Curator's Eye

Mirror Effect | Margot Quan Knight, photographer

selected by Stefano Catalani, curator, Bellevue Arts Museum

BB, photo courtesy of the artist

The quilt is made of glass mirrors that I cut and glued onto fabric in an eight-point-star pattern. I was thinking about how family identity used to be passed down through quilts, while now people often use photographs. The materials are so different, but both pull together fragments — bits of the clothes a family wore (in quilts) or moments from their lives (in photographs). My mirror quilt was an attempt to squash those ideas together, to make a quilt that is also a kind of camera lens.

This photo was taken in the bedroom of a teenage boy I met through a friend of my mother’s. I set up my mirror quilt on a stand in his room. I wedged tissue under the corners of the mirrors to avoid reflecting the camera.  — M.Q.K.

Artist Stats

Born: 1977
Hometown: Bellevue, WA
Alma mater: Bard College
Current subject matter: Fragmented reflections of cluttered rooms
Next show: ÜberPortrait at Bellevue Arts Museum (June 16 – October 18)
To see more: margotknight.com