The Eye Patch Quilt: Cloisonne Lenses

The Eye Patch Quilt (note: three cloisonne pieces circled in yellow).

Mom turned to making patches around 1962 and shelved her prosthetic eye.  She continued to research alternatives and by the late nineties a few more options were presented to her.  One option she followed up on was to have an artist make a pair of glasses that could fit a stained glass or cloisonne drop in for the right lens.  The artist made a beautiful side panel out of silver that hung off the frame's temple.  The artist also made six cloisonne lenses that could be switched in or out of the frames depending on her style or mood.

When we talked to Marcia Karlin about making the quilts, it was her idea to bring other objects into her work.  Marcia divided the lenses and incorporated them into both quilts, three lenses each.

Close ups of the lenses:

Close up of lens seen in upper middle left of photo at top of the page.

This one is from my brother's quilt.

Lens from upper right corner in photo at top of post.

Chapter 3: A Patch is Born

From the cover of Wild Women.

The summer before mom transferred to DU she worked back in Chicago as a Kelly Girl and was placed at United Airlines new executive headquarters.

I went to downtown Chicago on the train on Saturdays to Patricia Stevens' modeling school where our girl scout troop had visited.  I enrolled in many different classes.  During an eyebrow class the instructor looked at me struggling to invent an eye brow on top of the seam of this plastic glob.  She said, "I notice you make all of your clothes.  Did you know there was a famous opera singer who always performed with jewel encrusted eye patches?"  I thought this was a wonderful idea to explore.  When I went home to tell my parents that night,my Mom said, "Great idea, try it!" and my Dad said, "No daughter of mine is going to be a pirate!"  Of course he had no way of knowing how it felt to me, with my face, to be in my adolescence: navigating through the world of fashion, appearance, and the need for acceptance.

The Pirates of Blood River came out in 1962, context for Grander's comment.

So, I waited to try it.  My parents drove me to Denver University in the fall; as they headed down the driveway to go back home, I went in to Pat's sewing machine and came up with my first patch proto-types to wear during rush week.  My thinking was that this was a whole new place, no one had ever seen me before besides Pat, and I could be whoever I wanted to be: they'd think I had always worn a patch.  And if it didn't work out or feel good to me, I could always go back to Illinois and never see any of these people again.  It was a window of opportunity I didn't want to miss.

It's obvious, isn't it? The patch worked.

Chapter 2: Sink or Swim

Mom's chapter 2 is similar to Loie's chapter in section one.  It is long and has several themes critical to the rest of her book.  I'd like to break her "Childhood and Adolescence: Not for Sissies" chapter into a few entries, then post an unabridged version later this week (okay, by Christmas for sure).

Prosthetic Eyes and Foreheads (wait for it, wait for it!)

A few years ago Eric and I were sorting through stuff in the house when he accidentally shocked himself--not with a live wire, but with a box containing two of my mother's prosthetics.  He gave a nervous laugh and handed the box over to me saying, "Look, you have your mother's eyes."

This photo tells me all I need to know about mom's esteem with the prosthesis.

Mom's long relationship with prosthetics began around age 10 and some highlights from Chapter 2 are below.  I'll scan in the 8 page chapter and post it unabridged this week, but for now this will do.

Fourth grade also marked a transition from the gauze bandage taped on my face to an artificial eye prosthesis.  It required another surgery to line the eye orbit with skin from my stomach....I was so excited about not having to wear the gauze anymore and have questions about who hit me or what happened to me.  Over the years I had asked my mom if she couldn't just paint an eye on the gauze or behind a Halloween mask for me.  I really wanted to blend in.

We started trips to downtown Chicago to get the prostheses started.  The clinician was a wonderful artist and the moon shaped part of the eyeball showing was exactly like my left eye....Sometimes it fell out, sometimes [the glue] burned, sometimes it was okay.  They got me a pair of glasses, not that I needed them, but that they helped to camouflage the seam of the circle of plastic surrounding the eye.

It took me a while to realize that although people who didn't know me didn't ask em as many questions [with the prosthetic], they were now asking my friends and family.  They were too embarrassed to ask me because it looked like I thought everything looked okay, which it didn't.




Mom and I saw TMBG in DC years ago at Wolf Trap.  What a great summer day, prosthetic foreheads and all.  The song spoke doubly to me today, "where was I, I forgot the point that I was making," seems to be the theme of the day!