Amy Gates
Artist - - - August 26, 2002 Greensboro, NC The reason I chose this is because it is color and represents the beauty of color in our life and the importance of that to me. It also represents wind and making things and transparency and strength, because silk is the strongest fabric. I made this in Providence in 1990. It was a painting of figures. Other fabric that I painted was made into clothing or some was made into tents, and some was just left as paintings. The cloth that I hung in the woods was on long clothes lines. The reason I started doing that is that I started painting it at my Uncle's house and I was washing and drying it outside and I loved what that looked like - in the wind. I wanted to put my great grandmother's fabric in because it's like the two fabrics are connected, the one I made connected to what she wore. I love to see her handwriting and her name, such a beautiful name, Sarah Angeline, or Angie they called her. She lived on a farm in Indiana. I found this in the family Bible in the basement of my grandfather's house when we were cleaning out his house. It makes me think of my grandfather because it belonged to his mother. My grandfather was such an important person in our life. He helped us a lot. He was a careful and very giving man. My mother's name is Sara. She was named for my grandmother and I have her maiden name, Merrill, for my middle name. You see, with just one little scrap of fabric you have the whole line. The apple is my childhood with my sisters and my mother and father in CT. We lived in what was the Wadsworth Orchards, on Rattlesnake Mountain. It's the smell of my childhood. The rocks are from RI where Nevill and I and the children, Percy and Henry, spend part of our summer vacation. I have been going to that beach for twenty years. It's so magical because of the huge rocks that jut out from the beach and we climb on them. It's never changed, they're there every year and they never change, I don't know how to describe it. The water there is navy blue and you can see to the horizon, it's the amazing light there. The beach is part sand and part smooth round rocks. I bring rocks home to NC every year. You want to hold these rocks. The big rock is Nevill and the two small ones are Percy and Henry. In case:
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