Valerie Goodwin and the Human Environment
Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. African Burial Ground II , 2009. Valerie Goodwin is a textile artist that probably approaches the medium through a realatively unique perspective, that of an architect. She has both a degree and Masters in architecture and has taught architectural design. This gives her a strong and definite edge to her work akin to that of the fairly structured disciplines of cartography, archaeology and architecture. Illustration: Valerie Goodwin. City Grid IV , 2007. The use of planned and structured surfaces could give her work a cold and clinical appeal with quilts appearing as hard and intransigent geometrically set grids, but instead her work, although much of it based on the city grid map, takes into account the human element that makes a town or city. What at first glance what seems to have been both scientifically and geometrically planned within an office as a concept or task, takes on the role of an organic human landscape. This becomes more appare...