Ian Cozzens
Ian Cozzens lives, bikes, & works on projects in Providence, RI. He is a resident artist mentor in printmaking at New Urban Arts, an afterschool art studio for high schoolers. He likes geometry, cats, old objects & tools, and most things that bear the marks of human hands. He used to work extremely long hours on meticulous art projects before realizing that art won’t make people love you! and also realizing that sailing is more fun than obsessively hunching over a desk drawing lines with a Rapidograph. Ian has five small boats under 23 feet long, all made before 1970, two of which are fully functional… hopefully one more will be in the water by the time this quilt is on display. If you want to learn how to sail, he can teach you.
Let’s Play (2023)
Lemoyne Star (and any quilt block with “set-in seams”, as where three corners meet here) is a block that’s easier to piece by hand than by machine. I learned how to make this block early on in my quilting life, then realized how labor-intensive it is! But its geometry is really satisfying, & all the different stuff you can do with colors within its constraints. It’s kind of shocking (and possibly un-structural) to slice up a hand-pieced quilt square. But the theme of “play” challenged me to do something beyond just making a precision quilt block… & at least I pieced it myself so I wasn’t cutting up someone else’s block!
Neon Ruins (2022)
Flying Geese, with the big central triangle and two outer smaller triangles, is a traditional patchwork block. Letting them stack up in vertical strips/stripes, & not being too picky about symmetrically or “matching”, is a classic way of laying the geese out to make a blanket as you sew the individual blocks, using whatever fabric you have at hand. I think about the repeated Flying Geese blocks as delineating a a journey, watching the flight of geese overhead from unknown starting point to unknown destination. While making this square, I also came to see it as a landscape, with mountains & valleys & roads… Human marks across a scarred yet still beautiful earth.
The brown fabrics are quilting cottons, one traditional floral print and one “new style”/faux batik print. The yellow neon/reflective fabric is from a pair of torn safety pants I found run over in the street next to the construction site for the new 6/10 connector highway in Providence… and the pink fabric is from a Victoria’s Secret branded umbrella, found broken after a storm on Broad Street. Safety is important! and cute pink colors are also important. 😀