Robert’s Quilt: the Goldberg Variations
This quilt was inspired by a performance of the Goldberg Variations by Angela Hewitt, at the Guelph Spring Festival in 2004. Each of 32 squares is based on one of the variations, and is individually designed in response to its rhythm or colour or mood. To make the quilt into a bed-shaped rectangle, I added a beginning square (Alpha) and an ending square (Omega), and in the middle, a portrait of Bach with a smile, who “checks in” during the intermission, to see if you are enjoying yourself.
I made this quilt for my friend and fellow artist, the composer Robert Evans, who loved the music of Bach, and who told me he was cold when he began treatment for a malignant brain tumour. He died on March 10, 2005. The text which flows through the quilt is an anonymous one I found in England, which he set to music for me in 2003.