In 1985 when people in Vancouver were talking about the up-coming Expo 86 whose theme was going to be transportation & communication there was this truck that was catching everyone's eye.
We called it "The God Truck". The man who created it, I learned from my friend Philip Lander, was Ernie Ruff. He was from Telegraph Creek, or was it Whiskey Creek... No matter-- up in the Stickine... I wave my hand towards the north... at that point in my life in Vancouver I hadn't see much of BC. It was a total blur, & some of it still is!
Here is Ernie rounding his truck which was parked that day near City Hall. You can now understand why people called it the God Truck.
I thought it was a wonderful, stunning piece of folk art.
I decided I would do a copy of it in soft sculpture, so I started carrying my camera with me in the car so I could capture the proportions when I found it parked somewhere.
This was going to be my contribution to Expo with the clear combination of communication-on-wheels!
I settled on proverbs as text. I went to the library for proverbs, I asked friends for them, & I sought proverbs from around the world.
Using colored strips of cloth & a rubber stamp alphabet I had bought in an "Antiques" barn in rural Maine I set to work printing out the best of my quite large proverb collection.
Meanwhile I was doing much problem-solving for how I would make the cab of the truck, the A frame for the words, & the wheels that I decided would have to be able to roll!
Gradually, gradually it evolved. Finally it got a name: Couver, the Proverbial Van which I thought so clever & wonderful how the name fell in place, just right for the job. I made a license plate BC 1986, from silk charmeuse! Brake lights too from red charmeuse.
It was first put on show at the Vancouver Community Arts Council Office on Davie Street. I had my first quilt show there in 1985.
I invited Ernie Ruff to come see it.
I also took it in the final Expo 86 parade.
So what to do when George & I decide to move into 426 Beach Crescent? There was clearly not going to be any room for Couver. It was just too awkward to keep. I tried the Vancouver Museum. I tried Carol James who had sat on City Council & she had expressed an interest in it. Nope, no, thanks, no. A person gets it after a while. It's time to move on! It was time for me to move on.
I dismantled it, saving only the proverb strips, thinking maybe one day they would get working into a quilt.
But no, that didn't happen. Somehow, somewhere they were lost.
Poof gone!
Oh well, I still have wonderful memories, a few great photos, & good stories.
I am telling this story because I started asking who wants the 18 quilts, completed in 2012, Oh Solo, Double, Trio?
[See the next blog post.]
The Winsor School? They said," No, but thanks for thinking of us!"
The Putney School? Doubtful.
Sarah Lawrence College? Hmmmm, maybe, I majored in math there.
Smith College, special collections library.... I can't imagine it....
Canadian Textile Museum... oh sigh, they don't collect "modern work".
The Vancouver Art Gallery? Ha!
The New England Quilt Museum-- they have my Much Depends on This Quilt series, BUT, & this is a big but for me, these number quilts would rarely see the light of day if they go there.
That just makes me s.a.d. That's what happened to the Much Depends series. They've been shown once. ONCE!! s.a.d
So my Oh Solo Double Trio work: Is it art? Is it math? Is it a teaching tool? Is it craft? Are they "art quilts"? Is it a "book"?
Have I created another awkward thing that needs to be dismantled because it is too big, cloth [=troublesome], undefinable!
Yesterday, October 6th, I talked with Philip Ording, a math professor at Sarah Lawrence College.
Maybe gifting the number quilts to SLC will work out.
That's it for now.
& The Chair
