BLANCHARDVILLE - A tribute quilt featuring the faces of more than 600 people who perished in the 9-11 attack will be on display in the gallery at Blanchardville's River Valley Trading Company during February.
The creator of the quilt, Lois Jarvis of Madison, will speak about the project on Monday, February 11, at 6:30 p.m. during a reception hosted by the Blanchardville Women's Club.
The Ground Zero quilt has traveled across the country since Jarvis initially crafted it and posted pictures on her Web site in 2002. The site attracts up to20,000 visitors a day.
"I am so glad people are looking at the quilt online," says Jarvis, an accomplished quilter and quilting teacher. "I made the quilt to be viewed. I hope it will remind everyone that the loss of the building and their material content was not the important event of that day. The individual people on this quilt, the happy smiling people at work and at play, the brides and grooms, the fathers and mothers, the young so full of promise and the old with still so much to offer, who all perished that day, are the important things to remember."
The quilt features a "Lone Star" pattern, evoking the image of an explosion, that is made of transfer photos of people who died. Around the star is a border of grays, symbolizing a smoke-enveloped city in mourning.
One viewer described the quilt as "a testimony, not just to the event and the people it describes, but to what art can do in the human community."
"I like the fact that the quilt isn't metaphoric but factual, based in the people's lives. It is brave, blunt and honest. It doesn't force any emotional content on the viewer - agony, anger or grief - just the reality of rippling aftershocks we can only go on living with, but not really recover from," said viewer Brenna Hopkins of Madison. "The sense of energy, explosion, is palpable, but captured with love and reverence, not violence. The real heroes of that day are forever living in their glowing star."
To view the quilt online, visit www.loisjarvisquilts.com.
The creator of the quilt, Lois Jarvis of Madison, will speak about the project on Monday, February 11, at 6:30 p.m. during a reception hosted by the Blanchardville Women's Club.
The Ground Zero quilt has traveled across the country since Jarvis initially crafted it and posted pictures on her Web site in 2002. The site attracts up to20,000 visitors a day.
"I am so glad people are looking at the quilt online," says Jarvis, an accomplished quilter and quilting teacher. "I made the quilt to be viewed. I hope it will remind everyone that the loss of the building and their material content was not the important event of that day. The individual people on this quilt, the happy smiling people at work and at play, the brides and grooms, the fathers and mothers, the young so full of promise and the old with still so much to offer, who all perished that day, are the important things to remember."
The quilt features a "Lone Star" pattern, evoking the image of an explosion, that is made of transfer photos of people who died. Around the star is a border of grays, symbolizing a smoke-enveloped city in mourning.
One viewer described the quilt as "a testimony, not just to the event and the people it describes, but to what art can do in the human community."
"I like the fact that the quilt isn't metaphoric but factual, based in the people's lives. It is brave, blunt and honest. It doesn't force any emotional content on the viewer - agony, anger or grief - just the reality of rippling aftershocks we can only go on living with, but not really recover from," said viewer Brenna Hopkins of Madison. "The sense of energy, explosion, is palpable, but captured with love and reverence, not violence. The real heroes of that day are forever living in their glowing star."
To view the quilt online, visit www.loisjarvisquilts.com.
