Experience Science and Art in a New Light

Discover a groundbreaking anthology that bridges the worlds of fiber art, poetry, and scientific understanding.

Born from the captivating exhibits at the Annual Geophysical Union meetings, this unique collection, co-edited by Dr. Kathleen P. Decker, Dr. Laura Guertin, and Betsy Wilkening, invites you to explore the unseen forces shaping our planet.

Since 2021, Dr. Guertin and Betsy Wilkening have been masterfully blending fiber art with critical scientific topics like global warming, climate change, and environmental threats, all while offering potential solutions. In 2024, Dr. Decker proposed an innovative expansion: a multimodal ekphrastic project that pairs powerful poetry with evocative art.

This book is the stunning result. You'll find a diverse array of artwork—from exquisite fiber art quilts to compelling drawings, paintings, and even museum pieces—each carefully selected to illuminate the theme of "making the unseen, seen" and to forge a powerful connection between science and art through the medium of poetry.

We strongly encourage you to delve into the Artist/Scientist Statements at the back of the book. These illuminating insights provide brief, accessible explanations that enhance the thoughtful poems, making complex scientific topics relatable and engaging for everyone.

It has been a true joy to bring this project to life. We hope you'll return to these pages again and again, discovering new layers of meaning with each reading.

Contributors to this book include: Donald Beagle, Emily Bilman, Joyce Brinkman, Sarah-Beth Bradley, Megan Brown, Emma M. Burkett, Samantha Carr, Joan Ellen Casey, Loralee Clark, Tricia Coulson, Marcela Bianchessi da Cunha-Santino, Dr. Kathleen P. Decker, Zoey Dudding, Jae Dyche, Christie King Eckardt , Kerry Faraone, Catalina Florina Florescu, Anna Isabella Fratarcangelo, Chapman Hood Frazier, Dennis Owen Frohlich, Gail Giewont, Dr. Michale Glennon, Marjorie Gowdy, Jody Gruendel, Dr. Laura Guertin, Cathy Hailey, Lauren Haygood, Kate Hedstrom, Wayne David Hubbard, Mark Hudson, Piper Jameson, Robert J. Keeler, Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Barbara Martina Linde, Sally Harcum Maxwell, Greg McNamara, Susan Copley Novack, Holly Panzera, Sarah Parker, Tessa Peixoto, Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, Lynne Schreiber, Mattie Quesenberry Smith, Ron Smith, Alica Swain, Johannes Vermeer, Betsy Wilkening, Diana Woodcock, Nicole Zwolinski.

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The Quilted Art and Poetry of Science

$17.00

When one person throws a “telescope party” for the neighbors, something good is bound to happen. For Dr. Kathleen P. Decker, a neighbor’s “telescope party” opens “a doorway to the stars” where neighbors are free to step into a “a glimpse of infinity,” as “…a nebula emerges from obscurity/ nebulous no more” and “an explosion of spiderweb light/ illuminates the night.” For her, a “…neighbor’s doorway is/ a doorway to the stars,” a doorway that opens into real-world scientific concerns and hard-won wisdom explored through poetry and art.

Decker’s The Quilted Art and Poetry of Science offers ekphrastic insights into manifold places where catastrophic fear and doubt ignite scientific research and questioning which in turn ignite joyful certainties and discoveries. This book explores uncertainty’s disarray that often seems to hinge on full-blown chaos, yet Decker balances that disarray by integrating understandable Fibonacci sequences, fractals, and scientific notations which chaos and uncertainty obscured in earlier times. Her pairs of poems and quilts achieve new order in places that often feel like they are one half-step ahead of dissolution.

However, that is often the case when humankind blindly perches on the cusp of scientific discovery and innovation. With titles, such as “Doorway to the Universe,” “Solar Storm,” “Marsquake,” “Monarch Paradise,” “The Amazing Endangered Ocean,” “Predator and Prey at Peace,” “Saved by Bacteria!” and “Bioremediation,” these poems paired with patchwork quilts explore a spectrum of complex themes and transport Decker’s audience from uncertainty to discovery to innovation to unforeseen consequences and back to uncertainty again. By doing so, the book perpetuates the hope that humankind has enough faith and patience to allow science and reason to thread new pathways through life’s catastrophes, enough faith and patience to sew discovery and reunite all woven fabrics cut asunder. It is also a handmade feast for the eyes and poetic balm for the soul.

~ Mattie Quesenberry Smith, Virginia Poet Laureate 2024-2026, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow 2025-2026, author of Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light, and others.