LOS ANGELES — “How would a guy make a quilt?” Joel Otterson asked himself when he began his foray into the craft.
“He would make it out of concrete and stone,” he answered. And so he did.
Otterson’s “quilts” consist of interlinking blocks of concrete, stone and ceramics that are meant to be walked and danced on rather than slept under. One is 19 by 22 feet and made from six tons of concrete and 500 dinner plates cut into 4,000 pieces. There’s even a “crazy quilt” made from the scraps of his concrete projects.
Otterson is one of eight artists involved in “Man-Made: Contemporary Male Quilters,” that opened Sunday at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles and is curated by CAFAM Executive Director Suzanne Isken. Cluttered with heavy metal iconography and images of guns, basketballs, caustic political commentary and the occasional expertly executed log cabin pattern, the “Man-Made” quilts prove that testosterone and needlework aren’t mutually exclusive.