Hmong Story Quilt

Title: Hmong Story Quilt,
Date: 1970s
Author/Designed: Bee, Montana USA
Location: UC Davis Art Museum

What comes to mind when you first look at this quilt in terms of design. We see pattern, repetition, and rhythm. There is more but we are only going to focus on these three terms. Where do we see repetition? The two outlines of this quilt are done by repetition. Looking inside the outlines we see different symbols. Each symbol in the quilt has a meaning to it. Will get back to the meaning but let’s pay attention to the different scales of the different symbols that are in the quilt. Notice that they’re few different symbols, but each symbol has a certain repetition with also taking in the consideration of the pattern it’s in. Looking at different patterns we can see the rhythm in the quilt. Using the word rhythm sounds funny because rhythm is used to when expressing sound. But in design rhythm is a visual sensation. In this quilt it has been expressed as the repetition and pattern of different symbols. It gives a unity feeling. Let’s look at it closely ands see what the author trying to show us. It looks like we are shown how the Vietnamese are living. We are not going to go in details in this but now you know how to express rhythm in design.