Abstract:
This thesis demonstrates that advancements in communication, technology and media are
providing new inspiration, tools and techniques to quilt artists and have enabled them to
transform the 1960s art quilt into a new hybrid form: quilts that reference the sciences in
new and specific ways and in doing so, create new access to the sciences. Science-infused
art quilts have evolved naturally from art quilts because quilt artists desire to educate,
inspire, and express and influence culture by artistically employing and referencing the
sciences.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has played a major role in
the making and the enhancement of quilts up to modern day. Today, STEAM is a new
innovation that couples the sciences with art and design; STEM + Art = STEAM,
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics). In the twenty-first century the
public debate about innovation has focused increasingly on the role of art as an important
source of creativity and a new term has been forged to designate the broadened definition of the foundational fields: STEAM. To some degree, art quilts have always embodied the
ideas embraced by STEM but twenty-first century quilts have evolved into still broader
stylistic and conceptual categories and often function as the "A", the art component in
STEAM.
