Channel Islands: Island Night Lizard

Description

On Santa Barbara Island, in the Channel Islands National Park, lives a curious little creature called the Island Night Lizard. Despite its name, it is most active mid-day and not at all at night. It gives birth to live young, unlike most other reptiles which lay eggs. They grow slowly and can live to age twenty-five. Also unusual is that their color and pattern is highly variable: mottled, plain, blotched, striped, broken stripes, ocellated, and finely mottled. While considered a threatened species, due to habitat alteration in the Park and predation by alien species, the Island Night Lizard is not likely to go extinct. What an intriguing little animal. What a sadness if it were not part of our world.

In honor of such a peculiar character, my quilt is an unconventional scene of a vacationing night lizard family being watched by natives in their habitat of lichen-covered rocks. It is a peculiar technique for me – a whole-cloth painted quilt. While I enjoy making landscape art quilts, normally they are heavily thread-painted.

20 x 20 inches

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