Les Fleurs de mal: Urbanization

While I really love flowers, they haven't inspired any quilts of mine in the past 20 years. Therefore, I wanted to find an approach that better fits my interests as an artist or concerns as a citizen of the world.

For no clear reason whatsoever, the title of Baudlaire's volume of poems kept buzzing in my mind: Les fleurs de mal (The Flowers of Evil). The evils that Baudlaire addressed in his sequence are more personal and individual in nature, while I thought that 'global evils' are more relevant today - at least for me.

I developed the following synopsis: 1. find three global issues that I (and many others) find deeply worrying, 2. prepare three not-so-nice backgrounds (somewhat unpleasant colours, raw edge appliqué, untidy workmanship), and 3. place 3D silk flowers on top (they will not beautiful either).

The first issue I selected is urbanization, urban sprawl, concrete jungle - you name it -, which very often goes together with large areas of substandard housing around. While this may be a pleasing view for tourists from the top of a skyscraper, living there permanently must have negative consequences of the human psyche. No, I am not saying that we should 'go back to nature' but this magnetic power of cities creates unlivable environments, whether in Asia, America or other continents.

The fabric pieces were ironed on fusible batting, thus leaving raw edges very visible. The improvizational petals were cut from silk, and assembled into unrealistic flower-like structures. Since they are more than an inch high, they are attached with safety pins so that they can be transported without damaging them.