The Art of Sewing Science Into Beautiful Quilts

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Thirteen years ago, when American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the North Tower of the World Trade Center, no one could see the stars. But the stars were there, and the pattern above is what they would have looked like rotating behind the daylight, smoke, and fire. Anna Von Mertens stitched this piece shortly after the attacks, as a way to come to grips with what had happened.

“I had this background in mapping, and the most existential form of mapping is looking up at the stars and knowing where we fit in the giant puzzle of things,” she said. A friend showed her some software that modeled the stars from any time and place on earth, and she set about memorializing 9/11.

Von Mertens is an artist who explores humanity’s highs and lows. And while needle, thread and fabric are her medium, she typically finds some scientific phenomena that helps her translate how she feels about an event or subject. The September 11th piece was part of a series of time-lapsed stars over a series of American tragedies. She’s also knitted tree rings to examine drought and empires, a nuclear blast to represent the media’s lack of subtlety in politics, and a black hole to describe her relationship to the East Coast, among other works.

Von Mertens started her art career in more traditional mediums like painting and illustration, making quilts in her free time. Eventually, she saw quilting as a better way to represent her ideas. She approaches each piece methodically, beginning with intense research into her topic. She says she doesn’t start out seeking a scientific angle, but usually finds science offers a compelling tableau.

She designs her first patterns on the computer, sometimes drafting them from scratch. Once that’s complete, she uses a projector to draw the pattern onto the fabric. “I transfer each line by hand, with chalk. I chalk out my stitch pattern onto the piece. If the piece happens to include color, I hand dye it too,” she said. During the long weeks she spends stitching, she tries to immerse herself in the topic of her work. For example, while she was stitching the movement of stars during the Tet Offensive, she watched a 17-hour documentary on the Vietnam War. She says that she typically works on only one piece at a time.

Recently, the scientific aspect of her work has gotten notice within the physics community, and she was asked to join a panel on artistic interpretations of science as part of the COSMO 2014 physics conference at the University of Chicago. She says she was nervous to present her work in front of physicists, because she felt pressure to get the information correct. She says the physicists were interested and receptive to her work, and after the meeting, she laughed at her nervousness. “Artists and scientists are not that different,” she said. “We’re in our own little worlds grinding away at ideas.”