Jane Weaver - Artist's Statement

“Making quilts is one of life’s supreme blessings!

I love playing with shaped pieces of colored fabric.

I love experiencing the different qualities associated with the various numeric divisions of the circle and then interweaving them through additional concentric circles.

I love the experience of symmetrical geometric designs, and patterns – they irresistibly inspire me, especially those that are called “sacred” geometries, meaning that they form the underlying patterns and proportions for all the forms of Creation.

Harmony and wholeness can be encountered through certain patterns and colors. Whereas words and thoughts create intellectual understanding, art can uplift to the level of the spirit with color, design, and imagery.

I love the mandala form, its clear center and enclosing circumferences, its extensive radial symmetry. Mandala has become the main thrust of my work, in a tightly interwoven and precise format, as well as in a more free, improvisatory fashion. This universally sacred configuration bears a Sanskrit name: mand, a verb root meaning “to mark off or decorate,” and the suffix la, meaning “circle, essence, sacred center”. Mandalas feature prominently in the art of the great and ancient traditions, for they map the infinite nature of our spirit and its connectedness to our Universe and our Source.

I love precise and complex work, niggling and teasing out the interrelations among tiny printed shapes, symphonic lines, and texture and color interactions.

I love the sight of a finished mandala, the contrasting experience of the close with the far viewing of the surface in intricate work. The eye feels movement, not only around the layered circles, but also from center out to the periphery and returning to center again, to the bounds of the universe and back. All this activity, while the underlying design web is often only partially visible, just as life plays itself out over a deeper mystery.

I love creating sacred art that supports and harmonizes those who live with it.

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would be a quilter, having been born into a Mennonite farming family and culture. At the time, women held value mostly for their reproductive capability and capacity for skilled and uncomplaining labor at keeping house, garden, and field, while managing the feeding and well-being of their large families with few of the conveniences familiar to homes in suburbia. Women were generally expected to remain “plain,” but they could not resist color and visual expression in their gaudy flower gardens, their organized, colorful washlines, and their beautiful quiltmaking.

Although the role and experience of some Mennonite women has changed considerably since my childhood, and although many women feel they have liberated themselves from societal and cultural restrictions their mothers may have experienced, I wonder if our actual situation is so different? Our reproductive life is still not our own. Our children and friends are still subject to selection for cannon fodder and corporate disrespect. Our world seems to offer fewer and fewer soul-touching vistas, fewer moments of repose, more depersonalization.

When my craving for beauty and communion asserts itself, however, I can still tend lively flowerbeds of many kinds, artfully arrange laundry on a line, and put together quilts that magnify my soul.”