I am finding myself moving from pure textile/quilt art into multimedia, assemblage and mixed-media art. The textiles often play strongly in the mix, but the ideas that I am finindg in these other fields greatly widen the view. One great article on the introduction of humor and pop art into the craft vocabulary is Celia Ben Mitchell’s article: Heart and Head, The Life and Work of Don Tompkins. The article provides an overview of the career of Tompkins, with an emphasis on the motivations and growth:

“… This first pendant is a tableau, the inscrutable parts of a short story, a fable, a private mythology. A world. In this work, and more fully in the mature series that soon followed, Tompkins crashes the party’ of American Modernist jewelry, bringing eccentric materials and new techniques, social and political satire, the detritus of popular culture, private histories, bawdy good humor, and just plain good fun to the workbench.

… Including the first medal-like pendant, there is a record (likely still incomplete) of 25 commemorative medals. Naturally, some are clearly richer, more cohesive and visually dynamic than others, such as Henry Miller (1968); Patriotic (Fuck Communism) (ca. 1969); Nixon (1969-72); Janis Joplin, Minnesota Fats, Martha Mitchell and Jack Zucker (all 1971 , quite a run); Jackson Pollock (1972); what must be considered his masterwork, Banting and Best (1972); and Iran Karp (1974). These medals possess the visual grace that Tompkins brought to his earlier traditional jewelry, together with biting parody, balls-to-the-wall social commentary, often a full-­blown wit and at turns a tender, personal touch.

Jack Zucker (ca. 1972) is one of the gems and comes out of a terrific story. Zucker, a Philadelphia union organizer, was a friend of Betty Tompkins’s parents. Along with so many intellectuals of the 1950s, lie was called up before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s specious Un-­American Activities Committee and asked to defend himself. He said, “Senator McCarthy, I have more patriotism in my little finger than you have in your whole body.” Tompkins commemorates those words in the work, along with an etched portrait of Zucker, an American Federation of Labor pin, and a kitschy cast charm of a dancing girl, all wonderfully balanced in the grid format. A terrific tribute.”