September 14, 2013 Another day at the DAM

A few days ago I was at the Denver Art Museum again to see the exhibit in the new textile gallery on the sixth floor.  What a beautiful space and what an interesting variety of textiles on display.  Who knew that cigars used to have silk cigar bands?  Here is a shimmering 1880 yellow quilt made from them.

Another unusual quilt, from China in the 1990’s, featured raised three dimensional objects depicting the five poisons such as snakes, scorpions, centipedes, toads and spiders and was used to protect children from these creatures.  There were so many other wonderful textiles including several religious ones as well as shawls and tapestries.

In an adjacent room I found the educational piece of the exhibit.  Around the walls were displays of all the varieties of fiber processes, dyeing, weaving, lace-making and more.  also several videos showing the processes.

This lace shawl was so fine it could be pulled through a wedding ring.

As part of the SPUN exhibit, local artists were invited to submit a small quilt to become part of a larger quilted piece.  The Spun Community Quilt was hanging on the wall between the first and second stories.

On the mezzanine was another artist-community participation piece, by Marie Watt, a Seneca artist.  She asked people to donate a blanket that had special meaning for them. Each blanket was tagged with the story of the blanket’s meaning for the donor.  Placed in the museum’s mezzanine gallery of Pacific Northwest American Indian art, you could see the relation of this piece to the tall totems and blanket garments.