I guess the reason I chose quilting as the nearest female version of painting over embroidery is the fact that tapestries were often male-designed and female-rendered, usually with the designer being well-remembered and the actual needle-workers being well-forgotten. Unfortunately, this is often a fact of life with quilting as well, except for heirlooms quilts when the creator's name and place on the family tree is passed down from generation to generation within a given family. In the previous ArtyFact, I was comparing the art of quilting to that of fresco painting as much as anything, rather than trying to make the quilt the "exclusive" female artform vis-a-vis painting. In so doing I was trying to deal with narrative artforms and media rather than those that were "merely" decorative in nature.

As far as the penchant judges have of integrating quilting into painting, in all fairness, there was no "quilt" category in the show I was in and the judges were unwilling to cast the works involved into the "soft crafts" category because of the high quality and creative, "painterly" energy these works exhibited. The fault lay, of course, not with the judges but with the show's organizers for forcing them into such a corner. It has only been very recently that "quilt painters" have had the audacity to step up to the line and go toe-to-toe with traditional painters, and the show's (painter dominated) art guild simply hadn't reacted to such a phenomena. Next year should be interesting. I wonder if they will rise to the occassion.