They project a three-dimensional feel that enriches the already active surface. She has added hand-couched (or hand-twisted) cords for the cables. In her Kaleidoscope XXXII: My Brooklyn Bridge (2006), the kaleidoscopic effect is limited to the sky. One is a snowflake quilt, Kaleidoscope XXII: Ice Crystals (2000) and another is based on a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, her most realistic quilt to date. Most of Nadelstern’s works are abstract or semi-abstract, but she has produced several more realistic variants since starting her kaleidoscopes. Her Kaleidoscope XXXIII: Shards (2007) required 18 months, and that was with an expert (the artist herself) doing the quilting. But be forewarned, they take a lot of time. Her quilts form the basis for her fabrics, which are available through a design house, an excellent basis for your own similarly wildly complex quilts. Her straightforward directions and sense of humor make the prospect of assembling one of these challenging quilts actually seem viable. You can’t buy Paula Nadelstern’s quilts, but you can see them in exhibitions around the world and learn how to make them yourself in her quilt workshops or by buying the catalogue of her current show. Made of silver-to-black ombre kimono silks, cottons, with felt-tip pen, the eye at first races along straight lines, yet gets way-laid by subtle patterns that are too alluring to ignore. One personal favorite is Kaleidoscope XXXI: The Other Side of the Circle (2006), an airy, delicate design with a black background. The eye craves bilateral symmetry, which is repeatedly shattered. It’s an ornery quilt in a way, and a pleasure to try to figure out. Her effects range from the brightly accented Kaleidoscope XXI: Tulips in the Courtyard Below (1998) to Kaleidoscope XX: Elegant After Maths (1999), which intentionally breaks certain patterns within some of the scopes, the border, and shoots scopes across the borders, too. Working in series, Nadelstern has constantly pushed herself into new territory. Nadelstern’s favorite motto is "When it comes to fabric, more is more." Gone are simple repetitive patterns, replaced by what reads as an all-over design despite many repetitive elements, obscured by her careful camouflaging of seams. The construction is based not on squares or sunbursts, but triangles made of pieced slivers of patterned fabrics, which resonate rather than clash. Her first quilts look much like the interior of a kaleidoscope, but before long the designs become increasingly Byzantine, usually in rich jewel-tone colors - lots of them. light colors at seams and, especially in her later quilts, can have not one but several visual centers that push-pull the eye, not unlike a Hans Hoffmann painting. Unlike traditional sunburst quilts, Nadelstern’s pieced kaleidoscope quilts eschew dark vs. A sunburst quilt on display at the Folk Art Museum, probably made by Philadelphia Quaker Rebecca Scattergood ca. When kaleidoscopes first became popular, pieced quilts were made in a sunburst pattern, tiny diamonds of color radiating from a center point. Her quilts’ ancestors date from the 19th century. Looking at quilts like Kaleidoscope XVII: Caribbean Blues (1997), it’s easy to imagine why such an innate master colorist like Nadelstern would be drawn to a deeply hued Liberty fabric with a complicated design.īut Nadelstern is not the first quilter to have fallen under the spell of kaleidoscopes. Already an accomplished quilter, she was inspired to begin her kaleidoscope series by the bright patterns and movement in traditional Liberty fabrics. Since 1987, Nadelstern has produced over 30 kaleidoscope quilts, each radically different from the others. 13, 2009, the American Folk Art Museum presents the first major survey of Nadlestern’s sensual artworks. In "Kaleidoscope Quilts: The Art of Paula Nadelstern," Apr. Her pieced quilts are as intensely chromatic as stained glass and as intricately patterned as lace. Paula Nadelstern’s gorgeous and trippy kaleidoscope quilts are that rare thing, a really new category of quilts.
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