From afar, African American fiber artist Bisa Butler's portraits look like paintings, their depictions of human faces, bodies, and clothing...

Sentence Structure

Sentence 1:

• From afar,
• African American fiber artist Bisa Butler's portraits look like paintings,
  • their depictions of human faces, bodies, and clothing
    • so intricate
      • that it seems only a fine brush could have rendered them.

Sentence 2:

• When viewed up close, however,
• the portraits
  • reveal themselves to be ______ [quilts (?) the] stitching
    • barely visible among the thousands of pieces
      • of printed, microcut fabric.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start from the beginning.

The first sentence tells us:

• From far away, Bisa Butler's portraits look like paintings
• They look this way because the depictions are so detailed and intricate that it seems only a fine paintbrush could have created them.

Now the second sentence starts:

• 'When viewed up close, however, the portraits reveal themselves to be...'

This is where we have the blank: 'reveal themselves to be ______ stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric.'

Let's look at the choices:

• They all have 'quilts' and 'the'
• What varies is the punctuation between them:
  • A: quilts, and the
  • B: quilts, the
  • C: quilts; the
  • D: quilts. The

To see what works here, let's read the rest of the sentence and understand what it's saying!

The complete phrase is:

• 'the portraits reveal themselves to be quilts ______ the stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric.'

Now let's understand what this is telling us:

• 'reveal themselves to be quilts'
  • This is the main point - when you get close, you realize these aren't paintings at all; they're quilts
• 'the stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric'
  • This is describing what you see when you look at the quilts up close
  • The stitching is so subtle you can barely see it
  • There are thousands of tiny pieces of fabric

So the complete picture is:

• Up close, you discover they're quilts, with stitching that's barely visible among all those tiny fabric pieces.

What do we notice about the structure here?

• 'the portraits reveal themselves to be quilts' is a complete thought
  • It could stand on its own as a sentence
• 'the stitching barely visible among...' is NOT a complete thought
  • It's a noun ('the stitching') with descriptors ('barely visible...')
  • It's not making a complete statement - there's no main verb telling us what the stitching does or is
  • This phrase is adding descriptive detail about the quilts - telling us about a feature we see when we look closely

When you have a complete statement followed by a noun + descriptors that add more detail, you connect them with just a comma.

So we need: Choice B - quilts, the

The comma alone connects the complete thought to the descriptive noun phrase that follows.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Using Commas with Descriptive Noun Phrases

When you want to add extra descriptive information about something you just mentioned, you can use a comma followed by a noun phrase that provides more detail (this creates what's called an absolute phrase or a noun phrase in apposition in grammar terms):

Pattern:

• Complete statement , noun + descriptive modifiers

Example 1:

• The concert ended at midnight, the audience streaming out into the cold night air.
• "The concert ended at midnight" = complete thought
• "the audience streaming out..." = noun phrase adding descriptive detail

Example 2:

• She completed the marathon, her time beating her personal record by three minutes.
• "She completed the marathon" = complete thought
• "her time beating..." = noun phrase adding detail about the achievement

In this question:

• "the portraits reveal themselves to be quilts" = complete thought
• "the stitching barely visible among..." = noun phrase describing a feature of the quilts
• A comma alone connects them correctly

The key is recognizing that the second part is NOT a complete sentence - it's a descriptive phrase that adds detail and should be connected with just a comma.