Hooked Rug c. 1936

Lillian M. Mosseller, born in 1855, made this hooked rug design - or maybe it's a quilt design - and the whole surface is feverishly activated with a network of tiny, tiny strokes. It’s like she’s trying to fill every bit of space with her mark-making! I can only imagine what Mosseller was thinking as she built up this design: this isn't just about decoration, this is a kind of compulsive seeing. It’s amazing how the ruby red color gives such a sense of liveliness to the piece; you know, sometimes you just want to make the whole damn world red! There's something so wonderfully relentless about the repetition in this piece, like Agnes Martin doing craft. You see, artists are always in conversation, even across generations. Think about Hilma af Klint and her contemporaries, or even further back to folk art traditions. They all show us that art is a continuous process of building, questioning, and creating new ways of seeing. It's all about possibilities, not prescriptions.