By Gloria Hildebrandt
I just received this photograph of a quilt by artist Sandy Small Proudfoot. This image is so powerful that I want to share it, which I’m doing here with her permission. It is an intense depiction of a toga-wrapped skeleton on a black cross, although Sandy prefers “shroud” rather than “toga.” If you look at the right side, you see the bony hand is holding…a cellphone. The work is entitled “Electronic Intrusion.”
Sandy writes that it “is my visual comment on cell-phone use and texting while driving. We’ve had accidents up here in the country and I know that this sort of thing has caused serious accidents since people seem attached to their electronic devices. I used the Mexican Day of the Dead as my visual reference.”
The “up here in the country” that Sandy mentions is her home in Mono, in Niagara Escarpment country near Orangeville. Her studio dedicated to quilt making overlooks Hockley Valley. Sandy and her husband also run a bed and breakfast out of their home, called The Farmer’s Walk Bed and Breakfast. Information on the B&B is available here.
“The B&B is not my only focus,” adds Sandy. “My studio work such as the above has been juried into quilt conferences and exhibits in the United States for a number of years. I graduated as a part-time, mature student of the Ontario College of Art, and this is honouring my late re-entry into my educational field of visual art.” More of Sandy’s work can be seen at this page.
