Sewing the Seasons
Opinion
In this unfinished winter, the hope for new life ahead By
Eugene RobinsonColumnist|AddFollowDecember 21, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST
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Avis struggled more in settling on a concept for “Winter” than with any of the other pieces. Throughout the series, she has experimented with ways to create depth and perspective in abstract works “painted” with fabric. She wanted to push that further with “Winter,” but sketch after sketch didn’t quite capture the feeling she was after. As she worked and reworked the motif that became the final design, she knew it had promise; she was satisfied with the way the shapes and lines led the viewer’s eye around and inward, and she was very happy with the palette. The blacks, grays, beiges and icy blues told of the harshness of the season, while the greens and yellows seemed to herald the new cycle of birth and growth that lay in the offing. The design was done — but then again, it wasn’t, not really. Something was missing.
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Then one day, in late summer, she came upstairs from her studio with a new sketch, laid it on the kitchen table and said, “Got it.” She had added the long white streaks that crisscross the composition, tying it together and adding jolts of energy. And she had drawn the bull’s-eye-like figure in the center. I asked her where that had come from, and she shrugged. It just needed to be there.
Avis knew that making the piece would be a tough technical challenge, and she was looking forward to solving it. The simplest way would have been to sew the whole background together and appliqué the white streaks on top, but that was not how she rolled: Her fabric art was true patchwork, with all the panels of fabric sewn together in the same plane, not in layers. It was hard enough to piece different fabrics together along curves or spiky angles and make the whole thing lie flat, without bunching or puckering. Inserting those striking white lines would have been harder still.
She used the sketch to make the painting you see here. Next, she traced the painting onto a large sheet of paper, which she then cut into a pattern, which she would have used to cut out the dozens of pieces of fabric to be sewn together in “Winter.” Before she fell ill, Avis had rummaged through her color-coded supply of remnants left over from prior projects and picked out a few that might have worked. Her next step would have been a trip to the fabric store. She wanted to match the colors she had painted, of course; often, to get just the right hue, she would buy white fabric and dye it at home. She used cotton shirtings, wide-wale corduroys, raw silks, even the occasional wool tweed — but only natural fabrics. Any elastane or nylon in the cloth, even a little, made it slippery and unreliable when sewn into the piece and later quilted.
As for the essay, Avis didn’t tell me if she intended to begin with a childhood memory or a little-known fact of American history, as in the other pieces she wrote. My guess is that she might have opened with a reminiscence of sledding down the long, gentle hill in her family’s backyard with her sister and brothers, and trying not to crash into the creek at the bottom.
She did say, though, that she wanted this final piece to be upbeat. And she wanted to explain how much this project had meant to her. She took “Sewing the Seasons” as a challenge to grow as an artist — and an opportunity to situate her art in the broader context of African American history, culture and tradition. Avis would have ended, I am sure, by expressing her gratitude for the chance to do work she found deeply fulfilling.
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Avis Collins Robinson was a visual artist best known for her paintings and abstract quilts that explored race, gender, oppression and conflict in American history.
Eugene Robinson is a Post Opinions columnist.
For Avis Collins Robinson, the artist who created these works heralding the seasons, winter meant both an end and a beginning. The bare trees and sere landscape were stark, but they held the promise of spring and renewal — not a mere hope but a promise. Short daylight hours grew longer, slowly but inexorably. Tulips and daffodils planted as bulbs in late autumn absorbed the nutrients that would, in due time, fuel their colorful eruption. The year ended; the year began.
Avis, who was my wife, did not live to finish the fourth and final piece in her “Sewing the Seasons” series, nor did she get to write the essay that would have accompanied it. Avis died Oct. 28 after a sudden and brief battle with cancer. She hated to leave anything unfinished: During her final stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she became, as far as anyone knows, the first patient to insist that a sewing machine be brought to her room in the Weinberg Intensive Care Unit, amid all the beeping monitors. She had me bring her some fabric, too, along with the pattern she had cut out for “Winter.” She was determined to work. Sadly, she didn’t have the strength.
But she had completed the design for “Winter,” in the form of a large acrylic-on-canvas painting — an important step in the process by which she created “Spring,” “Summer” and “Autumn.” She told me about the technical challenges involved in transforming her vision into a finished piece of quilted fabric art. And I have a sense of what she might have said in the “Winter” essay. My words are a poor substitute for hers, but I will do my best.
Avis struggled more in settling on a concept for “Winter” than with any of the other pieces. Throughout the series, she has experimented with ways to create depth and perspective in abstract works “painted” with fabric. She wanted to push that further with “Winter,” but sketch after sketch didn’t quite capture the feeling she was after. As she worked and reworked the motif that became the final design, she knew it had promise; she was satisfied with the way the shapes and lines led the viewer’s eye around and inward, and she was very happy with the palette. The blacks, grays, beiges and icy blues told of the harshness of the season, while the greens and yellows seemed to herald the new cycle of birth and growth that lay in the offing. The design was done — but then again, it wasn’t, not really. Something was missing.
Then one day, in late summer, she came upstairs from her studio with a new sketch, laid it on the kitchen table and said, “Got it.” She had added the long white streaks that crisscross the composition, tying it together and adding jolts of energy. And she had drawn the bull’s-eye-like figure in the center. I asked her where that had come from, and she shrugged. It just needed to be there.
Avis knew that making the piece would be a tough technical challenge, and she was looking forward to solving it. The simplest way would have been to sew the whole background together and appliqué the white streaks on top, but that was not how she rolled: Her fabric art was true patchwork, with all the panels of fabric sewn together in the same plane, not in layers. It was hard enough to piece different fabrics together along curves or spiky angles and make the whole thing lie flat, without bunching or puckering. Inserting those striking white lines would have been harder still.
She used the sketch to make the painting you see here. Next, she traced the painting onto a large sheet of paper, which she then cut into a pattern, which she would have used to cut out the dozens of pieces of fabric to be sewn together in “Winter.” Before she fell ill, Avis had rummaged through her color-coded supply of remnants left over from prior projects and picked out a few that might have worked. Her next step would have been a trip to the fabric store. She wanted to match the colors she had painted, of course; often, to get just the right hue, she would buy white fabric and dye it at home. She used cotton shirtings, wide-wale corduroys, raw silks, even the occasional wool tweed — but only natural fabrics. Any elastane or nylon in the cloth, even a little, made it slippery and unreliable when sewn into the piece and later quilted.
As for the essay, Avis didn’t tell me if she intended to begin with a childhood memory or a little-known fact of American history, as in the other pieces she wrote. My guess is that she might have opened with a reminiscence of sledding down the long, gentle hill in her family’s backyard with her sister and brothers, and trying not to crash into the creek at the bottom.
She did say, though, that she wanted this final piece to be upbeat. And she wanted to explain how much this project had meant to her. She took “Sewing the Seasons” as a challenge to grow as an artist — and an opportunity to situate her art in the broader context of African American history, culture and tradition. Avis would have ended, I am sure, by expressing her gratitude for the chance to do work she found deeply fulfilling.
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