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Michael James (born 1949) is an American artist, educator, author, and lecturer. He is best known as a leader of the art quilt movement that began in the 1970s and is currently the Chair and Ardis James Professor of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://cehs.unl.edu/tcd/ )〕 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. ==Early life and education== James was the first of seven children born to an English and French-Canadian Catholic family in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He attended a bilingual parochial school in St. Anthony's Parish in the 1950s and 1960s, and upon graduating from high school in 1967, enrolled at Southeastern Massachusetts University in the neighboring community of Dartmouth (now the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth), where he studied painting and printmaking. His undergraduate education included a year-long program based on Josef Albers's ''Interaction of Color'', taught by Donald Krueger, which provided him with the foundation in color theory that prepared him for his later work as a colorist. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1971, he moved to Rochester, New York, to attend graduate school at Rochester Institute of Technology, concentrating again in painting and printmaking. During the course of his two-year graduate program, he married Judith Dionne, a fellow art student from Southeastern Massachusetts University, and their son, Trevor, was born. Even as he pursued a degree in painting, his interest in the medium began to wane. Before the end of his master’s program, he had come to the conclusion that he had “nothing important to say in painting” and that the importance of painting in the art world was on the decline. Within months after receiving his Master of Fine Art degree in 1973, he had stopped painting altogether. As his attraction to painting and printmaking dwindled, he grew increasingly fascinated by quiltmaking. He had experimented with quiltmaking as an undergraduate and returned to it in the third semester of graduate school as a diversion from the stresses of his studies. His growing enthusiasm for the medium in the early 1970s coincided with the increased national preoccupation with quiltmaking. As the United States emerged from the back-to-the-earth and feminist movements of the 1960s, greater value was being placed on what had been traditionally considered the “domestic arts.” The nation was also anticipating its Bicentennial in 1976, and the media was spotlighting American heritage and heirlooms and popularizing interest in American history and Americana. While quilts were being venerated as national treasures, they were also being recognized as forerunners to the modern art movement. In the summer of 1971, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York exhibited the Amish quilt collection of Jonathan Holstein & Gail van der Hoof, a pivotal exhibition that raised the status of quilts to a fine art. James attended a lecture by Holstein in 1973 and later said, “The idea that quilts can be art may not have occurred to me had I not seen Amish quilts.” In addition to the quiltmaking tradition, James was attracted to the geometric and abstract patterns of quilt design. There was plenty of fabric at hand, as Judy also sewed, and he found that he preferred to work with fabric rather than paint. The fact that he could quilt at home away from the toxic chemicals of the paint and print studio while playing an active role in his infant son’s life was a “nice bonus,” he said. He and Judy were soon making and selling small, patchwork items to bring in extra money. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michael James (quilt artist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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