Carole Pollard

Ideas excite me. Beauty inspires me.

Iwanted to be an artist from childhood, but made my living teaching English. I retired to get serious about making art and chose designing and making art quilts to express that intention.

Several previous quilts have been inspired by literature. To Walk in My Integrity is the first and probably the only piece that integrates words-ideas from literature-with images. Both have deeply personal meaning in this quilt, which is a psychological self-portrait.

Twelve archetypes. I could have made twelve quilts, but the archetypes are not separated from each other. They are all contained and interlinked within me and work together in dynamic and sometimes startling or even disturbing ways. They had to be integrated into a single quilt to suggest those relationships. Accordingly, elements of the archetypes reach into the “chambers” of adjacent ones.

The quotes in each chamber define the role of that archetype for me. The four very large gold rays seem to be a thirteenth archetype, but they actually carry an overarching profound inspiration which has been part of my life since I discovered it in a high school English class:

Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire, Bring me my spear. Oh clouds, unfold. Bring me me my chariot of fire!

Those four lines from William Blake capture my desire to be and to do something more and higher. Those lines have lifted me my whole life.

To Walk in My Integrity 2022 72” x 72” Art Quilt NFS lionsong@roadruer.com