Frankie Toan
Based in Denver, Frankie Toan (they/them/theirs) is an artist working mostly with craft and DIY materials and techniques to create large soft sculptures, interactive works, and immersive installations. Their work ranges from text based non-traditional quilts, to p/lush fantasy bodies, to large collaborative immersive projects.
Our Envisioned Futures (2021)
This quilt square is made of some recycled/ repurposed material, my collected thread clippings (in the center), and some fabrics that screamed “future” to me, like the gray ring of reflective material. The prompt for this quilt included some wonderful quotes from Octavia Butler, an author I continually look to as well. Science fiction has always offered clippings of alternative road-maps for the future. The best of this genre suggests ways to expand the mind, lending new approaches and nuance to age-old problems. When thinking of how to harness this power in the form of a quilt square, I decided to bring another dimension into the largely 2 dimensional quilt square. Of course a quilt is ultimately a 3 dimensional object with weight and depth, but the pattern of a quilt is often mostly flat. For our future I wish for new dimensions and ways of being to expand into, leading us to new ways of thinking and doing. I hope we bring the clippings of our pasts, and put them together in new ways.