Inspired by the sensuality and beauty in the designs of the tools of the Western trade - saddles, boots, bits, and spurs - and their fanciful forms, Filly took viewers on a playful prance through the territory of the femme in the American West.

Filly, Quilling (paper), grommets in wall, Installation at &Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, CA, 2001

Megan Wilson:

Growing up in Montana, I was surrounded by the iconography of the American West, and specifically that of the cowboy. Images of rugged men with their code of stoic endurance, self-reliance, loyalty, courage, and camaraderie, on horseback riding across the plains, wrangling cattle and spitting chew were everywhere - from the paintings of Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington to the landscape itself. However, what I remember being the most drawn to were the accouterments of the cowboy - the beautiful ornamentation and floral designs that adorned their trappings and presented such a delicate contrast to the rough and tough image of the wrangler.

I chose the craft of quilling - the rolling, scrolling and fluting of narrow strips of paper - to draw on this decorative sensibility. Quilling was a popular craft among ladies in the early West and I was taught to quill as a child by my grandmother. These squirming tendrils of paper coil and drape through the space with the playful and defiant tension of creatures living in a lair of control and abandon - not unlike those that fill the plains and mountains of the American West -- and are unbroken.