Karla Solomon ’87

Heterogeny Hop

Karla Solomon’s art flourished after she began living abroad with husband Howard Solomon, who joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1997.

Quilt Karla Solomon (Thomas) ’87, who combined a study of Russian and economics at Wooster, found her language skills useful, as she and her family settled first in Seoul, then Moscow, and finally in Vienna, where she currently lives.

She was inspired by the variety of fabrics that each country offered and began experimenting with “relaxing the ‘rules’ of quilting and adding more angles and less perfection,” she remembers.

Solomon created Heterogeny Hop as part of a series called E Pluribus Unum by the Internet organization QuiltArt, which challenged artists to illustrate the idea, “Out of many, one.” (www.quiltart.com/challenges/epu/)

“I started by cutting out cookie-cutter-like figures from paper, then I tried cutting them in quarters and reassembling them. I liked the way the symmetrical and static figures changed personality when they were recombined, and so I translated that onto fabric, which I dyed myself.

“Heterogeny Hop is a visual celebration of the diversity within an individual. The figures, originally static in their whole forms, perform their own unique dance when cut into quarters and combined. Each person takes their biological and environmental influences and creates their own unique person from it. From many, one.”