Little Glass Houses

2023, 38x44 inches, Hand-dyed and unbleached muslin, cotton batting, mercerized cotton thread and block printing ink

Diatoms are a prolific single-celled microorganism, found in water and soil across the planet. This quilt "magnifies" them for the human eye in a composition that mirrors the view of a slide under the microscope. The cell walls of diatoms are likened to glass, as they are made up of a thin layer of transparent silica. Replaced by soft cotton and thread, this quilt gives them a dimensional quality that is lost under a microscope.