influences: Wassily Kandinsky

Last post's sample baby quilt was evidence that "original" ideas are seldom that. Here's my brain, back in 1979, summer semester, at 8:30 am, 85 degrees F, in the basement of some god-forsaken art building, slumped over my notebook in the dark, watching slide after slide of art masterpieces, frantically scribbling down every word the professor intoned.

Probably there was this slide. I was already a quilter by then and already entranced by repetition and variation, color and shapes. I had never studied art before, having given it a wide berth in high school in favor of languages (French, Spanish and Russian), and the chance to really study art was like having the doors to a whole new world open wide. I drank it all in. I think I was the only one awake in that class.

So, here is my bow to Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944); may his art bounce around in my brain until some more of it shakes out.

Namaste, Wassily.