"Yo-Yo"

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
c. 1971
Cotton, polyester knit, corduroy clothing material, dashiki material
80 x 83 inches
Collection of
The Dallas Museum of Art
Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

Ironically, though her work was deemed too irregular for the Freedom Quilting Bee, Young made a so-called "Yo-Yo" bedcover around the time of the bee's founding, whose sheer technical finesse, combining a classic grid of individual rosettelike pieces to make a delicate yet wildly colorful and rich design, exceeds in execution even the most meticulously detailed quilting bee products. Young shows that she can master and transform any kind of bedcover, even common or novelty ones like the "Yo-Yo," from the roughest to the most elegant and baroque—or as in this case, a sort of pointillist abstract sculpture.