As a young girl, Mary Catherine Lamb (1949-2009) saved mementos from her Roman Catholic childhood in Oakland, California. Years later, Lamb was stirred by the “holy cards” and other faded religious relics she stumbled upon when clearing out the family home. By this time a disaffected Catholic, Lamb began to make art quilts through which she could, as she said, “embrace the images in a completely different way, on my own terms.” 

Lamb made at least a dozen quilts that re-interpreted religious art produced during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. She drew particular inspiration from The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the Gospels drawn by monks in Britain or Ireland around 800 C.E. Using mid-twentieth-century domestic linens and gaudy clothing discovered at thrift stores and garage sales in Portland, Oregon, Lamb transformed the images into textile works. 

Lamb described all of her work this way: “It could incorporate playfulness and irreverence. But it also has a little bit of grief and yearning for the security of the past.