Mary Catherine Lamb

Mary Catherine Lamb

Portrait of Mary Catherine Lamb one month before her death
Born (1949-03-12)March 12, 1949
Oakland, California
Died August 15, 2009(2009-08-15) (aged 60)
Portland, Oregon
Spouse(s) Richard R. Daley (m.1971–1978, divorced)

Mary Catherine Lamb (March 12, 1949 – August 15, 2009) was an American textile artist, whose quilts reframed traditional Roman Catholic iconography. Recycling vintage textiles popular during the mid-20th Century, she both honored and affectionately skewered her Catholic upbringing.

Early Life and Education

Mary Catherine Lamb, known as "MC" to her friends, was born March 12, 1949, in Oakland, California, into a devoutly Catholic family. Her only sibling was a younger sister, Colette, born three years later.[1]

Lamb read voraciously as a child, a habit she continued all her life, and also kept a journal that by the time of her death ran to 22 volumes, filled with elaborate illustrations.[1] She left the Catholic church when she moved away from home to attend college.[1] In 1971, Lamb married Richard Daley, a finish carpenter,[2] and the couple soon moved to Portland, Oregon.[1] They divorced in 1978 following a two-year separation.[3]

Quilting

Clearing out the family home in Oakland after her mother’s death in 1986,[1] Lamb rediscovered religious objects of her girlhood. She described being struck anew by the holy cards given to young Catholic children, and though long separated from the Catholic faith, she felt a resurgence of affection for these tokens of her childhood, recalling "the sense of promise, of security that the pictures of saints and angels imparted."[4] “I found a lot of Catholic mementos that really stirred me,” she said years later. “It was a revelation to me to realize I could embrace the images in a completely different way, on my own terms. It could incorporate playfulness and irreverence. But it also has a little bit of grief and yearning for the security of the past.”[5] “While maintaining my decades-long rejection of the Church, I found that rather than feeling the old rebellious anger I’d long held for these images, I savored the intensity of nostalgia they stimulated. The irony inherent in these parallel responses didn’t escape me,” she said.[4] Before long, choosing wall quilts as her medium, she would find herself drawn to "domestic textiles from the time when I believed and found comfort in the myths and symbols of the Catholic pantheon." [6]

"All My Hope" quilt by Mary Catherine Lamb, 1987

Around the time her mother died, Lamb enrolled in an art class at Marylhurst College taught by Portland art photographer Christopher Rauschenberg and performance artist Susan Banyas. Called "Close to Home," the class explored the possibilities of translating life events into art. One of her first projects was "All My Hope," a small quilt honoring her mother who, despite youthful dreams of a singing career, instead became a social worker.[1] “Whoa, this is an interesting person,” remembers Rauschenberg, who would become a close, supportive friend and enthusiastic promoter of her subsequent quiltmaking. “She had a way, like a snowball rolling downhill and becoming a snow boulder. You had this sense that she was accumulating more and more interests and friends all the time.”[7]

In common with many traditional and contemporary quiltmakers, Lamb constructed her quilts with secondhand fabrics, "anticipating the recycled-art movement," as one critic put it.[8] In time, she would become known for her eccentric choices of materials in creating "wry narratives that blended Christian symbolism with social comment," [9] her multileveled pictorial quilts "at once innocent and troubling, reverent and irreverent, serious and tongue-in cheek." [10]

"Cootie Quilt" was the first quilt Lamb made that really felt like it was more than following an assignment, she said. “All the fabrics in it are cut-up draperies or dishtowels or tablecloths. And I like how these cooties are funny in a way. I mean they’re comical, but they also have this kind of outer-space, menacing aspect. And it also got me started on the idea of doing a series of quilts based on the shapes of old toys.”[5]

Lamb drew particular inspiration from the Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel book believed to have been created c. 800 AD, whose illustrations embellished traditional Christian iconography with ornate, swirling motifs. "I became enamored of medieval depictions of these stories," she wrote. "[T]he flat, graphic quality of illuminated manuscripts . . . made them well suited for reinterpretation with two-dimensional textile work." [11] Rummaging through Portland’s garage sales and thrift stores, Lamb emerged with raw materials, treasures to her thinking: cast-off mid-20th century curtains, tablecloths and garments. These discarded fabrics would continue to reinforce memories of her Catholic childhood, "when certain religious images conveyed to me unquestioned order of the universe – with fond amusement not unlike my feelings for the holy cards themselves." [12] Among the silks, satins, brocades and metallics she gathered were "some hideous things I’d rather be shot in the foot than wear." [5]

For Lamb, vintage cocktail dresses from the 1950s also exuded an "air of regal elegance like that of gilded medieval renditions of sacred subjects." [5] Combining these "regal" fabrics with "their homely, domestic counterparts," the artist created multileveled pictorial quilts. "As a skeptical adult, I conjure up these images with a mixture of yearning and irony," she said. "I also find humor in the transformations (tablecloth into mantle, skirt into halo) and hope the viewer does [too.]" [6] Using these fabrics "previously worn or otherwise lived with lends a whisper of anonymous experience, a shimmer of life, to the whole...For me, the spiritual aspect comes from the lives these fabrics lived. These fabrics have soaked up experience that we’ll never know about," she wrote.[12]

Whether eliciting memories of common Catholic childhoods, or an instant, startling sense of déjà vu, many viewers felt an immediate connection with the quilts and the "range of emotional experience that was once played out in the presence of the reconfigured pieces of damask, cotton, satin, and corduroy," castoffs hinting of unknown lives, "the ordinary . . . infused with the numinous," she said.[4]

Like generations of quilt makers before her, Lamb used a familiar block construction process. She began with a full size drawing of one or multiple images she wanted to include – then broke down the original composition into "essentially abstract units, unreadable by themselves," which would eventually "coalesce into the narrative only when pieced together." [4] Individual blocks completed, she would deliberately "fracture" the pieces so that they didn’t fit neatly together, ultimately disjointing the images. For "Saint Anthony’s Torment," for example, a few squares were given a quarter-turn before being attached to the neighboring squares. A few other squares were completely transposed, their positions switched entirely. The process helped "to exaggerate the kinetic sense of these ‘moving pictures,’" [5] the artist’s deliberate disjuncts in pattern alignment "introduc[ing] both motion and the notion of deconstruction of the subject." [4]

"Saint Anthony's Torment" quilt by Mary Catherine Lamb

For Lamb, the fracturing served to emphasize the theme of the original image. In the case of "Saint Anthony’s Torment," the viewer sees "an individual struggling to maintain his concentration in the face of diabolical distraction, clinging to faith and sanity while everything is spinning apart." [6] Sometimes, images of saints’ faces were borrowed from earlier artwork, then photocopied onto fabric, their lavish garb perhaps fashioned from a sequined cocktail dress or souvenir scarf, the background possibly scissored out of a 1950s barkcloth curtain. In "Saint Anthony’s Torment," the body of a sympathetic pig, seen bottom left, was cut from a child’s pink polka dot corduroy jumper. Most quilts were heavily embellished with machine and hand quilting stitches, along with bits and pieces as disparate as shells from a necklace, sequins, fake pearls, and old coins.

Studying quiltmaking at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, Lamb was aware of America’s studio quilt art movement born in the mid-1960s. As did several better-known art quiltmakers unknown to her, she "worked with pictorial images and approached design holistically, as a painter would." [13] Robert Shaw, renowned quilt curator, historian and author, met and befriended Lamb early on, featuring two of her quilts in his influential 1997 book, The Art Quilt. Michael James, internationally-known, pioneering quilt artist and author (now chair of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design), was another who quickly recognized Lamb’s unique blend of the sacred and profane, and wrote about her.[4] Impressed by her coexisting senses of whimsy and spirituality, several other quilt scholars lauded her work in art journals, as did many regional publications.

Detail from "The Archangel Michael Bids You Aloha" quilt by Mary Catherine Lamb

During her lifetime, Mary Catherine Lamb was not as respected in the highly competitive art or studio quilt world as many thought she deserved. She was not invited to display her quilts in the most prestigious exhibitions. The reasons may have varied. For one, the "saucy insouciance" expressed by her chosen fabrics, combined with the "disquieting edginess" of the fractured block construction, may have worked against critical acceptance. Further, the irreverent religious content may have distanced some jury members.[4]

Exhibitions

Lamb was a member of Portland’s Blackfish Gallery, the country’s longest-running cooperative gallery, from 1993 through 1998, and was subsequently invited to join Nine Gallery, co-founded by nine artists, including Rauschenberg. Her quilts were displayed in both galleries, in solo shows as well as in exhibitions with fellow member artists. From 1999-2001, her "Angel at the Tomb" hung in the residence of the American Ambassador to Turkmenistan, part of the U.S. State Department Art in the Embassies cultural exchange program.


"Cootie Quilt" by Mary Catherine Lamb, displayed in her home

Today, Lamb’s reputation as an important and original quilt artist is assured, and she is "[w]idely recognized in national quilt communities." [14] Eleven of her 24 quilts are now in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. "Our Lady of Perpetual Garage Sales," her first "religious" quilt, resides in Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft. "The Archangel Michael Bids You Aloha" is in the collection of the Portland Art Museum. Her whimsical "Cootie Quilt" is in Washington, D.C., part of the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery, home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum of American Art’s craft and decorative art program.

Personal life and community activism

Mary Catherine Lamb arrived in Portland in 1972 and found the city to be suitably politically liberal and a mecca for artists and writers. She quickly attracted a loyal group of friends who became part of "M.C.’s Tribe," a network of beloved friends who stuck with her through the end. MC loved to entertain, hosting parties often similar to salons of decades past. Her "hard-core" monthly poker games, held in her home, had one admission requirement: the guest must be able "to contribute to discussions of life, culture and current events." A "movie fanatic," she gathered her women friends for semi-monthly movie outings. The rules: no popcorn during the film, no standing up until the credits were through.[15]

"M.C.’s" broad interests and infectious, wide-ranging enthusiasm quickly made her a popular fixture in Portland’s counterculture scene. "Known for her humor, love of poker and community activism," [16] she was also noted for her abiding love of music, especially honky-tonk and rockabilly," and her passion for literature, notably the works of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group in general, and she became a considerable scholar in that regard.[17]

Over the Portland years, Lamb’s income derived from an ever-changing patchwork of part-time jobs. She was night-shift dishwasher at a restaurant, a clerk at the Multnomah County Library, and a copy editor for Pacific Northwest publishers including Glimmer Train, Left Bank, Eighth Mountain Press, Mississippi Mud, and eventually for Willamette Week, the city’s alternative newspaper. She also wrote and edited for technical firms and had a successful eBay store dubbed "A Prize Every Time," selling vintage clothing harvested from the city’s thrift stores and garage sales.[18]

Off work, Lamb threw herself into a variety of liberal causes. Volunteering for community radio station KBOO-FM led to hosting "Women Reading Women," a semi-monthly program spotlighting fiction written by women.[16] In the spirit of her youthful Bay Area protests against the Vietnam War, she continued working for social justice. While at the library, she helped organize its first labor union. In 1992, along with many others, she vigorously opposed Ballot Measure 9, an anti-gay measure on the Oregon ballot. Five years later, she joined OPB Watch, a committee opposing the elimination of most of the music programming on the local NPR station. In 2002, she organized a letter-writing campaign protesting the closing of the 127-year-old postal station in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse.[16][18]

An inheritance from her mother’s 1986 death changed Lamb’s life in several ways. If not wealthy, she was now more financially secure. She left her library job, while continuing the copy editing. She was able to focus more on her art studies at Marylhurst, while continuing to study quiltmaking at the Oregon School of Art and Craft. The Marylhurst degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts, was awarded in 1992.[18]

Buckman house

Even as Lamb became recognized for her quilts, she was nearly as well known for her enigmatically artistic home. The inheritance allowed the purchase of a century-old, 10-room, three-story house in Portland’s Buckman neighborhood, in which she showcased her impressive, ever-expanding collection of cultural miscellanea. It became an "amazing house . . . a very personal museum of things she loved." [19] and, for a time, was a feature of the Portland Art Museum's "Off the Beaten Path" tour.

The Buckman house offered visitors a whimsical, arresting array of quirky collections.[18] Dozens of sock monkeys lined the window seat of her bedroom. The bathroom walls displayed assorted paint-by-number pictures. Bright cotton handkerchiefs were pinned high on a wall like colorful little flags. Women’s gloves, no two alike, made a valance across the bedroom window. Chinese checkerboards covered one wall.[5][20] A small, serene figure of The Virgin of Guadalupe presided over the living room, guarded by a ring of plastic cootie toys. Elsewhere, other religious statuettes, holy cards, paintings and prayer books were arranged in abundance, a collection that, like her quilts, "both honors and affectionately skewers my Catholic upbringing," she said.[21] Spread throughout the house were many vignettes, seemingly-disparate objects juxtaposed, underscoring both their uniqueness and common spirit. The third floor was her studio space, shelves and drawers housing hundreds of pieces of vintage fabric and other oddments, raw material for the quilts she pieced with a vintage Singer sewing machine.[5]

On the steps leading up from the sidewalk, painted wooden crutches served as balustrades, and brightly-hued bowling balls defined the periphery of the front porch. Lavishly-illustrated articles about the house appeared in regional newspapers, and at least one national magazine.[22][23][24]

Death

When Lamb was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, "M.C.’s Tribe" gathered around her, bringing food and company to her house. Five years later, as plans were being made to celebrate the cancer’s official remission, it returned with a vengeance, this time attacking her liver and brain. The Tribe, now 80-plus strong, again rose to the occasion, raising funds for her care, taking turns providing meals, and simply keeping her company. She died at 60, on August 15, 2009, her sister Colette having nursed her through her last days.[16] To the end, she was rushing to complete a commission for Rauschenberg: a quilt commemorating his father, the artist Robert Rauschenberg, who had died the previous year. Her October memorial service, held in Portland’s Tiffany Center, was attended by "a couple of hundred" of her friends.[25][26][27]

After Lamb’s death, Rauschenberg took detailed photographs of the Buckman house, documenting its rooms and details. The results, along with Susan Seubert’s photos for Budget Living,[23] were published in a book titled Mary Catherine Lamb’s House.[28] The home was sold and the hundreds of items Lamb had meticulously amassed and arranged throughout her home were distributed among The Tribe.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Harvey, Joan (13 September 2009). "Life Story: Mary Catherine Lamb. A Woman of Precision". The Oregonian. Portland Oregon.
  2. ↑ "In Memoriam". Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  3. ↑ Daley v. Lamb (Circuit Court of the State of Oregon 30 January 1978).
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 James, Michael (1998). "Mary Catherine Lamb: Quilts Sacred and Profane". Art/Quilt. 9: 12, 14.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Quilter Mary Catherine Lamb, Episode #105". Oregon Art Beat. Portland, Oregon. 5 May 2000. Oregon Public Broadcasting.
  6. 1 2 3 Shaw, Robert (1997). The Art Quilt. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates. pp. 21, 236.
  7. ↑ Vondersmith, Jason (2 September 2009). "Stil Living Through Her Quilts". Portland Tribune.
  8. ↑ Hicks, Bob (19 August 2011). "A Selection of 10 Pieces from the Museum of Contemporary Crafts '75 Gifts for 75 Years'". The Oregonian. Portland, Oregon.
  9. ↑ Wiggers, Namita Gupta (2012). 75 Gifts for 75 Years. Portland, Oregon: Museum of Contemporary Craft. p. 34.
  10. ↑ Shaw, Robert (September 2004), "Five Decades of Unconventional Quilts: The 1990s", Quilters Newsletter Magazine: 47
  11. ↑ http://www.quiltstudy.org/collections/quilt_of_the_month/qom.html/title/january-2011-mary-catherine-lamb, retrieved 14 September 2013.
  12. 1 2 http://www.quiltstudy.org/collections/quilt_of_the_month/qom.html/title/january-2011-mary-catherine-lamb
  13. ↑ Shaw, Quilters Newsletter Magazine, pp. 45-47.
  14. ↑ Thomas, Mary. "Artists Contrast the Secular and the Spiritual," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8 July 2000.
  15. ↑ Harvey, Joan. "Life Story: Mary Catherine Lamb. A Woman of Precision," The Oregonian, 13 September 2009.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Harvey.
  17. ↑ Orr, Mary (25 April 2014). Interview with Susan Stanley.
  18. 1 2 3 4 http://marycatherinelamb.com
  19. ↑ Shaw, Robert. Email of 17 January 2014.
  20. ↑ Van Flandern, Constance. "All Together Now," Budget Living, Dec.-Jan 2003, pp. 124-127.
  21. ↑ Van Flandern, p. 125.
  22. ↑ Dunham, Elisabeth. "Mix Master," The Oregonian, Homes and Gardens of the Northwest, pp. 16-21. 7 March 2002.
  23. 1 2 Van Flandern.
  24. ↑ Blair, Stephen. "Crazy Quilter, Kitsch Queen," Portland Tribune, 9 November 2001.
  25. ↑ Orr.
  26. ↑ Rauschenberg interview, 7 October 2013.
  27. ↑ Becker, Nancy (22 April 2014). Interview with Susan Stanley.
  28. ↑ Rauschenberg, Christopher and Seubert, Susan. Mary Catherine Lamb’s House. Self-published, 2009.


References

with Susan Stanley.

External links

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