Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade began their collaboration in the 1970s on projects ranging from wearables to site specific installations to quilts. They created Marsh Island for the 1986 exhibition The Art Quilt, a seminal event in the history of the genre in which they were invited to participate. This triptych, composed of three quilted panels displayed within a three-part framework, challenges the very definition of the word “quilt.” Pioneers in the use of reactive fiber (Procion) dyes, Fraas and Slade painted (rather than pieced or appliquéd) the textile panels and used a combination of machine and hand stitching to outline and/or emphasize elements of their pictorial landscape. The subject is a sandy shoreline with large rocks on Marsh Island in Muscongus Bay off the coast of Maine where the receding tide often reveals fragments of pottery in the sand.