Margot Quan Knight: Made Especially For You By

Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday, November 12th, 6:00-7:30pm

Art proposes an alternate value system based on aesthetic properties or the beauty of an idea. Doilies inhabit a strange place in this system. Craft objects originally admired for their elegance and as demonstrations of their maker’s skill, doilies have been stripped of their aesthetic value by contemporary taste. They’re now so out of style that I can buy one on Ebay for $12. Aesthetic value (the lack of) trumps the value of labor, the value of the hours and months it took to make these objects.

Some doilies do stick around, out of sight in drawers and cedar chests, but nonetheless saved. Why? Because of affect. We love their maker—our mom, aunts, grandmothers, and godmothers. The care women lavished on these works is a visible artifact of the work they did caring for others, caring for us. Love, like art, proposes an alternate value system.