LOS ANGELES — Quilts are as American as apple pie, but the public often overlooks these traditional bedcovers. 

Typically considered a craft, the art world has only recently given quilting its due. Artists like LA-based Luke Haynes view quilting as a medium with almost limitless ideas to explore.

Haynes shared his story with “LA Times Today.”

“I went to school for art first, sort of arts conservatory, and then into architecture. And that’s what led to quilting because, for me, quilting is architecture. It is a history of craft that has to do with the human scale. Architecture is about kind of stone stacks turned into wood stacks turned into steel stacks turned into concrete stacks as the buildings were able to get taller. But these sorts of material innovations have changed over time. And the same is true for quilting,” Haynes said. 

Making a quilt can take Haynes a few days or years, depending on the project’s requirements. 

He addressed the history of quilting as a female-led art form and talked about this place in the quilting world.

“Something that came up so much in my early career as a quilter is gender. I’m a male who makes quilts. There’s controversy about that. I’m held to a different standard as a maker of quilt objects because I am an interloper. Quilts were a place where women specifically had agency early when they didn’t have other agencies. So, men coming into a domestic sphere or women’s medium is fraught. And so, me being scrutinized in a different way, I think, is absolutely fine. It doesn’t make a quilt better because it’s made by men or because it’s made by women. It just references the history of it in a different way,” he said. 

Haynes has been quilting for 20 years. He’s had quilts shows in 160 shows all over the world. 

“I shy away from saying what my values are in appreciating quilts because I don’t want to tell people how to like them because quilting is something that people still are allowed to have their own appreciation of. A gallery of oil paintings has such a barrier to entry into education, but in a gallery of quilts, you can go in and say, I don’t know anything about quilts, but that one’s blue and it would look good on my bed,” Haynes said. 

Haynes is working on several projects, including more affirmation quilts with his wife, Nicole. 

You can follow him on Instagram @Entropies to see more of his work.

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