Quilts and Creative Community

My friend Carol kept mentioning a quilt exhibit that she wanted me to see at the community arts center near which she lives. We made a field trip there last Thursday, and I loved what I saw.

Each participating artist in the exhibit was asked to use a different vintage quilt as inspiration and reinterpret it in any way the artist chose -- color, shape, texture, theme, etc. The results are both interesting and beautiful. I've included photos of a few of the quilts here.

Quilting and textile crafts have a rich tradition in Western North Carolina (For example, Penland School of Crafts, which is now a national center for craft education, was founded in 1923 by teacher Lucy Morgan, who organized the Penland Weavers to provide looms and materials to local women and to market their handwoven goods. She invited guest instructors to teach weaving, and when requests for instruction began to come from other parts of the country, Penland School was born.)

One of the exhibiting artists is Caroline Mannheimer, whom I met at BookWorks last year. Both of us are now students in a follow-up to a creative journaling class that each us of has taken there. That's Caroline's lovely piece, Kiss Kiss, top right and directly below). One of my life's joys is regularly crossing paths with other members of this vital creative community, and the support and encouragement that's exchanged along the way.

Detail from Kiss Kiss. I love text in textiles!

Murray Johnston, Torn Loose and Wheeling Free

Detail, Torn Loose and Wheeling Free

Bets Ramsey, Star of Hope in a Time of War

Detail, Star of Hope in a Time of War

Jimmie Benedict, Scarlett O'Hara's Coat

Detail, Scarlett O'Hara's Coat

Susan Webb Lee, Log Cabin Remodel

Detail, Log Cabin Remodel

Friendship Quilt, 1851 (owned by Mary Sauerteig) This is one of the quilts used for inspiration. It was given to Mary Sauerteig's great-grandfather, Daniel Dobler, by students, relatives and friends upon his retirement from teaching in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Mary's grandfather, along with another of Daniel Dobler's sons, each provided one of the squares (see below)

Detail, Friendship Quilt, 1851

Field Trip

Tuesday was a field trip with a friend to visit the gallery in Burnsville that will be hosting the exhibition for our Book Salon for a month later this year. It's a lovely space. Coincidentally, Wendy Reid, the owner, serves with me on the Board of HandMade in America. She's brought in a wonderful selection of art at all price points. I noticed that the gallery participates in several community and philanthropic causes, usually by donating a percentage of sales of specific objects.

We stopped in at the Burnsville Town Center across the street from the gallery to see a quilt that my friend had heard about. It's amazing. The work of quilt artist Barbara Webster, it portrays key places, people and sights in the history of Yancey County, and surrounds them with representations of the four seasons. She used both old photographs and took over a thousand new ones. it's a masterpiece of design, and spans the entire lobby wall (the size is 24' x 7'). It's well worth making a trip just to see it.

After lunch (which was a delayed birthday treat for me), we traveled on to Penland School of Crafts, so that my friend could visit with a book artist friend she hadn't seen for nearly 20 years, Jana Pullman, who's been teaching a two-month class in leather bindings. I planned to visit Annie Fain Liden, who's currently a teaching assistant in Beth Ross Johnson's weaving class. Annie Fain is one of my bookmaking teachers as well as a friend, and it was a joy to catch up with her.

It was a long day, and a good one. I'm soooo looking forward to the book arts workshop I'll be taking at Penland this summer with book artist Laura Wait. I've been Googling Laura to learn more about her work and have found many examples of her books, which has made me even more enthusiastic about learning from her.