Black Hole – Deep-Sky Object ALC 3

Black Hole

34 x 34 cm (13,5" x 13,5")

This is my third astroquilt, and the second in a series of astroquilts that combine space and human anatomy. The first in the series is The Heart Nebula, which is an anatomical heart floating in space and pumping stars out into the cosmos. In Black Hole you see a human eye with a black hole instead of a normal pupil. A black hole in space is a complex and fascinating object, and if you want to know a little more about what a black hole is and why I have chosen to depict in in this manner, follow this link to my project page and scroll down to 17 February 2020.

I had a lot of fun with this quilt, playing with different concepts and creating layers of meaning. Apart from the idea of the black hole itself, one thread (pardon the pun) in this quilt is Einstein’s so called field equations. These are a series of equations within the general theory of relativity, which describe the spacetime curvature and lead to the prediction of black holes. Since they are highly relevant for my subject matter, I chose to use parts of these equations for the quilting in the background and in the iris.

Spacetime curvature, i.e. the idea that spacetime is not straight and flat, but warped by massive objects, is also present in the white of the eye and the eyelid, where I used quilting lines to describe the curvature of the surface. There is, however, also another element in the white of the eye and the iris, which alludes to the eye as a camera, where the pupil is the aperture and the iris the aperture stop which controls the amount of light that is admitted into the eye/camera. The lines that curve in from the outer edge toward the black hole symbolise the moving parts of the aperture stop and the muscles in the iris, which contract and expand the opening, as well as the gravitational force that inexorably pulls even light into a black hole, from where there is no escape.

The eye is a very powerful symbol that in itself has many layers of meaning in e.g. folklore (the evil or spellbinding eye), romance (drowning in someone’s eyes) and communication (look someone straight in the eye). I really enjoyed adding another symbolic layer to the eye by introducing the concept of the black hole.

These are the main ideas that I played with in the making of the Black Hole quilt. If you want to follow the process behind the quilt step by step, please visit my project page or check out my Instagram feed.

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