Sew Sister(published 06.13.07)
In the catalogue for Rosie Lee Tompkins’ solo exhibit at the Shelburne Museum, a quote from esteemed New York Times art critic Roberta Smith describes her work: “These pictorial powerhouses are like multifaceted jewels spread flat before the eye yet turning in the light, their sparkling shards of color and mutating geometries full of mystery and life.”
Abstract paintings? Not quite. Smith is gushing about quilts. And if you think that’s mighty grand art-speak for the homey craft of piecing fabric together . . . you haven’t seen “Something Pertaining to God: The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins.”
On view through October 28 in the Shelburne’s “Hat and Fragrance” gallery, Tompkins’ boldly colorful and inventively patterned creations — not just quilts but pillows, wall hangings, chair coverings, book bags and odd articles of clothing — are stunningly original. The visual punch of these items is an artistic K.O. that temporarily renders you speechless. And then, the word most likely to escape your lips is “Wow.”
Rosie Lee Tompkins, whose real name was Effie Mae Howard, was an African-American “untrained” textile artist from Richmond, California, who passed away last year at the age of 70. Intensely private — hence the pseudonym — she produced her works in obscurity until she was “discovered” by Eli Leon just over 20 years ago. A collector and scholar of African-American quilts, Leon, 71, says it took some doing to persuade Tompkins to sell hers. The first one she was willing to part with, he explains over the phone from his home in Oakland, was her dog’s blanket. Now restored to its original glory and hanging in the Shelburne, the 73-by-112-inch quilt is a dramatic assemblage of black and red squares and triangles.
Many of Tompkins’ works feature Christian crosses and her signature spidery lettering — including her given name, Effie — stitched in yarn. The crosses, and the title of this exhibit, indicate that Tompkins was deeply religious — many of her projects are also embroidered with the numbers of scriptures. But Leon says that, though she was “really into the Bible,” her religion was “very personal. In the last 10 years, I don’t think she went to a church. Her quilts had something to do with her spiritual relationship to family members, often dead,” he adds. “For her, making quilts was a form of prayer.”
Tompkins once explained her aesthetic gift to Leon this way: “I think it’s because I love them so much, the Lord let me see all these different colors.” Exhibits such as the Shelburne show — whose contents are from Leon’s collection — allow the rest of us to see them, too.
Critic Smith suggests that Tompkins’ works are astonishing examples of African-American improvisational quilts. As “Something Pertaining to God” amply illustrates, the style is characterized by idiosyncratic deviations from the “rules” of the art form — as in jazz improv. Patterns may approximate regularity but then veer into sinuous curves or inspired riffs on shape, color and/or texture. Case in point: Tompkins’ quilt titled “Half-squares Put-together.” Strips of dove-gray moiré taffeta border the roughly 78-by-94-inch work on two sides; the vast middle ground is an exuberantly colored and playfully erratic arrangement of not-quite-square solids and prints. In fact, even the “half-squares” — a traditional quilting technique that involves splitting the square diagonally — are rarely equal-sized triangles.
Not surprisingly, such non-linear reasoning makes for off-kilter quilts. In many of Tompkins’ works, one end — perhaps the starting point? — seems to initiate a more or less regulation rectangle, but by the time the motley arrangement of patches reaches the other end, it has become a sassy geometrical mutation. Just looking at them makes you giddy, as if sharing in the subversive joy of breaking the rules.
But viewers shouldn’t think Tompkins had no regard for order: The very title “Three Sixes” suggests otherwise. That’s the name of a quilt composed of eye-popping yellow, gold and orange squares punctuated by purple and black ones, all of various sizes. The visually arresting work is an op-art masterpiece. But what appears at first to be a random arrangement is in fact structured in blocks: three rows of six squares.
African-American improvisational quilts compose a substratum of folk textile arts that has become highly collectible — just check eBay. Or, more to the point, ask Leon: He’ll be at the Shel-burne next week to deliver a talk entitled “Models in the Mind: African Prototypes and American Patchwork.” Leon has placed Tompkins’ pieces in exhibits across the country, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He reveals that he sold one of her quilts to the Whitney Museum of American Art for $50,000. “An Oakland museum bought one for 25 thousand,” he adds. “I took half the profit and made sure it got back to Rosie Lee.”
Tompkins’ work embodies what Leon and other folk-art scholars claim is a lineage of African traditions — not just a scrappy imitation of European patterns, as others suggest. “The long-skinny strips of cloth is one of the techniques,” he points out. “And she did some shifting of scale — little teeny pieces as well as large ones.” All her patterns “were probably about making do with what she had,” Leon concedes, “but she did it from a genius perspective.”
The Shelburne Museum exhibit is Tompkins’ second solo show. Sadly, she didn’t live to see it. But if she had, the exhibit would look different from the one Leon ultimately compiled. That’s because Tompkins refused to let the public see her real name, which is embroidered in bold stitches on many of the works here: a jumper made of men’s ties, a sweater vest adorned with beads and rhinestones, a toddler-sized pair of denim pants covered with pink lettering, various wall hangings, even a potholder.
The exhibit also displays the only photograph Tompkins allowed Leon to use to represent her. It shows a yellow jacket, orange top, purple skirt, orange purse and yellow shoes — the hues of “Three Sixes” — neatly draped over a chair to symbolize the woman who would not pose, but who did, Leon assures, wear this loud outfit.
Because Tompkins died while he was preparing the Shelburne exhibition, however, Leon was free to include in the catalogue a rare actual photograph of the artist. The headshot, which he took in 1986, reveals a handsome woman with a sweet, shy smile. It’s the enigmatic face of a divinely inspired artist who once said, when asked about a design on one of her quilts: “I’m thinking of something special when I do that. You know, something pertaining to God.”
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