Sonja Lee-Austin
Flow, 2025
Art quilt with photograph, paint, & stitch 33x8.75"
Flow is a piece about the meditative quality of nature and the creative process. It started with a photo of a tree printed on fabric that I then painted on and hand-stitched to follow the flow of the tree branch patterns.
Sonja Lee-Austin
Mother/Not Mother, 2024
Mixed media art quilt with basketry 10" diameter
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a mother - so much responsibility, so much baggage, so many stereotypes: soccer mom, earth mother, helicopter mom, working mother, stay-at-home mom… I couldn’t imagine not knowing what it was like to be a mom, so I decided why not. Around maybe 5 weeks, I had what my medical record documented as diagnosis code 003.9 for “spontaneous abortion,” more commonly known as a miscarriage. The circle of life goes on and as chemist Antoine Lavoisier said, “In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.” Thankfully, over a year later I became a mother of a healthy baby boy.
Sonja Lee-Austin
That Than Which, 2022
Mixed media: machine stitched collage of sheer fabric bits, Glitterati fibers & film, metal shim & knit ribbon and wire on a dissolvable stabilizer 16" diameter
“That Than Which” refers to my fascination with Saint Anselm’s rather circular logic when he attempted to prove the existence of something greater than what we can comprehend. He said “Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” For me, the Yin-Yang symbol epitomizes the mysteries of life with its representation of opposites such as light & dark, good & evil, and day & night. The curved line where Yin and Yang meet and blend together represent the spaces between opposites while the complete circle represents the oneness of all.
