Coverlet c. 1940

Carmel Wilson made this small coverlet, sometime before 1995, using what looks like cross-stitch on a woven ground. It’s that lovely combo of reds, greens, and purples that I find so appealing in folk art, so grounded, but also kind of wild. I really get into the way the image wavers, how it both states the words so clearly and then kind of dissolves them into just pure texture. The little gestures of needle and thread make a topography of tiny marks. It’s so methodical and yet full of all these tiny accidents and variations. The way the pattern at the bottom becomes almost floral – it makes you think about growth, domesticity, and labor all at once. It reminds me of some of the patterns in Gee’s Bend quilts, or maybe even the obsessive surfaces of some outsider art. Like those, it makes you realize that art isn’t just about what it represents but about the whole process of making, how the hand can make meaning out of sheer repetition.