Dana Warner Fisher’s Quilt Kundun
by Danny Fisher
My mother Dana, who is a professional actress and librarian by training, is also a quilt artist. (Regular readers may recall a post from last summer about a quilt she made for me out of old t-shirts of mine.) Mom makes what are called “art quilts”, or quilts that are designed and shown like more traditional forms of gallery artwork. I was helping her recently to photograph some old quilts, including one she made in 2000 called Kundun (pictured above). Kundun is a Tibetan word that means “the presence,” and it is used as a title to address His Holiness the Dalai Lama. (And, of course, it’s the title of Mary Craig’s biography of the current Dalai Lama’s family, as well as Martin Scorsese’s 1997 biopic about him.) My mother has long been an admirer of the the Great 14th, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso. We even went to see him together during his visit to Indiana some years ago. Anyway, she was inspired to make a quilt in his honor, and Kundun was the result.
Click on the image above for a larger view. The same goes for the two views from the back of the quilt posted below.
Wow, what a tremendous quilt!! What adventures has the quilt had since it was made in 2000!? Perhaps it should be arranged that Martin Scorsese and His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso sleep under it [not necessarily together].
– Tom
M’ma sometimes does quilt shows, so it does the rounds there. Honestly, though, I don’t think this particular quilt has been shown enough. It’s one of my favorites of hers for a lot of reasons.