Home Quilt, 2004
Inez Storer

Oil and mixed media on panel
46 x 46 in.
Promised gift of the artist

In the fall of 2003, the de Saisset Museum presented Theatrical Realism, the first retrospective of Inverness-based artist Inez Storer. The large-scale exhibition featured paintings, works on paper, and assemblage sculptures produced between 1960 and the present. Presented in collaboration with two other complementary exhibitions at the San Jose ICA and the Gallery at Villa Montalvo, the exhibition received a significant amount of critical attention from the local and national media.

As a permanent record of the exhibition, artist Inez Storer has agreed to gift her recent, large-scale painting Home Quilt to the museum's permanent collection. Home Quilt represented the most recent work by Inez Storer in the Theatrical Realism exhibition. The painting combines, in a quilt-like composition, scraps of motifs that appear throughout her oeuvre. The bearded troll figure, the propped-up vanity mirror, and the ladder are all represented here and in numerous other works in the exhibition. By "stitching" them together in a quilt-like grid, Storer makes reference to the way she organizes visual information in her work while referencing the personal comfort she derives from these images.

Home Quilt is traveling to Philadelphia, where it will appear in the presentation of the Theatrical Realism exhibition scheduled for March 14-June 27 at The National Museum of American Jewish History. At the close of the Philadelphia exhibition, the work will be returned to the de Saisset Museum for future generations of our audiences to enjoy. Home Quilt will be the first painting by Inez Storer in the de Saisset Museum's collection, joining two artist books, nine works on paper, and one sculpture.

Karen Kienzle
Curator of Exhibits and Collections