COMMUNITY TIES
by Niamh McCooey
From the 1st July, the Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, MA) is offering free admission to all Brockton residents, in an effort to strengthen ties with the local community and promote arts access. By opening its doors, the museum hopes to inspire Brockton residents to use it as their own cultural resource. The museum is currently hosting a touring exhibition, curated by quilter Nancy Crow and organised by the Muskegon Museum of Art, that is following a trail around the USA. Circular Abstractions: Bull’s Eye Quilts features dazzling and colourful quilts by artists from far corners of the earth, including the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa.
The quilters were challenged to improvise designs around the Bull’s Eye pattern, doing away with sketched-out designs and following their own creative intuition. Nancy herself has made over three-hundred quilts, and always lets the design form in her imagination: “never, ever do I think about what others expect or want or what will sell”. For her, quilting is a highly personal and expressive activity: an art that reveals itself throughout the creative process.
The improvisational style of the quilts exhibited in Circular Abstractions gives them energy and life of their own, and makes for an exciting display. Other exhibitions at the Fuller Craft Museum also include the flameworked glass creations of Amber Cowan and an immersive tableau of constructed landscapes by Future Retrieval – all of which the people of Brockton will be able to view for free.
Circular Abstractions: Bull’s Eye Quilts, until 22 October
455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA 02301, USA