StitchPunk (through July 13)
Domestic Partners (through June 15)
New England Quilt Museum
18 Shattuck Street
Lowell, MA
On a recent trip home from Maine Emily wanted to stop at the New England Quilt Museum (NEQM). I was only mildly interested and planned to walk about and take photos instead. Into every life a little rain must fall and, in my case, threatening weather was a good thing. I went inside the NEQM and adored the two featured exhibits.
StitchPunk is, of course, wordplay on Steampunk, but it was also a marvel of imagination and creativity. First, though, let me say a few words about steampunk. It was all the rage in the late 1990s and into the first decade and a half of the 21st century. The term is associated with dreamers and science fiction writers who use the trappings of the Victorian world, but replace modern technology with shiny brass gears and steam power rather than our current (pun intended) reliance on electricity and petroleum. Steampunk ardor has cooled a bit, but it still has allure. Its critics associate it with hipsters doing hipster things and those who dislike science fiction for its assumed lack of “science” and its alleged animus toward “progress.”
Courtesy of a book by Simon Webb titled The Real World of Victorian Steampunk, I’m prepared to tell such people that they are nuts! Do you remember that Elon Musk design for a vacuum tube rail system? A steam-powered version was successfully demonstrated in 1867. In1903, the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane, right? Nope! Several steam-powered airplanes got off the ground in the 1880s and 1890s and traveled further than the flimsy gas-powered wood and canvas box of the Wrights. Solar power was proved a good idea in 1878, and in the same century steam-powered buses, ocean-going boats, telephones, and fax machines were operational. So too were electric cars capable of reaching over 150 mph and the prototypes of Skye and computers. The very world of oil and gasoline to which fanatics so zealously cling came to dominate for the same reasons they remain: the discovery of oil led self-interested investors to promote machines using it and demote steam machines, some of which were superior. So there!
The show at the NEQM doesn’t seek to rekindle such battles, rather it focuses on stitchers and quilters who wanted to do create unique and unusual fabric art. Like steampunk writers, a lot of what they do upsets traditionalists. Is it a “quilt” if it contains wire, dryer vents, gears, hardware, jewelry, mannequin faces, and glass jars? Why not? As the below pictures show, it’s cool stuff no matter what labels you want to slap on it.
I would suppose the wooden marionette fashioned by Bruce Rosenbaum, Isaac Singer: The Time Stitcher doesn’t fit rigid definitions either, though many of the pieces you see are decidedly sewing-related. (If you don’t know, this is the Singer associated with a famed line of sewing machines that still bear his name.)
You only have a few more weeks to catch Domestic Partners, which is more on the calm side–in both design and intent. Fiber artist Dawn Allen pays homage to the farm animals of her youth as well as domesticated companions, and woodland critters. Her show skirts the borders of “Ahh, cute!” but in a good way.
Rob Weir
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1 comment:
Rob,
This looks like an extremely interesting exhibition. I love steampunk and I also love the history of early aviation. I'm a huge fan of Alberto Santos~Dumont, the Brazilian inventor who did all his flying experiments in public in front of thousands of spectators and judges who documented his flights. Santos~Dumont was flying around Paris in his own private dirigible in the 1890's but it was his 1906 flight in his 14bis heavier than air machine was the first publicly observed and documented heavier than air flight. Many other early aviation pioneers managed to get some machines up in the air for short hops but true controlled flight of airplanes didn't happen until after 1906. The Wright brothers took their machine to France in 1907 to demonstrate their superior machine but the French mocked their airplane because it needed to be catapulted into the air on rails and they had to steer by warping the wings with their body. Santos~Dumont's machine took off on it's own power with a wheeled landing gear and he steered by hand controls including his invention of the aileron. I think you would have difficulty in documenting your statement about steam powered airplanes traveling further than the Wright brothers. My main beef with the Wrights is that they saw the airplane as a military machine and they ended up patenting heavier than air flight which severely limited other American inventors. Alexander Graham Bell and Glenn Curtiss moved to Canada to continue their aviation experiments. It wasn't until WW1 broke out that the US realized that the Wright's patent had stymied US experimenters and revoked their patent with the stipulation that the government recognized them as the inventors of the airplane. As a fellow cinephile I wonder if you've seen Karel Zeman's 1967 entertaining film The Stolen Airship. I think you would really enjoy it.
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