Nice rugs

Carlotta Miller's updated take on colonial floorcloths

by Leon Nigrosh

NAMESAKE DESIGNS: QUILTS AND FLOORCOVERINGS FOR THE HOME BY CARLOTTA MILLER
At the ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora, 660 Main Street, Worcester, through June 2.

Quilts were born out of the necessity to keep warm and were first made from cloth scrap by people who couldn't afford wool blankets. The same can be said about the history of colonial floorcloths. They were hand-painted oilcloths used to cover rough floors in the houses of those who couldn't afford woven rugs. But now, along comes Carlotta Miller with a new take on these early arts-and-crafts objects.

Miller's works are currently on display in ARTSWorcester's new offices and gallery in the Aurora Hotel. The muted tones of this tall, barrel-ceiling space and its bright hardwood parquet lend a tasteful backdrop to the dozen quilts and floorcloths that adorn the walls and floor. This spacious area also affords room between Miller's pieces, which allows us to appreciate each of them from a distance.

Miller's technique for painting floorcloths has been updated from the traditional oil paint on cotton cloth to acrylic paints on heavy canvas duck, with several finish coats of polyurethane for added durability. These cloths are meant to be used, not simply admired. Though the floorcloths have their own character, each is based on a complicated " pentagonal game" Miller plays with herself. Her 30x45" floorcloth Aliens and Snakes Amongst Pentagons almost follows the rules of the game: pentagons must cover the entire surface; pentagons are limited to five colors; no two pentagons of the same color may touch; and opposing shapes must be in complementary colors. But this structure soon dissolves into colors that advance and retreat as green and ochre pentagons become gray and mustard diamonds and triangles, while red rhomboids meander through the composition.

In her quest for scintillating, bright compositions, Miller continually breaks her own rules, relying on intuition to make the final choices. Her Birdseye Rediscovered is awash with lavender, gray, ochre, and black diamonds and triangles floating in a pale background without apparent destination. Even though these floorcloths are composed of strict geometric shapes, they are much more loosely structured than Miller's earlier quilts, such as One + One + One . . ., in which block-printed fabric crosses march in cadence over a field of subdued color. They also strongly hint of works by M.C. Escher (1898-1972), the Dutch graphic artist who had a preoccupation with the interchangeability of figure and ground.

It is Miller's latest project "Namesake Designs," that holds the most promise. To create the designs for these quilts, floorcloths, and window treatments, she uses the letters in a child's name -- in the example on display she employs her daughter's name, Grace -- and then re-interprets them by using the seven specific geometric forms found in a tangram, or Chinese puzzle square. As complicated as this may sound, the results are imaginative, colorful, and, once you know the secret name, very challenging.

The 32x65" quilt GRACE is pieced together with snippets of pink, greens, and oranges on white. At first glance it is a fanciful abstract pattern, but once you spot the first "Grace," the game is on. Miller doesn't make the search easy, either. In some places the name appears vertically, in other areas the letters are "written" backwards, and several spellings are even arranged upside-down. Miller has also reproduced and silkscreened her daughter's amusing original drawing of "the Pickle Guy" on the backing fabric.

Because she plans to produce other similar quilts with any child's name, Miller is now using a computer as a time-saver to geometrically interpret the letters of the alphabet. As an accompanying storyboard illustrates, Miller -- with modern technology -- puts a lot of herself, her passion for color, her concern for geometric intrigue, and her love of the tactility of fabric into the layout and design. She wants to make something that people will cherish and something that is personalized, useable, and contemporary but filled with emotional content that is warm and snugly.

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The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (508) 755-5142.