The 40th anniversary of the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit will be commemorated with a host of activities and uniquely exciting exhibitions throughout the year.
The piece-de-resistance is the Christo-like wrapping of the museum in a massive quilt created by renowned quilt maker Joe Cunningham. Annie Dean, Cahoon’s consulting curator, said that after fiddling with the idea of using recycled vinyl banners for the job, she came up with the idea of using colorful spinnaker sails.
“My husband’s family has owned the boat, ‘Freedom,’ for over 60 years. It is a 100-year-old Herreshoff 12 1/2 and it is a very special wooden boat that is no longer made. My husband grew up racing in it and used the spinnaker often. Last summer we put the spinnaker up just for fun and that is when I got the idea,” Dean explained.
In an edition of “The Quilt Report,” that he regularly produces for YouTube viewing, Cunningham sits amongst massive rolls of nylon ripstop sails contributed to the project by Sea Bags of Portland, Maine, with his rotary cutter. He said he likes to put himself in situations where he doesn’t know what will happen and this is one of them, making him feel disorganized, a bit overwhelmed but excited. He will, he said, “Cut up then sew together with a team of sewists” 40 seven feet-by-seven-feet patch work panels from these huge curvilinear sails. As he cuts, he mentioned that this sacrilege freaks out his brother, who is a sailor.
In the design that Cunningham showed me, the quilt wrapped around the Cahoon will exude stripes of wild color, of yellow, blue and red contrasted with a white quilt. Dean noted, “The quilting will cover the signature red shingles, but the windows, doors, and other architectural features of the building remain visible.”
Cunningham grew up in a working-class family in Flint, Michigan, where he was a compatriot of filmmaker Michael Moore for whom he has played benefit concerts for — where books and art became his escape. “When I first went to a museum in 8th grade, I felt like I was home,” said Cunningham, who started playing guitar at 17, complimenting his work as a professional singer and songwriter, and discovered quilting in his 20s when a woman he was courting asked him to catalogue and co-author a book on the Mary Schafer quilt collection.