SANTA BARBARA, CA.-The University Art Museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara, presents Anna Von Mertens: Suggested North Points, on view through August 28, 2005. Anna Von Mertens' artworks, composed of non-traditional quilt sculptures and floor drawings, embody three-dimensional spiritual and physical landscapes. Created with hand-dyed fabrics and sewn by hand, Von Mertens' quilts, displayed on raised platforms, manifest geography, physics, and geometry as they examine the relationship between the individual and the collective.

“I use the site of the bed to translate the external to the personal,” says the artist. “Maps are my point of reference: circuit boards as paths of communication, topography as a foreign landscape, cell structures as an inner landscape. I stitch these patterns to internalize them and to build my own sense of place? By navigating my way one stitch at a time, these sculptures become an examination of place and how we find direction in our lives.”

The exhibition is comprised of two complementary parts. The first, “Suggested North Points” (originally sponsored by UC Berkeley's Art Museum MATRIX program), portrays the artist's renditions of north, east, south, and west. The second, “Black and White, Shades of Gray,” examines the difference between stark black-and-white thinking vs. areas of gray that reflect the complexity of reality. Natural and man-made events are evoked: sunsets, tides, nuclear explosion. Together, all of the sculptures raise questions about perspective, place, and contrast.

Von Mertens is an MFA graduate from the California College of Arts and Crafts.
Please see http://www.annavonmertens.com for more images and information about the artist's work.