Movement and energy shine in Michael C. Thorpe’s textile art.
Michael C. Thorpe’s vivid quilt paintings offer a window into his rich, joyful world. The Boston-raised, New York–based multidisciplinary artist, whose practice encompasses textiles, sculpture, photography, drawing, writing, and performance, emphasizes storytelling in his work, depicting family and friends, sports figures, musicians, dancers, animals and nature, and himself in brightly colored fabric and thread. Thorpe learned quilting from his mother and other maternal ancestors, who have long been a part of the New England quilting community. Encountering the work of the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, offered him a deeper connection with quilting and his African American heritage. Thorpe, who was a basketball standout at Emerson College in Boston, excels at showing movement and energy through his use of blocked color and lively stitching. For Thorpe, 2024 is a banner year, with five solo exhibitions throughout the country. Jon Spayde wrote about two of them—Homeowners Insurance at the Fuller Craft Museum and No Expectations at the Hickory Museum of Art—in “Craft Happenings” in the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft.

michaelcthorpe.com | @iversonsdurag

How do you describe your work or practice?
There’s no rhyme or reason, just a method to the madness. I consider myself a traveling salesman trying to sell ideas of what it means to live in today’s world. I make everything from paintings (quilts), sculptures, photographs, drawings, videos, performances, and whatever sparks my imagination next. My only objective is satisfaction of a job well and honestly done.

You grew up in a family of quilters. What sparked your interest in the medium as a way to tell your story? What are the challenges and joys of making art in the same medium as your forebears?
When my mother, Susan Richards, got a long-arm sewing machine, I became interested in quilting as an artmaking process. The joy of making art in the same medium as my forebears is that they have all the cheat codes. They are basically the best YouTube University money can buy!

Tell us about your collaboration with Nike. How did that come to be? As an athlete, what did it mean to you?
My collaboration with Nike was a spontaneous event that was brought to me by my dear art dealer from Chicago, Easy Otabar. He is a wizard who makes the impossible possible. Being an athlete, it was really a dream come true to have my own pair of Nikes. Seeing that I don’t sport sneakers much anymore, I made the shoes themselves into a sculpture.

If you could have textile art from any artist for your own home, whose work would it be and why?
The piece of “textile” art I would want would be A Movable Object by David Hammons. Hammons is a godlike figure for me because of the way he interprets what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. He uses non-art materials to brilliant effect and pushes our understanding of what can be a work of art.

Which craft artists, exhibitions, or projects do you think the world should know about, and why?
An artist I would suggest people check out is Mike Kelley. The way he worked with fabrics and textiles is mind melting. He currently has work at the MoMA and has an upcoming show at the Tate Modern in London.

What are you working on right now?
I’m currently working on a couple projects with my Boston-based dealer Laisun Keane, and then a museum show next year at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica.