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Dharma Blues—The Kerouac Crazy Quilt kicks off a series that promises to further explore and blur the separation of the literary world and the visual arts, the high art world and the traditions and heritage of American crafts and folk art.I chose Kerouacs life and writings as the subject for my rst quilt to pay him homage for inspiring myearly creative adventures. I had collected the old hardbacks since 2001 and conceived the idea fouryears before I nally mustered the courage to execute it. But once I began stitching in the Spring of 09,it took just a three-week frenzy of cutting, stitching, and mending to complete—the same time it took Kerouac to type the original manuscript of On the Road. 

 

I chose the crazy quilt format for its proclivity towards improvisation. Kerouac sought to invent his new kind ofAmerican prose inspired by the spontaneous outbursts of bebop jazz and the free- owing breath of Buddhistmeditation. I utilized a well-worn movers blanket as the background structure. It has been back and forth across thecountry like him, perhaps even more times. None of the covers in the quilt are from Kerouacs books, but they all dore ect something about his background, his personality, writing style, novels, characters, his generation, or his times.