Artwork Details
- Title
- Deception of the Formal Landscape
- Artist
- Date
- 2009
- Location
- Dimensions
- 63 1⁄2 × 24 1⁄2 × 2 1⁄8 in. (161.3 × 62.2 × 5.4 cm)
- Copyright
- © 2023, Sonji Yarbrough Hunt
- Credit Line
- Gift of Carolyn L. Mazloomi
- Mediums Description
- cotton fabric and batt, acrylic paint, metal grommets, cotton thread, glue, Peltex and fusible web
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Abstract
- Object Number
- 2023.20.2
Artwork Description
Sonji Hunt
born 1964, Milwaukee, WI
resides Milwaukee, WI
Deception of the Formal Landscape
2009
cotton fabric and batt, acrylic paint, metal grommets, cotton thread, glue, Peltex and fusible web
Sonji Hunt bends genres with her signature bundles of painted fabric scraps. Experimental in nature, the wrapped fabrics explore different colors and compositions that comprise the larger work. Their irregular shapes push the viewer to reimagine what constitutes a quilt.
With this quilt, Hunt also celebrates the freedom and ingenuity of nature. She describes a formal, or man-made, landscape as a “rigid structure imposed by humans to control the fluidity of the way in which growing things want to be in their original environment. Nature always overcomes whatever humans inflict on it.”
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Carolyn L. Mazloomi, 2023.20.2, © 2023, Sonji Yarbrough Hunt
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025