Basketball is a sport of equal and opposite forces, swift actions met by harsh and instinctive reactions. Hoops springboard in and out of place, basketballs bounce off surfaces, and team formations are constantly disrupted by the other team’s intentions. Artist Michael C. Thorpe’s new exhibition, “Barstool Sports,” running through October 27 at LaiSun Keane, is a collection of intricately sewn quilts depicting athletes caught in this precarious relationship. The technicolor quilts depict basketball players in poses otherwise conventional if not for Thorpe’s distinctive practice which employs crudely cut out swatches of colored fabric layered and sewn together with a quilting machine to create flattened cartoon-esque scenes. The edges of Thorpe’s quilts are left unfinished—batting and dangling threads are visible where there would otherwise be a tidy border. The outcomes are undeniably quilts, but quilts filtered through a style that when not abandoning tradition, distorts it.
