ARTIST AS QUILTMAKER XX

Artist Index

**Click Artist Name To View**

**Unless otherwise stated photos are by the artist.**

Mary Alexander   (Girard, OH)

Luminous #8
Cotton hand dyed with fiber reactive dye and shibori painted with metallic acrylic paint, machine pieced, machine quilted
45" x 45" x 1"
$3,500

This work might also have been titled Minimal /Maximal. With this piece, I am trying for a combination of simple composition and complex surface design, close values, and high contrast. Metallic acrylic paint provides the luminosity. As simple and complex as light itself.

Margaret Black   (Boswell, PA)

Polyphonic 9
Hand-dyed and commercial cotton fabric, freeform cut and pieced, straight line machine quilted
47.5" x 77" x .5"
$3,660

Cloth speaks to me. The nature of the cloth itself--its drape, the tactile comfort of its woven thread--surround me with warmth and security as I dream of what it can become. An intimate dialog begins between the cloth and me. I apply dye to white fabric. The marked cloth initiates a narrative. I cut and piece, and recut and repiece my fabrics. All the parts take on an energy of their own and become vibrant wall quilts that are inspired by color, value, and patterning.

Rodger Blum   (Greenfield, MA)

Event No. 5
Procion dye on cotton broadcloth
81.5" x 38" x .25"
$8,000

I began my artistic life as a dancer who, contending with rural south anti-gay bigotry, found that creating beauty in movement gave my world a sense of logic and meaning. From dancer to choreographer to quilt maker, I remain driven to create kinetic expression that celebrates action, beauty, and identity. My work ranges from improvisational piecing to painted textiles, heavily worked with reactive dyes, and installations merging hand-printed silks and dance videos. Boundaries between disciplines continue to blur: my compositions - on the human body, or two-dimensional artwork, is a complex sequencing of ideas and gestures in color, time, and space.

ONLINE ONLY

Susan Callahan (Frankford, DE)

The Life of a Chef is Hot
Commercial and hand dyed cotton, cotton and metallic threads, found objects, organza, machine piecing and quilting, raw edge applique, machine quilting and hand stitch
34" x 47" x 0"
$1,000

My career as a professional chef has always influenced my artwork. I am motivated by everything in the landscape of a commercial kitchen. I love the energy in a kitchen, the beauty of the dishes prepared, the joy of the patron being served a meal. I want to give a back stage look at what happens in a kitchen while honoring the women and men who have chosen this career path. I love to use both commercial and hand dyed or printed cotton to create an image that allows the viewer to see what I see everyday and see my story.

Katie Chester   (Charlottesville, VA)

Songs from My Belly
Cotton fabric, cotton batting, machine pieced, hand quilted and hand tied, machine couched
65" x 46" x 0.25"
$4,800

I place two colors side by side; together they are magical. I rearrange the composition to strengthen their union. A muscle twitch contracts my elbow; a previously obedient seam becomes a distinctive gesture. I add another unexpected line to give the first one company. 

Learning to honor color and form, to transform disparate elements into a visual composition — this process absorbs and sustains me.

As a middle-aged woman who has neither wed nor bred, I live outside society’s templates. I approach my quilts as I do my own life: searching for beauty, grace and yes, domestic contentment, in the wonder and fear of the undefined.

Cheryl Eddie Deibel   (Canfield, OH) 

Controlling Chaos
Ice-dyed cotton ground, hand-dyed silk organza, cotton batting, commercial cotton backing. Fused raw edge applique with satin stitching, machine quilted with serpentine ruler
41" x 44" x 0"
$625

How to use a wild ice-dyed fabric to best showcase it without obscuring it? I dyed small samples of organza in the same colors I had used in the ice dye ground. The organza didn’t totally hide the underlying ice-dyed ground and I cut it into various circles. The randomness of the ice dye demanded an orderly approach to layout. Since it was circles and a quilt, I started by referencing the wedding ring pattern and built on that until I’d run out of room and most of the pieces. Quilting ties it all together.

Kelsie Doty & Sherry Haar (Manhattan, KS)

Grandma Didn't Wear Jeans
Upcycled denim, upcycled bedsheets, cotton embroidery thread, hand applique, laser cutting, machine piecing, and machine quilting
61.75" x 49" x .25"
$1,800

"Grandma Didn't Wear Jeans" is a collection of imagery evoked by the physical labor of our grandmothers which was often grueling and thankless work. We interpreted these images through a textile medium that was largely reserved for men during their lifetimes. Our grandmothers did daily farm labor in house dresses and aprons, unlike our grandfathers who wore jeans and coveralls. This dichotomy is shown in visual memories of their feminine coded work while using denim upcycled from the masculine members (fathers, husbands, sons) of our families.

Kim Fox   (Pittsburgh, PA)

Quilt 2
Found and reclaimed materials, wood, fabric, paper, ink, hand-cut vintage lithographed tin canisters
21" x 21" x 1.5"
$355

Kim Fox was born in New Wilmington, PA, and currently resides in Pittsburgh. Fox earned her BFA in Printmaking from the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, in 1994.

Her childhood in rural Western Pennsylvania informs her aesthetic, subject matter, and choice of materials. She has been making art and showing her work for over twenty years — beginning with more traditional painting and collage and then exploring the regional arts and crafts with a more rural bent. She began working with vintage tins and salvaged wood, patchworking the tin in a way that felt like quilting. Her tin assemblages have been exhibited in Pittsburgh, Wheeling, WV, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Providence, RI, and created for public commissions for ARGO AI in Detroit, MI, and CBRE in Pittsburgh.

I create these non-traditional quilts using found and reclaimed materials. I focus on pattern, texture, and form to honor the work done by traditional quilters.

Judith Quinn Garnett   (Portland, OR)

Standpoint: A Self Portrait
Cotton canvas, gesso, acrylic paint, UVLS top coat
24" x 24" x .25"
$1,800

“Standpoint: a Self-Portrait” – This stitched painting evolved over three years, having started during the COVID-19 lockdown. I’d met with friends for years to draw from live models. Covid drove us into weekly electronic meetings with this work was one of several self-portraits from that time. Having settled into isolation, I was suddenly confronted by a breast cancer diagnosis. All my big “makes” in the studio were postponed for treatment and recovery. Over a year later I finally returned to this painting and the stitch line work. All that the world had been through — and all that I and those dear to me have been through with cancer — led to a new “standpoint” on life, love, family, and friends. I am so very grateful for what emerges — even in difficult times.

Helen Geglio   (South Bend, IN)

Ordinary Oracle: Visions of Repair
Cotton, silk noil, found domestic textiles, small objects, hand stitching, raw edge applique
45" x 34" x 1"
SOLD - $1,500

The oracle is a woman of great wisdom who speaks truth, offers insights, and predicts change. She dwells among us.

Pam Geisel   (Yellow Springs, OH)

Women's Work
Commercial cotton fabric, commercial machine embroidered curtain panel, handmade crocheted granny squares, commercial sheer fabric, commercial and hand-spun yarn, embroidery floss, variegated quilting thread, raw-edge machine applique, machine couching, free motion quilting, hand embroidery, and embellishment
36" x 30" x 1"
$2,100

After my grandmother passed away, I was gifted some granny squares she’d crocheted. With the political landscape being what it is, I’ve been interested in women’s rights and how they’ve changed since my grandmother was a young woman. Wanting to incorporate “women’s” items I used curtain panels and did some hand embroidery. I believe women’s work won’t be done until all women have the same rights as men. I think one pathway to this is the political candidates we vote for.

Debbie Grifka   (Ann Arbor, MI)

Lake of Blankness
Cotton and polyester fabrics, cotton thread and batting, machine applique and quilting
42" x 42" x .25"
$2,800

My creativity was a refuge during the first nine months of the pandemic. Then, it just left. The early months of 2021 were a "Lake of Blankness." A change from my usual style helped express that feeling in fabric and find a way back in. While this work is mostly about that lake, references to the pandemic and social justice themes that occupied my thoughts during this time are included as well.

Kirtz/Van Nortwick Innovation Award

Melissa Haviland   (Athens, OH)

An Absence of Sound
Screenprinting on fabric (170+ quilted pieces)
10" x 72" x 72"
$5,000

“An Absence of Sound” began with an obsession with the Haviland tableware pattern, ‘Elizabeth’, first designed in 1759 for the Empress of Russia and revived in 1950 by the MET for an exclusive run. ‘Elizabeth’ owns a unique design in the world of tableware, reveling in sacred geometry, specifically the torus that symbolizes the interconnectedness of all things and the cyclical nature of existence. Here I set a table with my soft remake of ‘Elizabeth’ while contemplating the power of objects in our lives, the coldness of capitalism, and the healing power of making.

Donna June Katz   (Chicago, IL)

Blind Eye/ of the Hurricane
Diluted acrylic paint on unbleached muslin, batting, thread, cotton backing, hand painted, curved piecing, hand and machine quilting
21" x 22" x 0"
$3,200

Natural history, geology, maps, patterning, and concern for the environment offer inspiration for my hand-painted quilts-- created in my studio filled with fossils, dried cicadas and dragonflies, seeds, tree bark, and an eight-foot-tall dried cup plant. Imagery includes birds, insects, fossils, flora, celestial bodies, and patterns and shapes based on weather phenomena and geological formations. The work is also informed by my experience as a bird-watcher and as a volunteer for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Bird imagery is a way to draw attention to the threats that birds and their habitats face, and to their beauty and intelligence. "Blind Eye" depicts eyes that don't see-- the eye of the hurricane, a bird blinded by flying leaves, a buckeye butterfly, Black-Eyed Susans, and eyes of the birch tree-- set against a pattern based on images of Hurricane Katrina. Bird numbers decrease; hurricanes increase. But do we see? Are we paying attention or are we distracted?

Patty Kennedy-Zafred   (Murrysville, PA)

Roe, White & Blue
Cotton fabric, procion dyes, photo emulsion screen printing materials, textile inks, cotton batting and backing, digitally printed personal photos hand dyed and printed, hand screen printed patterning, machine pieced and quilted
23" x 67" x .25"
$4,000

Self-portraits taken the year Roe v. Wade was issued, fundamentally protecting a woman’s right to choice, inspired this work. As a young, single woman, this ruling offered physical and emotional security, and the right to privacy, regarding my own body. Nearly fifty years later, with political parties entrenched in conflict, American women are caught in the crosshairs, resulting in the stunning reversal of a woman’s right to control personal reproductive health decisions in many states across America. Today, doctors are fleeing specific American States in record numbers, leaving countless women without care, especially those facing a desired pregnancy with unexpected complications, miscarriage, or an unfortunate situation, due to rape or circumstances.

Award of Excellence: Use of Color

Susan J Lapham   (Vienna, VA)

The Blue Hour
Hand-dyed solid cotton, silk batting, cotton thread, machine pieced, long arm matchstick quilted
79" x 80" x 1"
$12,000

Just after sunset the sun casts a diffuse light from below the horizon and the sky takes on a vivid purple blue. A time of meditation and reflection, a time to be carried off into another world. A time when the birds quiet and the cricket song begins. A time for contemplation and contentment.

Russ Little   (College Park, MD)

Interaction #3
Acrylic felt batting, hand-dyed cotton fabric, yarn, machine piecing and quilting, machine embroidery from original designs
53" x 30.5" x 0"
$1,300

My artwork is abstract and deals with the themes of brokenness, wholeness, connection, and movement through the juxtaposition and manipulation of color, shape, line, and layering. Circular forms speak to me on a soul-deep level and appear in most of my work. I work very intuitively. Rather than executing a carefully preconceived plan, I work in a call-and-response manner, allowing each new layer or design element to influence my next step. Others have said that my work has mid-century modern, analytical, dreamy, and painterly qualities.

Interaction #3 is part of a series of compositions focusing on the interaction of design elements as a metaphor for our daily interactions with other people and natural and built environments. It is a collage of hand-dyed fabric assembled on a felt foundation. The texture features raw edges and is heavily and visibly stitched.

Niraja Lorenz   (Eugene, OR)

Strata
Hand-dyed and commercial solid-colored cotton fabric, machine pieced and quilted
28" x 81" x 1.0"
$6,200

Color inspires me to play, to explore, to create. My passion for intricate piecing, subtle variations in color, and organic textures and forms, results in ever-unfolding visual imagery. “Strata” is composed entirely of strip-pieced fabric made from solid-colored cottons. Using a limited palette of muted colors, I wanted to explore both the simplicity and the complexity that are possible using stripes and lines. At 80” wide, this piece invites the viewer to imagine undulating landscapes, geologic layering of ancient sediments, or perhaps undersea gardens. Inspired by the powerful paintings of Dorothy Napangardi, I used intense strip-piecing to create a subtle landscape. Making the strip-pieced fabric from solid-colored cotton took me over a month. This quilt has approximately 20,000 separate pieces of fabric.

Glenda Mah   (Salem, OR)

Lines and Spaces
Whole cloth linen fabric, felt batting, cotton Arashi wrapping string, hand stitched nui shibori, quilting, hand sewn binding, hand dyed in Indigo
38" x 56" x 1"
$1,200

Typically stitch resist Shibori is used as a decoration on Japanese textiles, very often on Kimono. A design is chosen and drawn onto fabric, then carefully sewn with a running stitch and each line is carefully gathered, a technique called Nui Shibori. When dyed and the stitches removed, a resisted pattern is revealed. In this case, a whole cloth design yielded a 3-dimensional appearance. I quilted with reused Arashi Shibori wrapping string to add a bit of dimension and texture. Quilting was kept to a minimum to allow the viewer to focus on the design. I dye all of my Shibori by hand in natural indigo vats. I think the viewer will enjoy this piece from a distance, to really see the dimensional effect, OR close up to see the intricate stitch detail.

Cat Mailloux   (Columbus, OH)

Patience
Found and thrifted fabric from clothing, bedsheets, and other household textiles, hand-quilted applique and embroidery, machine-pieced base
44" x 44" x .25"
$2,000

I make quilts, what I think of as layered and labored drawings in found color and material. They are made from old and thrifted clothing, mostly worn denim, that carry the faint memory of the bodies that wore them. The making of a quilt is grounded in a logic, bound and subject to invisible, omniscient rules of how things must fit together. The image is embedded within the material; the quilt is both composition and architecture. As color shifts across its surface, both advancing and receding in space, geometry gives way to atmosphere.

 Layered like drawings, the quilts combine the logic of stained-glass windows with quiet vignettes of domestic life — the shapes of windows, shadows cast onto walls, and light filtering through trees on neighborhood walks. They do this largely through abstract representation. Though made from small pieces, they carry the sense of the monumental. Together the form a reflection on home, memory, and sacred spaces.

Valerie Maser-Flanagan   (Carlisle, MA)

Byways #6
Hand-dyed cotton fabric and commercial black cotton fabric, cotton thread, and cotton batting, machine pieced and quilted
52" x 54.5" x .25"
$4,500

As a child, I was always drawn to new roads, trails, and paths. I wanted to continue my journey because there was an unknown regarding what was around the next bend. This was exciting and I wanted to see it. Even as an adult the curiosity continues. Avoiding highways whenever possible, I chose the smaller indirect roads that meander through unfamiliar and surprising visual adventures. In the Byways series, I created a direction of movement and then interjected a change from the expected.

Troy Murrah   (Torrance, CA)

Hey Dolly!
Mixed media and reclaimed materials
60" x 38" x 2"
$8,500

After working decades in carpentry, I returned to my visual art when my quilter mother passed away. In her memory, I made a single wood quilt and have since continued to expand with new additions that link us to the past. I celebrate quilt patterns––a legacy left to us by resourceful, hard-working hands––and the vibrancy of reclaimed materials found on our streets. 

After sketching, I source various materials, usually ones that conjure up memories linked to the home or that I find interesting—shelving, antique pickled floorboard samples, kitchen cabinet doors from a home renovation, aged Pine, engineered floorboards, faux wood window molding, etc. From my materials, I cut, using a saw, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pieces of varying thicknesses and dimensions for depth. I paint or stain the pieces before putting them together. 

Similar to stitching together rags and thrown-out fabric remnants as quilters do, I glue and nail together the pieces of reclaimed material––sometimes stacking them to add dimension. Using these materials and making creative decisions based on their tones, textures, and characteristics are part of the charm. I laser engraved what would be the “negative space” of the “quilt” with my illustrations and designs before securing the remaining pieces.

Ree Nancarrow   (Fairbanks, AK)

Morning Light
Digitally developed fabric images custom printed on cotton fabric, polyester felt batting, polyester thread, commercial fabric backing, machine pieced, machine quilted
26" x 29" x 0.25"
$1,300

 Morning Light was developed as an experimental piece, digitally and intuitively combining silk-screened and photographed images. I draw on years of experience working with fabric in a variety of ways, and years of living in a rural area in Alaska. My quilt surfaces are elaborately quilted which gives them richness and depth.

Frauke Palmer   (Columbus, OH)

Rising
Personal photographs printed on fabric, cotton sateen, rayon quilting thread, machine quilted
47" x 47" x 1"
SOLD - $1,500

My studio is the out of doors. That’s where I take my pictures, that’s where I find my inspiration, that’s where my ideas spring forth. Back home I sit in front of my computer and relive all those moments out in the desert hiking through the wide-open landscape and learning about nature’s ways. Rocks are a particular focus of mine, the large expanse of rock exposed in the deserts of Arizona, California, and Utah. Multicolored, and etched with nature’s designs, they provide me with a palette of color and line that I incorporate into my quilts. These elements come together through the use of the computer which allows me to slice and dice my images, layer them, adjust them, blend them, piece them, and manipulate them in myriad ways. Through photography, I connect with nature in a different way. Now, as my hikes in the desert are also the inspiration for my art, the symbiotic nature of this interaction is enriching my life and leaves me even more appreciative of the earth and my place in it.

Sarah Pavlik   (Lewes, DE)

Standing in the Shade
MX dyes and discharge on cotton and linen fabric, machine quilted
46" x 72" x .25"
$3,500

My artistic process is improvisational. A piece typically involves using a motif or configuration as inspiration in creating a composition, however, I do not typically have an "end result" in my mind. I strive for figure-ground tension and a composition that encourages the viewer to move their eyes around the piece, finding interest throughout the work. I continually explore new territory by working in a series, modifying piece after piece. I work to evolve as an artist by pushing myself to continually create new work in my own artistic voice. I alternate between pieced work with solid-colored fabrics and the use of surface design techniques with mx dyes, acrylic paint, and earth pigments.

"Standing in the Shade" was created out of a desire to explore organic shapes, patterns, and movement: hoping that the viewer has a desire to continue to look at the piece, one's eyes darting from place to place, engaged.

Wen Redmond   (Strafford, NH)

 The Sacred Gift
Recycled quilt top, paint, ferns, Black Eye Susan petals, paper, image printed on digital-ready silk organza, opaque flake, lava and other mediums, pearl cotton, and leaf skeletons.
55" x 29" x .3"
$4,200

One of the many gifts that nature offers us is a clear demonstration of the interdependence between all living things. The person who exhales the carbon dioxide, the clouds that produce the rain, the sun that gives light, the leaf that transforms all these things into sustenance for a tree--not one of these could survive without being part of this cycle.

Each living being is dependent upon other living things for its survival. When we look at the world, we see that this is not a place where different beings survive independently of one another. Earth is home to a web of living things which are connected through a spinning kaleidoscope of relationships. We need each other to survive and thrive.

Mother Earth provides us with the elements to grow and mature, teaching us lessons of the rock, the feather, flowers, and leaves. Give us deep regard for your sacredness. Let us learn to care for each other more than things. Thank you, great orb that sails us through the universe.

Denise Roberts   (Albright, WV)

MITOTE #19
Hand-dyed 100% cotton fabric, cotton batting, and cotton thread, machine pieced and improvisationally quilted
75" x 35.25" x 0"
$8,000

The MITOTE series relies on multiple layers. The background recedes ambiguously, becoming energetically engaged with a foreground of linear variations and subtle color choices. Loose strands of curvilinear bands move effortlessly on top of one another. Here I identify with the author and spiritual teacher Don Miguel Ruiz's idea of the mind as "being the chaos of one thousand voices all trying to talk at once in the mind." I associate each line or strand with one of the many thoughts in my mind.

Irene Roderick   (Austin, TX)

Derse Verse
Commercial cotton fabrics, polyester/cotton batting, polyester thread, machine pieced and quilted
85" x 63" x 1"
$8,500

My artwork is grounded in the textile arts, focused on quilt making and fabric dyeing. I am trained as a painter and I have always been interested in pattern and color and how these elements can evoke emotional and political responses. A few years ago, I encountered modern quilting and loved the idea of making a “utilitarian painting.” I learned to quilt and accidentally discovered improvisational quilting, an intuitive, spontaneous process I call "dancing with the wall.” The technique opened up a new-found creativity for me. Through this act of making, I have learned to embrace the joy of creative intuition, spontaneous expression, and a blind trust in process.

Irene Roderick   (Austin, TX)

 Facets
Commercial cotton fabrics, cotton/poly batting, polyester thread, machine pieced and quilted
80" x 73" x 1"
$8,500

Award of Excellence: Surface Design

Karen Schulz   (Silver Spring, MD)

Ghost Ice
Cotton fabric, hand-painted Procion MX dyes, cotton batting, thread, mono-printing, screenprinting, machine piecing and quilting
41" x 47" x .25"
$3,800

"Ghost Ice" was created by experimenting with using dirty screens in the screenprinting process. This technique allows for maximum chance in the creation of composition. Many of my current works are basically whole cloth pieces with minimal piecing. I was taken with the overall light value with splashes of saturated orange, and a medium dark gray.

The resulting image generated within me a cold icy feel. This feeling is juxtaposed with the actual climate changes of an ever-warming winter.

Ann Scott   (North Adams, MA)

Infinite Library: Midmorning
Cotton fabric hand-printed by artist using thickened fiber-reactive dyes, wool batting
40" x 32" x .5"
$1,800

“Infinite Library: Midmorning” is part of my “Infinite Library” quilt series, inspired by the story, “The Library of Babel”, written in 1941 by Argentinian surrealist Jorge Luis Borges. The Library of Babel is a paradox -- an infinite repository of human knowledge with books that are mostly incomprehensible “senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles.” This quilt is an abstraction of such a jumble. It represents the quest for meaning and coherence while living in an era of overwhelming information and ‘big data’. “Infinite Library: Sunrise” is made of cotton that I hand-printed using a variety of printing techniques with thickened fiber-reactive dyes.

Susan Shie   (Wooster, OH)

Daphne's Sisters
White cotton fabric, freehand airbrushed paint, paint markers, hand sewn perle cotton thread border edge, freehand machine and hand quilting
59" x 62" x 0"
$30,000

I've made art quilts since graduating from The College of Wooster in 1981 and going on to do my MFA at Kent State, graduating in 1986. My work is mostly about women, current events, politics, and the environment.

 I weave my own life stories into my art quilts, as I make them freehand, from drawing and painting on the large white cloth with my airbrush, to writing my stories in paint, and then making rambling grids of quilting, during which time I can listen to audiobooks about politics, history, women, and the Earth. I've been working on my Kitchen Tarot project since 1998, and am nearing the end of making its 78 "card" quilts, many of which are a mixture of personal and political topics.

 This is about our friend group, after Daphne died. Sharing lots about our lives and hers, and how we feel her presence and "hear" her edgy comments on current events. Drawn, painted, and written freehand with airbrush and paint markers. The beets are my symbol for women's strength and resistance.

Terri Shinn   (Snohomish, WA)

 Smooth Arizona Cypress
Hand-dyed fabrics, threads, interfacing, thread painting, machine quilting, and hand stitching
17.75" x 7.5" x 7.5"
$2,100

Trees have turned into a source of never-ending fascination and inspiration. Besides their wonderful textures and diverse colors, I am drawn to their amazing lines and shapes. This new series of vessels endeavors to explore the textures, colors, and lines in the bark of trees from around the world. Bark is considered an accumulation of several different outer layers of a wood plant. Similarly, multiple layers are what I use to create my vessels; either by machine or hand stitching, or a combination of both. I am forced to slow down, to take my time and truly study what nature has so masterfully created as I attempt to emulate its beauty while interpreting these forms in stitch.

The Smooth Arizona Cypress inspired this vessel. Excitedly, I was driven to showcase the unusual colorations and markings created due to the presence of its resin glands. Challenging myself to emulate the outer bark flaking and peeling away, which then exposes the very smooth underlying bark.

Stephanie Shore   (Lexington, MA)

Giant's Causeway
Hand-painted cotton fabrics, acrylic paint, rayon thread, fused, appliqued
30" x 43.5" x 0.25"
$1,200

The Giants Causeway is an area on the coast of Northern Ireland where giant rock columns lead from the nearby cliffs to disappear under the ocean in the direction of Scotland. Here I focused on the movement of water over the rocks using small pieces of fabric fused to an underquilt I created from a photo I took of the landscape near the Causeway. As I worked, I used the shapes and value pattern of the underquilt to inform where to place the fused elements to imply movement.

Kelly Spell   (Hixson, TN)

Candy Pop
Fabric hand-dyed and hand-printed by the artist, thread, batting, machine piecing, longarm machine quilting
73" x 58" x .25"
$4,500

I make modern quilts that celebrate color and shape. A love of circles and swirls drives my current work, which explores ideas of movement, energy, and the exertion of control amid broader chaos. An intense curiosity is at the foundation of my artistic practice. I enjoy experimenting with the fundamentals of color theory and using them to manipulate the way designs are perceived. Recently I started dyeing and printing my own cloth to further those investigations.

This quilt pushed my design and piecing capabilities into new territories. All of the fabric is hand-dyed or hand-printed. Construction of the quilt top required techniques similar to that of a double wedding ring motif, with the added challenge of an 18-foot-long serpentine swirl. Cut from a single piece of fabric, it winds its way up and down three columns of circles.

Martina Taylor   (Stoneham, MA)

I suppose we haven't lived here very long
Dyed cotton and inherited linens, fabrics from salvaged clothing, buttons, toy cars, beads, fastenings, fleece blankets, thread, poker chip, marker, cloth ruler, wool, free motion embroidery, applique, hand embroidery, machine quilting, needle felting
56" x 88" x 0.25"
NFS

I’m a materials-based artist working primarily with fiber. Repurposed textiles are the backbone of my work, recontextualizing the past through material storytelling and the language of craft. My work is rooted in the quilting and embroidery traditions of my Early American and Hungarian ancestors. My use of historical and personal scraps highlights how much of our interaction with the past is a mirroring of ourselves. In this way, my art seeks to interrogate the disconnect between the past and present. This quilt was borne from the discovery of beautiful yet stained linens my mom had stored in our basement for my future use. I was struck by this act of care, of the continuation of our family story through the passing down of items that exist not so much to be used, but to be continued. Working from this base of linens, I sought to reconstruct a basement scene, the ubiquitous and unique story of family. All other items on the quilt were sourced from my personal collection or that of others.

Dale Tomlinson   (Toronto, Ontario)

Shenanigans 7
100% cotton top and backing, mixed fiber thread and batting, machine pieced and quilted
46" x 38.25" x .2"
$4,400

Whimsy and playfulness are at the heart of my story-telling series “Shenanigans”. I made Shenanigans 7 to celebrate how we can choose to hold each other up, to provide support from near or far. No matter the challenges life presents I am grateful for the joy of creating art.

Award of Excellence: Piecing

Emilie Trahan   (Joliette, Québec)

Live Stream (What Lies Beyond the Physical World)
Upcycled fabrics (bed sheets, pillowcases), upcycled flannel sheets for the batting, improvised curve piecing, domestic machine quilting, quilt-facing
80" x 69" x 0.5"
NFS

This quilt was inspired by the colors of the warm light of a blinding sunset, and my goal was to push my piecing of the curves to create a dramatic 's' shape motion. All of it is pieced, using improvised curve piecing. Throughout the lines and the flow, it created this sense of oscillation and waves. It got me thinking about how we are surrounded with influx but we cannot clearly perceive them as waves. Think of lights, sounds, colors. This might be my interpretation of them.

Emilie Trahan   (Joliette, Québec)

Until It Becomes Something
Upcycled fabrics (bed sheets, pillowcases), upcycled fannel sheets for the batting, improvised curve piecing, domestic machine quilting, quilt-facing
57" x 54" x 0.5"
NFS

 This quilt was realized over the longest period of time of any quilt I have ever made. I was working in sequences spaced with long pauses, as I was undergoing personal changes and therapy. In a way, this quilt acts as a time-lapse of growth, discoveries and acceptance, happening both in the creative work and in the maker. Was the person who started this quilt the same one who finished it? This is a time traveling piece.

Linda Waddle   (Auburn, CA)

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Hand-painted Procyon dyes, cotton fabric, invisible polyester threads, wool batting, stenciling, screen printing using Procyon cold water dyes
44" x 32" x .25"
SOLD - $1,850

Even though the skies are dark and a hard rain is going to fall, we know that the rain is necessary to bring and sustain new life and renewal. We can endure dark times knowing that change is constant and by sustaining hope for better days.

Petra Fallaux, AQM XX Juror

Dutch native Petra Fallaux is a writer, curator, and artist based in Pittsburgh, PA.

As an artist, Petra’s approach to making quilts is grounded in art. Contemporary painting and design - graphic, interior or architectural - are major influences. Her new series of monoprinted quilts inspired by the Dutch horizon have been shown in Q=A=Q (Auburn, NY), at the Harlan Gallery (Greensburg, PA) in Inspired, at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in the printmakers exhibition Under The Blankets as well as in the fiber exhibition Blue. Her ongoing pieced art quilt series, Formations, embodies her credo of shape, color, and simplicity. Formations #25 and #28 were part of Color Improvisations 2, an international traveling invitational of contemporary quilts.

Since 2003, while working as an independent writer, curator and artist, Petra has helped direct Springboard Design, an architecture, planning and design firm whose work includes museum, exhibition and public interest design. She co-curates the Springboard Gallery, which is located on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood.

Petra has juried many exhibitions. Most recently she juried On the Edge, a new online initiative by Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA.com). She was a juror for the Quilt=Art=Quilt exhibition at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York in 2019 and for Quilt National in 2017. Petra has also been a juror for statewide exhibitions such as the Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition and the Michigan Regional Art Exhibition. She frequently juries exhibitions for the Pittsburgh Society for Artists, Pittsburgh’s Group A, the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts’ New Collective.

Petra’s writing includes articles on the Fiberart International 2019 exhibit: her preview was published in Fiberart Now’s Spring 2019 issue (Vol 8, Issue 3), while Art Quilt Quarterly published her article on the history of art quilts in Fiberart International in issue No.18. For the catalogue of Circular Abstractions: Bull’s Eyes Quilts, Petra contributed an in depth analytical essay on the fifty pieced quilts included in the exhibit.

Petra received degrees in psychology (BS) and film studies (MS) from the Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam in the Netherlands and earned a Master of Arts Management (MAM) degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Upon graduation, she directed Carnegie Mellon University’s art galleries for over ten years and curated well over one hundred exhibitions in a variety of media ranging from quilts, paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, video, architecture, and design, to multi-media and site-specific installations.

 Juror’s Statement:

Making a quilt is a phased and layered endeavor, full of transitional moments of choice. For some artists the bulk of time is spent arranging patches, then choosing quilting stitches; for others, a lot of time is invested in dyeing, painting, or printing the fabrics. For all, a lengthy process of contemplation and decision making builds the work. Spending time builds the work. Decisions become the energy imbued in the work. Then, when the artist decides the work is finished, it all falls away. As soon as the artist lands on a composition that seems clear and done to them, the work itself often takes on an effortless character.

 This is the contradiction, the conundrum, of any art making. The effort and time are absorbed into the work, which then merely becomes a momentary image, a rather short experience for the viewer. In addition, this brief absorption of the work is different for different viewers, entirely in the eye of the beholder, with their baggage, inclinations, and preferences.

It is an honor to be asked and trusted to jury an exhibition, a task I take very seriously. As a juror, I try to be aware of my own proclivities, as well as being well informed about the state of contemporary quilt making today. Fresh approaches draw my attention, whether by something new I have not seen before, or by a work in a style I recognize but pushed to new territory.

The entries for AQM XX were varied and truly encompassed the entire spectrum of quilt making today, from traditional to modern, to innovative art quilts, and –by way of FAVA’s liberal definition of a quilt– to an assortment of quilt-adjacent art works. To all who entered and were selected this time around –and especially to those who were not– please continue your explorations and stay true to your lane, the one that takes you to that process you can lose yourself in, the one that leads you to times of flow. It is the immersive process that should capture and enchant you and keep you going, not the serendipitous nature of the outcome of ‘calls for entry’ for exhibitions.

Irene Roderick and Emilie Trahan elevate popular improvisational piecing in new delightful and expressive compositions. They construct their pieced work with beautiful shapes that reveal new possibilities and configurations. Frauke Palmer, Sarah Pavlik, and Ann Scott push the boundaries of their pieced works by integrating fabrics with their own surface design treatments of fabric. Katie Chester and Helen Giglio continue to make beautiful examples of soulful handwork. Masterfully subdued color combinations are found in new quilts by Susan Lapham and Valerie Maser-Flanagan, while Rodger Blum and Karen Schulz make sensitively painted and printed compositions the focus of their work.

Women’s issues stood out in the group of entries. Pam Geisel and Patty Zafred-Kennedy remind us of work yet to be done, while Kelsie Doty, Troy Murrah, and Susan Shie celebrate special women in their lives. In ‘An Absence of Sound’ Melissa Haviland presents a table set with her soft remake of the historically significant tableware ‘Elizabeth.’ By converting the table setting into quilted objects, she addresses “the power of objects in our lives, the coldness of capitalism, and the healing power of making.” Her reimagining of dishes and quilts raises a special awareness, while making us ponder and connect women’s work.

The passion of all the artists who offered their work for my consideration was plain to see. I hope that my selection of art works for AQM XX honors all our commitment to this extraordinary and endlessly fascinating medium. Artists who commit to the ‘slow’ medium of quilts, while pushing their work and this medium into new territory, will never cease to delight me.

Petra Fallaux, AQM XX Juror