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Fancy Work is an installation that looks to an exuberant early-nineteenth-century decorative arts movement known as American Fancy to trace an alternate lineage for modernist abstraction and psychedelic light shows. Drawing from patchwork quilts by Rebecca Scattergood Savery and others that were inspired by the 1815 invention of the kaleidoscope, I gathered a group of local makers to create a vibrant, dizzying wall work composed of more than 2,400 screen-printed, cut, and sewn linen diamonds. The design is a variation of the traditional Star of Bethlehem quilt pattern, which Scattergood innovatively took to the edges of her quilts like explosive shockwaves that could not be contained. This monumental quilt top then served as the projection screen for an outsized colonial wall sconce that scatters light from an electrified candle reflected in its faceted mirrors. The sconce is like an inverted disco ball/satellite dish, and it actually spins. Viewers navigated the space with punched tinwork lanterns, creating moving patterns of light and shadow, while an ensemble of tunesmiths played the hauntingly beautiful musical saw to complete this sensory experience.
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Fancy Work (Colonial Wall Sconce) 2010 steel, acrylic mirror Plexiglass, blown glass, mixed media
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work (Colonial Wall Sconce) 2010 steel, acrylic mirror Plexiglass, blown glass, mixed media 12' diam.
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work (Colonial Wall Sconce) 2010 steel, acrylic mirror Plexiglass, blown glass, mixed media 12' diam
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Barton MacGuire plays the musical saw. Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work (Light Show) 2010 public event 12' diam.
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Allison Smith. |
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Fancy Work (Tinwork Lantern) 2010 punched tin 36" h
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work 2010 installation view dimensions variable
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work 2010 installation view dimensions variable
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work (Tinwork Lanterns) 2010 installation view, detail dimensions variable
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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Fancy Work (Crazy Quilting) 2010 public event
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Allison Smith leads a "crazy quilting" activity with scraps from the Fancy Work quilt. Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Allison Smith. |
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Fancy Work (Improvisational Quilts) 2010 public event
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Quilt historian Roderick Kirakofe shows selections from his eccentric quilt collection. Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Allison Smith. |
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Fancy Work (Scattergood Quilt) 2010 screen printed ink on cut and sewn linen 27 x 27'
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Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with "75 Years of Looking Forward." Photo credit Charles Villyard. |
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"Cheater Cloth" 2010 giclée print Edition of 7, published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 43 3/4 x 32 inches
This limited-edition giclée print is digitally printed in full color on flax linen with a finished hem sewn by the artist. It depicts imagery captured using a unique scanning technology, updating the tradition of "cheater cloth," a printed material meant to look like several different fabrics, usually calicos, appliquéd or patch worked together. The inspiration for this work was derived from a quilt Smith saw at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, made by a convalescing Civil War soldier; she made her reworked version by cutting out fabrics collected over many years from her and her mother's sewing chests.
The original artifact combines Smith's interest in wartime textiles and art made by soldiers in the context of war, and also contains another facet of her research: the history of tradespeople and street peddlers. This print was made as a Special Projects Artist Edition in response to the "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915" exhibition at LACMA and is available from the museum for purchase.
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![Allison S M I T H Fancy Work giclée print](artistInfo/thumbs/218.jpg ""Cheater Cloth"")