Keep an Eye on the Bowl: The Art of Joan Schulze

Curatorial Comment 

As a contemporary artist, Schulze bridges abstraction and minimalism, fine arts and crafts, East and West. The title of the exhibition, Keep an Eye on the Bowl, is a reference to the Schulze’s ongoing series of quilts inspired by an antique Chinese tea bowl gifted to Schulze after one her visits in China. 

 

Schulze’s flirtation with the bowl as a subject deepened by her engagement, introspection, and cultural immersion with Eastern philosophies, Zen and Buddhism, Haiku poetry, and other cultural traditions, inform and drive her endless creative experimentation. While the output is awe inspiring, this unique poetic quality of the work draws the viewer and provokes awareness and appreciation for the culture that is rich and sophisticated.

 

Each artwork image in this viewing room is accompanied by a written visual description and a comment from the artist. In some case, additional detail images are included to offer a closer look at the artist's technique. Please click on invididual images to access this information.  

According to Schulze, the completion of a quilt is a long process, during which creative experimentation comes in and so does chance. Images in her work are created using photocopy processes and Xerox transfers that give her the upper hand to manipulate, recompose, and distort photographs. 

 

Juxtaposing, overlapping, dissecting images, and repeating visual content in her work, Schulze creates non-conventional compositions that look beyond the traditional quilt blocks foreground to more impressionistic imagery.

A number of works in this collection offer a different direction and are executed in a distilled earthy palette of beiges, greens, grays, and creams, with visible influences from contemporary art, with The Paris Bowl offering a striking example.

 

Throughout, the images are created using a distinctive image transfer method developed by Schulze, where she applies glue onto photographic images and attaches the paper to the fabric. Once the paper is carefully peeled away, the image remains on the fabric. Through variations of this application process, the fabric may assume various qualities and look either smooth or textured, opaque or transparent, a contrast evident in such works as Disapearring Bowl and 13 Bowls. 

The lines formed by intricate piecing are enhanced by added stitched lines, graphic details, calligraphic markings, and images of inconsistent quality, that play with our eye and invite us to discern and engage in its messages.

 

In Joan's words: "I see these drawings as lines of poetry. Each line supports the other. When all the stanzas are finished the drawing asserts itself." It is Schulze's way of melding two inseparable parts of her identity - as a poet and a visual artist.

For Schulze, quilting is about having an open mind and an eye on experimentation. This idea is taken to a different scale in the monumental hangings from her Opus series that rely on improvisational packing tape collages and drawings and offer a sharp contrast to the poetic imagery of other works in the exhibition.