Into Art
Into Art
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 1990 Ad Buck Rogers Rockets into future Role Play Game Pictorial Graphic Arts  US $12.95
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 1944 IN THE FORD MOTOR KITCHENTHIS LITTLE ENGINE SPUTTERED INTO LIFE ART AD US $7.00
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 1945 AIRLINE INDUSTRY PROMO ART AD STEP INTO THE NEW WORLD POST WAR US $7.00
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 1991 GLORIA ESTEFAN INTO THE LIGHT TOUR SALES PROMO ART AD BY BARCARDI BREEZER US $7.00
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 1982 ADIDASSLIPPING INTO FASHIONLOW GEAR AD ART US $5.95
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 1949 GREYHOUND BUS LINESTHE SWING INTO SPRING AD ART US $5.95
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 1940 JANTZEN SWIM SUITS AND SUN CLOTHES Ad ArtSTEP INTO SUMMER Print US $5.95
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How A Quilt Maker Became A Famous Artist
Imagine that you are living on a small farm in a cold place. Life is hard and you have to make do with whatever is at hand in order to survive. You live off the land and your livestock. You use whatever money you earn from selling eggs or your labor for buying necessities like clothes and you wear the clothes until they wear out.
Nothing goes to waste because everything has value. When your clothes are too worn out to patch together again, you keep whatever scraps you can and make patchwork quilts out of them. The first quilt sets ever made were sewn by hand like this. The were items made from necessity.
In order to make your quilts cozy and warm, you learn from your geese and ducks, who fluff their feathers to keep warm. You collect and save all the feathers and separate the coarse larger feathers from the fluffy white down. Little by little, you fill your quilt with them until it is filled with down and warm as toast. Oh, what a luxurious feeling!
Winters are long where you live and you have a lot of time on your hands, because you are indoors so much. To pass the time, you start making more decorative quilts from the brightest and best swatches of material you have. You fill these with your finest down. Because money is short, you take them to the market to sell.
One spring day, a wealthy matron notices your handiwork and compliments you on it. She asks you if you would make a quilt for her. She will supply you with the materials, because yours are too coarse for her. You are thrilled, because she offers to pay you well for your work.
No one can say for sure who made the first luxury quilt set, but it's a good bet its origin was something like that described above. Even though modern quilts are rarely hand-stitched, there is still a mystique about patchwork quilts. As a matter of fact, a famous quilt artist learned her craft by stitching together quilts in a tiny stone dwelling in her freezing Orkney island home.
Today, that woman lives on a larger farm in the Kentucky hills. She no longer makes patchwork quilts for her family. She makes works of art that hang in some of the best galleries in America. Her husband doesn't have to cut firewood with a handsaw, but he still cuts his own, using husqvarna chainsaws. She and her large family still live modestly, even though she is a well known artist.
Is there a moral to this story? Maybe not, but it's true. Sometimes, the most humble craft can evolve into high art.
"Goldfish Salvation" Riusuke Fukahori
