Crafts Become Art in African-American Quilt-Making Exhibition: Show and book explore the tradition of beautifying what is useful, highlighting both continuity and improvisation.: [Valley Edition]

"Anything you set your mind to do, you can do. It makes me feel so good to make a pretty quilt and have someone enjoy it."

-Nora Ezell

The events of everyday life matter in art, particularly in 19th- and 20th-Century art. Many of our best films, plays, paintings, and sculpture have dealt with ordinary people handling ordinary problems. But "dailiness" in art has also helped lead us on to a re-evaluation of crafts, the arts of the home. When do crafts become something more than merely decorative or useful works-more than merely objects of self-expression, satisfying to make but ultimately insignificant?

From rug weaving to jewelry making to pottery firing, the great crafts have sometimes crossed the line into the realm of art. When they do, they usually carry with them transcendent meaning or, perhaps, some leap in beauty that transcends decoration. "Transcends" is key here. Works of craft that cross the boundaries into art bring with them the faint perfume of home, of usefulness, and of daily experience.

Take quilts. American quilt-making as a household art has been re-examined in a number of wonderful quilt exhibitions all over the country during the past 20-odd years.

We've seen marvels of the needleworker's art that have tapped into European and American traditions and imagery for generations-an art taught by mothers to daughters.

Sometimes exquisite designs have gravitated more consciously toward high art, until working artists have taken up quilting as their chosen medium.

A great variety of imagery and style has graced this coziest of American home arts from the very beginning. Imagery has been traced to almost every imaginable European culture.

But the influences of African cultures on American quilting have been less well documented-until now.

In a traveling exhibition that originated at the...