Description

The Los Angeles artist Jim Bassler made these hollow cubes to celebrate the 90th birthday of Mildred Constantine, the pioneering fiber-art author who has generously donated over 100 small works in fiber to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The cubes are arranged to show the number 90 and can be rotated to form other numbers or letters as Bassler illustrates on the card "CC" (Connie Constantine as Mildred is called) and "JS" (for the artist Jane Sauer).

The cubes were inspired by digital clocks. Bassler realized he could weave cubes that could be rotated
to advance numbers by using tapestry and scaffold weaves (without any cut edges), a technique he studied in ancient Peruvian textiles, thereby combining the old and the new. Some cubes have
brilliant colors underneath to reveal "surprises."