Quilt #231
11″ wide by 16″ high
Recently our Inland Empire Modern Quilt guild had a challenge that required that we use at least 4″ square piece of classic blue fabric, that any one side be no longer than 24″ and that the theme was Urban.
I’m on the board for this Guild, and am VP of Communications, so to help advertise it, I set up a mood board and we handed out a card with the 4″ square of fabric stapled to it. We chose Lapis, a Painters Palette solid from Paintbrush Studio, and I purchased several packets of it from Pineapple Fabrics, when they ran a booth at Road to California.
Then Covid-19 hit and it scuttled our plans. Like most, we were knocked flat for a bit, but then put together a Zoom meeting and resurrected our challenge. We had several amazing entries, seen on the guild website.
MetaStructure/Metaesquema was my entry (seen above).
I wrote on my label:
Helio Oiticica, a Brazilian artist (1937-1980), made hundreds of his Metaesquema paintings. Here are a few:
I like the way the solid blocks in the Metaesquemas kind of slump into each other, like a square that lost its energy, or tried to take off and was misdirected, or else it was trying to get away and couldn’t get free of the grid.
As noted above, Oiticica was closely linked to the global Concrete movement. They stripped art from any lyrical or symbolic connotations, believing that art should have no meaning other than color, line, and plane. Kind of sounds like catnip to a quilter, doesn’t it?
He created his Metaesquemas between 1957 and 1958. He coined the term as a means to “describe a work that, although schematic (esquema) in its formal development, is still open to the subjective interpretations inherent to metaphysics (meta). Oiticia was aware that artworks are objects that exist in time and space,” and are subject to the viewers’ interpretation (Philips).
For the contruction, I made wide 1-1/2″ borders around my blue squares, then created a tilt on them that I liked. I cut a few tilting to the left and a few tilting to the right, then arranged them. Of course, I would like to try this in a bigger quilt, with more white space around the tilted squares, but for a first go at it, I’m pretty happy.
Hop over to the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild website to see all the entries and the winners.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 
What a fun challenge and the submissions were outstanding! I loved your MetaStructure and was reminded of our Four In Art days.
I too remembered our art challenge quilts from “Four In Art”. I love the movement you’ve created with the placement of your pretty blue squares!
What a good guild challenge! I love that Lapis color, and like how you reinterpreted these Meta… designs. I’m smiling because not only can I not spell it correctly, I can’t think of how it’s pronounced! Wish I could hear you say it, in person. 🙂 In any case, I really like your interpretation of the fabrics and “Urban.” I hope you have a spot to hang it up and enjoy.
That’s a great challenge! And in blue???? 😉 You did such a nice job with it. It was a great Covid project.
I hate to tell you this, but your label says May 2017 instead of May 2020. Thanks for writing your interesting blog.
Thanks for the introduction to Oiticia. Fascinating works. And I enjoyed your quilt that it inspired.
I was not familiar with this artist—thanks!
Great interpretation of Helio Oiticica’s work, and thank you for the link to get to go see everyone else’s submission. I’m glad that you were able to dust off the challenge for the guild and have participation after adjustment to COVID19.
Elizabeth it’s a beautiful quilt. Love the challenge and thanks for the link to see the other projects.
My quilt Boxed for the Its Hip to be Square Blog Hop was very much in line with this idea.
I was not familiar with this artist, but find him fascinating. Thanks for broadening my horizons
Wow, you and your Guild really have it together! How great to still be able to meet like that and provide a forum for the challenge. I love that Lapis blue you chose and I’d never heard of that artist – enjoyed learning something new today. And your mini is stunning!