First RPE Quilts: Finished

Last week I blogged about my new printing and quilting projects based on the retinal pigment epithelium and choroid and today I'm back to share the first three small quilts I made from those printed fabrics.

This first one was a piece of painted silk, and finished 20" x 20".  After painting and markering the back RPE layer, I quilted around all the cells.  Then I fused down the orange choriocapillaris layer, quilted it, then painted it some more, then quilted some more.  This one was made to enter the Vision 2020 exhibition being curated by Brenda Gael Smith. 

RPE #3: Age-related Macular Degeneration. 20" x 20" c. Shannon Conley, 2020, Photo by Mike Cox

The second and third ones were made out of a scrap of polyester crushed velvet.  I painted the back since I thought it would give me a crisper print, but then you couldn't really see it on the front.  However, I think the thickness of the fabric mean more paint was absorbed, so the colors turned out very vibrant.  These two are both donations for SAQA, one for the annual 12x12 SAQA auction, and one for the SAQA spotlight auction at the annual SAQA conference in Toronto.  The spotlight auction quilts are really small, and not finished on the edges.  They're 6"x8" and then matted so that the final part that shows is 4.5" x 6".  That's why it looks so unfinished here, all that edge will be cropped out with the mat.

RPE #1, 8" x 6", c. Shannon Conley, 2020

This one is showing for the month of March at the Shirley Stiles Gallery in Westwood, MO  and for the month of May at the InterUrban Art House (IUAH) in Overland Park, KS, so if you happen to be in the area, stop in and see the exhibition.  It'll be a collection of these 12x12 quilts from SAQA members in our region.

RPE #2, 12"x12", c. Shannon Conley, 2020

These three were all in the same colorway, but I painted several others, so there will probably be some more coming with a similar theme.  It was certainly fun to experiment!

New Project: RPE Quilts

Since this is 2020, it seems like every art gallery or quilt show is having a Vision 2020 themed show or exhibition.  Of course as a vision researcher I wanted to enter at least some of these, but the two previous vision associated quilts I did, (here and here) aren't available to show anymore really.

So I decided to make a couple of new ones!   The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) combined with the blood vessels of the choroid comprise the support tissue for the neural retina.  If the RPE and choroid stop working or start to die, then the retina cannot receive nutrients or eliminate waste properly. This is what happens in age-related macular degeneration.  The RPE and choroid start to degenerate, and then the retina starts to die as well, leading to vision loss and blindness. I therefore decided to make a series of quilts using the really cool patterns of the RPE and choroid as my starting point.  The RPE is a layer of epithelial cells that is tightly arranged in a largely hexagonal pattern, with the network of small choroidal blood vessels known as the choriocapillaris directly behind it.

Inspired by the "sun" printing exercise from Betty Busby's class, I cut a whole bunch of vinyl masks in the shape of the retinal pigment epithelium.  I made this design using Adobe illustrator and one of my micrographs of the RPE and cut it out of vinyl on the silhouette at two different scales.

Here you can see a piece I painted with the vinyl over it while it dries.

I painted several different fabrics, below you can see a couple of them after they dried and I removed the vinyl.  

The next step was much coloring with paint markers and jelly pens to give some depth and texture,  below you can sort of see where I've started outlining my shapes with marker, and further painting in the one below.

After finishing with the coloring, I started on the layer of blood vessels.  This is the pattern I designed for the choriocapillaris, but instead of cutting it out of vinyl, I cut it out of painted non-woven fabric, ready to fuse to my quilt surface.

 Here you can see me quilting (on my mom's longarm no less) the choriocapillaris layer (orange) down onto the painted RPE layer (blue-purple).

Check back later this week to see the first three small quilts I made using this fabric!