Available Art Quilts

Note: This is the last art quilt Ruth made before her passing.

”I came across the Yayno, Peru, buildings while investigating Peruvian archaeology online. This place amazed me. The Recuay culture was active from about 200 to 700 AD. This village, fortification and sacred center was built on the top of a mountain at 13,000 feet elevation. The site has been looked at archaeologically, but not apparently in real depth.

I had never seen pictures anywhere in the world of such a beautiful use of megalithic-type stones, of many different kinds, along with rectangular trimmed horizontals (sils). On the bottom left stone in my quilt, I’ve drawn a human to give you a sense of the scale of this astounding piece of architecture. The same system of stones was also used for huge curved walls. The Recuay culture had fine ceramics and excellent textiles. The climate conditions did not allow many textiles to survive. Some of the fascinating ceramics are now in museums. 

In order to bring attention to this place, Yayno, I decided to make a quilt. To tie it visually to Peru and the Recuay, I incorporated some human figures in the borders. Many Recuay ceramics incorporate humans into their designs, so I used them as a starting place to draw the figures for this quilt. In the ceramics, the many of the eyes and mouths were drawn the way you see here. All of the male figures had large elaborate ear spools. Buttons seemed a logical choice in the quilt.

Recuay textiles were woven or made as tapestries. Sometimes designs were painted on cloth. The colors used were mostly browns, tans, reds, yellows, white and black. Trying to confine myself to those hues in choosing fabrics from my stash was difficult. The yellow stripe border is Guatemalan, purple plaid Indian, some fabric pieces African, some Indonesian, some American, a red ikat brushed like flannel a surprise, some hand-dyed by other quiltmakers, and the outer border Marimekko from Finland.   

I hope the world gets to see and celebrate this wonderful place.”