2008
Princeton, New Jersey
77 x 56 inches
Gift from Joy Saville and Friends, with special support from the Lincoln High Class of 1953
IQM 2011.005.0001

Quilt artist, Joy Saville, worked on this quilt after the death of her husband. She wrote that it is " . . . filled with emotion and passion."

Her son named it after the surface of a black hole, which Saville felt was a perfect description of her mental and emotional state at the time, “as I was working hard at developing a new relationship with Dudley in the absence of his physical presence."

Born in Clatonia, Nebraska, in 1936, Saville trained as a nurse at Lincoln General Hospital in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Saville left her nursing career to pursue textile arts full-time. She produced dozens of abstract expressionist textile works rooted in quilting. Her art has appeared in exhibitions around the world and can be seen in permanent collections, including the IQM, the American Craft Museum in New York, The Newark Museum in New Jersey and in private and corporate collections. Saville died March 10, 2020 in Skillman, New Jersey.

"Event Horizon" appears in “Quilts of Emotion,” which is on display at the International Quilt Museum December 4, 2020 - March 28, 2021. In this exhibition, objects from the IQM’s permanent collection provide examples of the many kinds of sewing techniques and skills women have mastered from the 1700s to the present. These objects of plain and fancy sewing allow visitors to imagine the solitary and social sewing communities of past times in which these objects were made and that provided sources of emotional support to countless women.