‘Man-made’ quilts

By Jessica Gelt

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES

“How would a guy make a quilt?” Joel Otterson asked himself when he began his foray into the craft.

“He would make it out of concrete and stone,” he answered. And so he did.

Otterson’s “quilts” consist of interlinking blocks of concrete, stone and ceramics that are meant to be walked and danced on rather than slept under.

Otterson is one of eight artists involved in “Man-Made: Contemporary Male Quilters,” that opened Jan. 25 at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles and is curated by CAFAM Executive Director Suzanne Isken.

Cluttered with heavy- metal iconography and images of guns, basketballs, caustic political commentary and the occasional expertly executed log cabin pattern, the “Man-Made” quilts prove that testosterone and needlework aren’t mutually exclusive.

Men have been quilting since the dawn of the 19th century, but these artists express a fresh and irreverent sense of masculinity and in some cases sexuality through mismatched patches of fabric like never before.

For them, quilting is not an attention-grabbing shtick.

Isken says the pieces on display fall in the category of fine art based on their technical acumen and their ability to push aesthetic boundaries and upend accepted themes of the traditional medium.

The art quilts of “Man-Made” seek to sweep gender paradigms into history’s dustbin, showing how the modern men joining the global sewing circle add a boisterous voice of virility to a traditionally soft conversation, with interesting wrinkles.

In addition to his work with concrete, Otterson sews fabric quilts.

“I put a big naked cowboy in the middle of it, just because I could,” he says, giggling over a quilt in his colorful downtown LA studio. “When in doubt, put some nudity in it, I always say.”

He says if women can become CEOs of major corporations, he can sit at home and sew.

Cluttering nearly every surface of his light-filled space overlooking the damp concrete cavity of the LA River: beads, a riot of fabric, a kiln, a vintage black May’d Best sewing machine on a wooden table with a knee pedal and piles of books, including a worn copy of “Woman’s Day Book of American Needlework.”

Otterson, 55, says in his “old age” he has come to prefer needlework. He thinks of it as his own brand of feminism. Or is it feminist-lite?

The question of gender and gender identity is a source of debate when it comes to male quilters, curator Isken says.

It began when Michael James, a leader of the art-quilt movement that blossomed in the 1970s, wrote to the editor of Quilters Newsletter magazine, suggesting the need for a new form of quilting, one that dismantled tradition.

Dozens of female readers immediately criticized him, saying his ideas would likely strip the craft of its female and community-driven identity.

“But it turned out that a lot of male quilters had tried to address their maleness and otherness in the quilt world, and it was really interesting,” says Isken, adding that the work in “Man-Made” is particularly noteworthy for its reflection of contemporary urban life. The unconventional quilts are in no way, their creators stress, intended to make fun of or reduce the importance of women practicing the art.

Isken said she was nervous about staging the show at first, because CAFAM is known for championing the work of women, but that feeling lessened as she got to know the work of the men in the show.

“We’re not showing this because we think one is better,” she says. “

We’re showing one moment and one idea. There’s a place for that amazing [feminist] history and also a place for this.”