Jessie Cutts, working as Cutts & Sons creates textile artworks and objects, exploring the possibilities and limitations of form and colour through traditional quilting techniques.
Bringing together a 20 year background in graphic and communication design, illustration and a lot of making on the side, Jessie works to create artwork and objects that elevate quilting to something that can be enjoyed in a new and modern way.
While the pieces are created using patchwork and quilting stitches, the designs take an organic, improvisational approach to pattern and line work. These are ‘made’ artworks, using a domestic, functional craft to create pieces that are at once modern, colourful and textural.
The works are made in direct response to the fabric, by mostly free form sewing – using trimmings from previous works, scraps, upcycled clothes, offcuts from clothing manufacture and the lucky ‘accidents’ of stitching without a pattern.
Historically fibre arts have been dismissed as ‘women’s work’ or merely ‘decorative arts’ and not taken seriously in the art world. These crafted pieces, steeped in centuries of tradition, bring together – as they always did – craft, abstract art, functional utility and graphic design.
In some way, the hope is to elevate the idea of quilting beyond the realms of gendered domesticity while preserving the skills and traditions of so many women before.
