Apron Fantasy

The original woven fragments
piece by fiber artist Sue Jones
My cousin Sue Jones in Oberlin OH made this beautiful design for the Textile Art Alliance guild show in Cleveland; each artist chose a modern or historical textile from
the Cleveland Museum of Art's Education Art Collection. These
textiles, used whole or fragmented, were either incorporated into the new work
or provided the spark of inspiration for an entirely new piece;
sales will benefit the museum's acquisition fund. She writes:

"Re-Production: Apron Fantasy" (20" x 20") incorporates 19c. woven
apron fragments from Romania that caught my fancy (technically,
tapestry weave with supplementary weft). I was intrigued by its
irregular placement of color accents, which I'm imagining as some kind
of code, along with the intricacy of its linear designs. The repeated
diamond shapes, called lozenges, are considered a powerful fertility
symbol, so I took my theme from that.

" Aprons in Romania were always worn with a
tucked-in white blouse, which I'm suggesting at the top using a Roman
numeral design. Notice the DNA test patterns, negative and a positive
pregnancy test strips, and what my friend Carol calls the 'sperm
skirt' at the bottom, inspired by very short Paleolithic string skirts
(~20,000 BC) discovered in eastern Europe, thought to have been worn
as a kind of mating girdle. I've also covered the gold background with my own secret code"