Source: www.lillianblades.com
From the Artist: Lillian Blades – “Quilted Passages”
While creating the idea for this space I thought about the passages and transitions one makes in life’s physical and spiritual journeys and metaphorically how the airport environment offers so many means of passage (such as elevators, shuttles trains, and airplanes).
I wanted to show the passage of life from the baby spirit to the wisdom of the ancestral spirits through the use of dresses. I choose not to fill the dresses with physical bodies to emphasize our spirit. I also wanted to evoke the cyclic continuum of life’s journeys by celebrating both those who have passed as well as those that are yet to come or return.
I aimed to visually translate into this quilted tapestry of paintings and found objects, the collective spirit of those who came before us and the wealth of wisdom they have left.
The act of quilting (or for me, attaching by various means) is a way to make sense of the fragments of information I know for sure. The niches or shadowed spaces represent the somewhat mysterious understanding or things not known. The empty frames reference the potential of those things created, rediscovered or reclaimed in our lives.
The implied motherly dresses form protective archways or passageways for the new or returning spirits that will embody the white dresses that await on hangers. The pure white baby dresses filled with vigor and potential have not yet been patterned or stained with the experience and wisdom of the motherly quilted dresses, but they show the long passage and transition that exists between the two.
The dress will eventually become a part of the quilt.
It is my desire that “Quilted Passage” evoke a visual comfort for traveler
Source: www.lillianblades.com