In God's Eye
“There are many, many more quilts to complete.” Elisha Frontz
Art is at its most successful when you can stand in front of a work and feel the emotion calling out to you. Stepping into The Contemporary at the Dayton Arcade for their Members Exhibition, there was one such piece that drew me in.
Of the many on display, there was one right at the opening that hit me all at once. From a distance you see a beautiful quilt. Like any other classic patchwork quilt, its blues and yellows shining and reflecting light a little too unnaturally.
Upon taking a few steps closer, it reveals its secret.
This quilt, God’s Eye, is constructed of $50 lottery tickets. This quilt is made of approximately 136 $50.00 Ohio Lottery tickets, which represents a loss of $6800.00. “I remember unloading the boxes of lottery tickets in my studio and sorting them out, looking at each one and thinking about how one ticket could feed my family for a day.” Elisha shares in her memory of cleaning out the seemingly never-ending boxes taken from her in-law’s home.
Looking at that, the first thing that weaseled its way into my brain was hope lost. Areas left unscratched gave me a strange sense of dread. Among them were handwritten notes tracing wins and losses over time. A legacy in this quilt, but a story of loss and regret.
Her collection entitled Cold Comfort is a collection of heritage quilts made from lottery tickets that are designed to be bought, scratched and thrown away. Frontz transformed thousands of these disposable objects into a quilt, something traditionally associated with permanence, family, warmth, inheritance and passing something from one generation to another.
The vision for this series began at the end of 2023 when it became increasingly clear that her 80 year-old father-in-law was deteriorating. He stopped doing many of the activities that made him who he was and at the beginning of 2024 he was officially diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimer’s.
Shortly after the diagnosis the family uncovered an extensive gambling addiction and boxes of spent scratch-off lottery tickets, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of the money he had so carefully saved to care for himself and his wife in their final years was gone.
Addiction in all forms is sickness. It’s a monster lurking in the deep waiting to rear its ugly head. Things that seem harmless and fun in the beginning take over…
This reality brought a question to the surface in Elisha’s mind: what would be the legacy she leaves behind for her own children? “My question mirrors a question that mothers all over the world ask themselves - What do mothers leave behind?” She says reflecting on the question that started it all.
Traditionally, handmade objects are among the things mothers have passed from one generation to the next. Think of things that you make with your hands. Things that are used to serve a purpose. Gifts of care and love, just like the motherly love that they were made from. Tapestries, embroideries, and quilts made from the remnants of the lives they lived or the wealth that they had gathered along the way. “The only physical remnants of gained generational wealth that I have to offer are used lottery tickets. When that thought crossed my mind, I knew exactly what I needed to do with the spent lottery tickets.” Elisha recalls.
The inheritance was gone. So Frontz took what remained and made an inheritance of her own. She took what to many would have been trash, remnants of loss hidden away in boxes, and transformed it into something that now speaks to others who carry the same hurt in their own lives.
Elisha kept her work on this series a secret for the first couple of months. There is a shame and stigma in any kind of addiction, but there is also healing in the process. We are all human after all. We live and love and learn just like anyone else. Her decision to take these works and enter them into the public space to share was the drive to help others who are still in the dark and alone. “A few of the artists I spoke with during that time also shared that their own families had been through remarkably similar circumstances. Hearing their stories helped me push through my own feelings of shame and fear, and gave me a deeper sense of purpose”.
God's Eye went on to win Best in Show at The Contemporary's Members Exhibition.
I was there when her name was called.
With a mixture of shock, relief and joy on her face, Frontz tearfully walked to the front of a gallery filled with her peers to accept the honor. Knowing the story behind the work now, that moment carries even more weight for me.
Something that had begun in secrecy with boxes hidden away, an addiction the family didn't know about, and an artist quietly working through shame in her studio was now hanging openly on a gallery wall.
And people were looking.
Elisha plans to keep exploring and making quilts until she runs out of lottery tickets.
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