“Nine Patch (for Sara Clymer), Brenton Good, chair, Department of Visual Arts
Commissioned by President Kim Phipps for the High Center, this piece references a landscape, with a nine-patch “sky,” a horizon line and star-patterned earth tones. Brenton Good dedicates the work to his grandmother Sara Clymer Nafziger, an avid quilter. Recently, Good considered how these geometric forms relate to his Mennonite upbringing.
“For years, people would say, ‘Oh, your work is like quilting,’” said Good, “and I’d say, ‘No, it isn’t. It is about the history of modernist painting.’ But I don’t say that as much anymore. In the second half of the 19th century, you see these flat, severe quilt designs showing up in Lancaster County, 50 years before the abstract painters. They’re both about flatness and geometry.”