“Purple Girl”

“Purple Girl”
Copyright 2017 by Susan Brubaker Knapp

I’m thrilled to announce that my latest work, “Purple Girl,” has been juried into the next Dinner @ Eight Artists’ exhibition, “Personal Iconography: Graffiti on Cloth.” The show will debut at International Quilt Festival in Houston this fall.

The call for entries included these prompts:

• An artistic expression based on personal style
• An underlying social message
• A story that is told through lines, shapes and imagery
• A graphic landscape that conveys a story
• A mark, an object, an idea

It is 40" square, and is made from white fabric, acrylic textile paint, wool batting, cotton thread, and cotton backing fabric. Wholecloth painted and free-motion machine quilted.  

Artist’s Statement: The purple girl I love is creative and complex: she composes music, creates her own alphabet and language, and writes novels. She sees sounds in color, and is an expert in monotremes. She dreams of swimming as a mermaid. 

This piece is about my eldest daughter. The things in this piece represent her primary passions: language (English words and Arithian, the language/alphabet she created), music,  water and the creatures in it, monotremes (the platypus) – and her dream of swimming like a mermaid (the mermaids’ purses in the lower left). And the purple? It’s her favorite color.

Note: “Mermaid’s purses” are skate egg sacks, sometimes found washed up on the beach. You can read more about them here: http://www.sanibelseaschool.org/experience-blog/2014/5/23/what-comes-out-of-those-mermaids-purses

The thirty pieces in the exhibition are listed on the Dinner @ Eight Artists’ blog.