Lyre Liar is a new series I recently started of digitally fabricated hardwood ‘quilts’ that explore historical quilt-making imagery of Appalachia. In leafing through the pages of a book on West Virginia quilts I came upon a striking Baltimore Album quilt that held at its center an odd image, one that looked to me like an impossible piece of pottery. Impossible because of the way its handles were positioned along with these openings throughout the center of the pot. Upon more research I found out that this ‘impossible pot’ was an ancient instrument called a lyre. This lyre in the quilt was so abstracted and my mind biased towards pottery that this image had fooled me on all accounts.
Rhododendron Trophy Handoff is the first in this series and plays with this idea of a ‘lyre pot’, a made-up liminal object ebbing and flowing between being recognizable as any single thing. Like the original quilter abstracting the image to a degree in which I fell short of understanding it for what it is, I continue to break down this image as a pure exercise for my curiosity. I hope this artwork produces the same mystery for the viewer as the original quilt did for me.