Glycocalyx Finished!

Earlier this week I talked about the construction of my most recent (yet still not very recent) large art quilt, and today I'm back to share the final pictures.

The piece is called Glycocalyx by which it is very loosely inspired. The glycocalyx is a protective layer of long carbohydrates/proteoglycans that lines the inside of blood vessels and other anatomical structures in the body.   It helps in cell-cell adhesion and recognition (for example for immune cells), as well as providing a reservoir for important extracellular enzymes and a physical barrier to help protect endothelial cells from direct exposure to shear stresses associated with blood flow.  All in all, it's a very helpful structure!

Of course, in my pieces the spiky furry layer is protruding outwards (rather than inwards), but I still think of it as a protective layer.  From a purely physical standpoint, the spiky layer is a barrier- every time I moved it or tried to hang it up, it poked me!  But it's also a metaphorical barrier- a reminder that having boundaries is important for our well-being.  While making it though, I also thought a lot about the value of community, and how too many barriers can impair that.  For me at least, I need a good balance of being alone and being with others or else I start to feel out of whack.

Glycocalyx, c. 2021 Shannon Conley, 48" x 48" x 20"

Anyway- I'm very happy with how this came out.  I love the half-tube shape that enables the spikes to radiate out in a partial circle.  I love the added texture that comes from the roving-wrapped wire, and I love the pinky-purpley colors.

The only things I don't love are practical.  It's four feet by four feet by about 20 inches, so it's very hard to move around, hard to transport, and is too big to ship.  Sadly that means it won't likely get to go to very many places in-person, but for now I get to enjoy it hanging on the wall in my bedroom.

 

New Quilt: Glycocalyx

Well, I'm shamefully behind on blogging again.  This was my last quilt for 2021 (it was a bad year for me quilting wise, but that's a story for another day), and I finished it several months ago, but am just now getting around to blogging about it.

We moved labs early in 2021, and in the process I found three boxes of 1ml serological pipettes that everyone hated, so I took them home determined to use them for something.  Each one is about 11 inches long and a rigid tubular shape.  With only the vaguest idea of a plan, I started covering them with some fabric I'd painted.  I had a total of 300, and after covering about half of them, I realized I needed to branch out color-wise (all the original fabric was the pinky-orange you see in the second picture, so I added the turquoise and a few purple and fuchsia ones.

After covering them, I took the remaining hand-painted fabric and attached it (front and back) to a big piece of peltex interfacing.  I wanted something with a little more stiffness than batting in the middle layer of the quilt.

The next step was sewing in the spikes; I sewed them to the background one row at a time, and while the peltex quilts and sews well, it is stiff and hard to maneuver, especially once you start sewing down hundreds of fabric covered rigid plastic tubes!

After getting all the spikes sewn in, I quilted the background.  It was tough to free-motion quilt something so stiff but I got through it!  

After quilting, I loved the dimension of the spikes but the background felt very plain and bland.  It lacked vibrancy and contrast- too much peachy pink.  So I painted the bottom darker and more purple, and added lots more color to the top including intense pinks and yellows.

I really wanted it to feel like the spikes were protruding in all directions, so I stitched the whole quilt to a half-circle sized piece of sonotube.  It's what they use to hold concrete when pouring concrete footers.  They're made out of very sturdy cardboard, so it felt like a great thing to use as an armature.

After mounting to the cardboard, the next step was to stitch the spikes into their spikey positions.  In order to get them to stand out properly, they're hand stitched to each other.  The last construction step was to add some roving wrapped wire snaking along both the top and the bottom.  I love the extra texture that added.   You can see it pinned in place in the picture below,

 

This was a fun quilt to work on; come back on Wednesday to see pictures of the finished piece.