines in linear perspective are represented as converging, so as to give the illusion of depth and distance. It was mastered for the first time during the Italian Renaissance. The most common types of perspective are one-point two-point and three-point perspective. Linear perspective is important because it helps the artist create more realistic or believable images as well as more realistic architecture designs.