Gallery: The Art of Sewing Science Into Beautiful Quilts
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*8:45 am to 10:28 am, September 11, 2001 (above New York City looking toward Boston)*. Anna Von Mertens used software to visualize what the stars would have looked like (even though they were obscured by daylight) throughout the duration of the September 11 attacks.
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*Gray Area/Ocean Currents*. All of Von Mertens quilts are hand-stitched and hand-dyed. The pattern on this piece depicts the corkscrew feature of oceanic currents called the Ekman Spiral.
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Von Mertens develops her patterns using computer software, traces them onto the fabric using chalk, then spends weeks to months hand-stitching them. Here is the computer detail for the Ekman Spiral stitch.
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*Aurora*. Von Merten's most recent work is all-dyed fabric representing the Aurora borealis. "I am interested in the structure of this phenomenon, how different colors manifest at different altitudes and with different elements," she said.
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*Black and White*. The stitching on these quilts show different views of a nuclear bomb blast. The black is a side view, while the white is from the top.
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*Black and White (Black)*. A detail of the energy pattern from a nuclear explosion.
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Von Mertens sometimes uses scientific phenomena to explore her own relationships to places or events. In *West*, she stitched the Big Bang over sunset colors to represent California's vivid energy. The pattern on *East*, the quilt at the top, uses a black hole to represent introversion.
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*Palette (Arkanoid)*. Von Mertens translated the color palette and pixellation from the 80s video game *Arkanoid* into a traditional patchwork pattern. Look closely, and the needlework shows circuitry.
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*Anasazi 12th century migration*. After reading a study describing how drought cycles—recorded in tree rings—correlate to human historic events, Von Mertens embarked on a series exploring how the lives of various human empires correlated with the lives of trees that lived in the same places and times.
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*Anasazi 12th century migration, detail*. Von Mertens' stitching perfectly matches the trees ring pattern, while the thread color—from white to gray to black—signifies the health of the human civilization. "The Anasazi had a rolling cycle of droughts, and it was years before their settlements were truly abandoned," she said.
