Quilt art
Encyclopedia
Quilt art, sometimes known as art quilting, is an art form that uses traditional quilting
techniques to create art objects. Practitioners of quilt art create it based on their experiences, imagery, and ideas rather than traditional patterns. Quilt art generally has more in common with the fine arts than it does with traditional quilting
. This art is generally either wall hung or mounted as sculpture, though exceptions exist.
Jean Ray Laury is cited by Robert Shaw as the "most prominent and influential of [the] early modern [American] quiltmakers." Laury is an "academically trained artist and designer who encouraged women to create their own new designs based on their own experiences, surroundings and ideas rather than traditional patterns." Laury wrote, "There are no rules in stitchery -- no single 'right' way of working."
Pauline Burbidge, a British artist, first saw old quilts in Portobello Road in London and 30 years later is still working in the medium. (McMorris p. 48)
Radka Donnell, as a former painter, used her training in her quilted works. Donnell is a feminist who eschews the "art scene" in order to explore quilts as liberating creativity for women. As of 1996 she was still teaching in the field with a course on the history, theory, and techniques of quilting at Simmons College and Westfield State College in Massachusetts.
Charles and Rubynelle Counts, after studying at Berea College and elsewhere, started a crafts center. Charles Counts designed tops which were then quilted by local artisans. Rising Fawn, the crafts center, continued to produce quilts into the mid-1970s; the designs are little known today but are still distinctive.(Shaw, p.49–50)
Joan Lintault produced original textile and quilted art before quilting or quilt art became a national pastime. She and Therese May, as well as the Counts, had work that was first published by Jean Ray Laury in Quilts and Coverlets: A Contemporary Approach, 1970. While Lintault often makes openwork tops, May is known for her embellished and painted quilts, using private symbols and figures.
Beth Gutcheon and Michael James were quilting instructors, beginning a trend which still allows quilting artists to earn income from a pursuit close to their art. Gutcheon published The Perfect Patchwork Primer in 1973. James' book, The Quiltmaker's Handbook: a Guide to Design and Construction (1978) was more technical. These two books are often cited as the place where contemporary quilt artists began. James' follow-up book, published in 1981, The Second Quiltmaker's Handbook: Creative Approaches to Contemporary Quilt Design showed his work as well as photos and analyses of art by Nancy Halpern, Beth Gutcheon, Radka Donnell, Nancy Crow, Francoise Barnes, Katie Pasquini, among others. (Shaw, p. 54)
By 2010 Gutcheon had established herself as a successful novelist based in New York City. James currently serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Textiles, Clothing & Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is closely associated with the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. He teaches courses in textile design and quilt studies.
Nancy Crow, another influential teacher and writer of books, was instrumental in freeing quilting artists from certain preconceptions about rules. Her 1995 exhibit, Improvisational Quilts, was the first solo exhibition of art quilts done by the Renwick Gallery.(Shaw, p. 66)
Two other quilt artists, Molly Upton and Susan Hoffman, exhibited with Radka Donnell in 1975 at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
at Harvard University. Also in 1975 Upton and Hoffman exhibited at the Kornblee Gallery on 57th Street in New York City. In doing so, they brought quilt art to the forefront as comparable to other forms of contemporary art. According to Robert Shaw, "Where other quilters were moving away from the traditional quilt one step at a time, seeing how far they could push the quilt format while still remaining connected to historical precedent, Hoffman and Upton largely ignored the rules and the assumed limitations of traditional quilting and simply leapt forward." (Shaw, p. 60)
Other quilt artists working in the 1970s include Terrie Hancock Mangat, Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade, Nancy Clearwater Herman (http://www.nancyherman.com/www.nancyherman.com/HOME.html), Jan Myers-Newbury, Pamela Studstill, Joan Schultz, Yvonne Porcella, Ruth McDowell, and Rise Nagin. (McMorris, Shaw)
The Quilters Hall of Fame (QHF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to the world of quilting and quilted art. Many of the quilt artists discussed here appear in their list of honorees. The organization's list of honorees can be found on its website; early in their history, they had many honorees; now it appears that they generally honor only one and sometimes no quilt artists for their list.
exhibit, Abstract Design in American quilts. That exhibit of pieced quilts from the 19th and early 20th centuries, organized by Jonathan Holstein, presented the quilts on stark white walls with simple gallery labels. Holstein organized the exhibit so that each piece could "be seen both as an isolated object and as part of a balanced flow of objects." This type of visual presentation marked a break from the traditional crowded hanging of quilts in county fairs and guild shows that had predominated throughout earlier displays. The exhibit was widely reviewed, including a glowing report by the New York Times art critic, Hilton Kramer
.
The presentation of pieced quilts, with their emphasis on color and geometric forms, fit perfectly into the art modes of the time. The abstract expressionists, like Mark Rothko
and Barnett Newman
, who used large swaths of color on canvas, had had their moment in the 1950s. They were followed in the 1960s by such hard edge abstractionists as Frank Stella
. Thus the public had already been prepared for highly colored abstract art work; the pieced quilts in the Whitney exhibit fit into the current art scene. The Whitney's pieced art exhibit toured the country and was followed by a quilt craze, which reached a culmination in the Bicentennial events of 1976. Many quilts were made for that event and a revival of interest in quilting techniques and materials started giving artists expanded work potential. In addition the feminist movement of the late 60s and 70s produced a new interest in women who worked in the arts as well as formerly neglected women's work that could now be seen as art. Quilts, exhibited in galleries and museums, fit into the country's cultural and social concerns.
Other exhibits in the 1970s presented the "new type of quilt, one markedly different from its tradition-inspired counterparts." "The Art Quilt" was a traveling exhibit, sponsored by the Art Museum Association of America, debuting at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery on October 1, 1986. Two other exhibits were "The New American Quilt" at The Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City in 1976 and "Quilt National
" in 1979, the first of the still existing biennial exhibits spotlighting contemporary, generally original, designs. It too is a traveling exhibit.
Other important exhibits of the 1970s include "Bed and Board", DeCordova Museum
(a museum of twentieth-century American art), Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1975; "Quilts for 76", the Boston Center for the Arts, 1975; and "Quilted Tapestries," Kornblee Gallery, New York City, 1975. Many annual venues now exist in which quilt art is exhibited; these include the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, and elsewhere, and Quilt Visions, in Oceanside, California.
Art quilts are now part of collections in museums such as the:
Quilted art outside the U.S. has flourished in the UK, France, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and possibly elsewhere. More information about the art in these countries needs added to this site.
Although quilt art originated in traditional quilting techniques, quilt artists now may use many different processes to create their artwork, including painting
, dyeing
, stamping, piecing, collage, printing (often incorporating a photograph printed onto fabric), applique, and other complex cloth processes.
exhibit, "which represented everything the traditional rules of the craft told them to avoid: sloppy work and assembly, bizarre color combinations, nasty materials.... Quilt makers had kept the craft alive and in a relatively pure state, the latter largely because no czars of culture had bothered to look closely at it....They made beautifully crafted quilts....The issue was hot for a long time, until enough exhibitions with orientations similar to the Whitney's had been seen across the country, and a constituency for new visual considerations in quilts had emerged." Holstein, p. 57.
Holstein was also criticized for divorcing the quilts from their historical context, for applying a traditional male-dominated sense of aesthetic value to a woman's art, for dismissing applique quilts as artistically inferior to pieced example, and for his apparent lack of concern as a collector for the stories of the women who made the quilts, "thereby marginalizing the makers by denying them their personal identities." Shaw, p 54
Some of these controversies continue to the present day. Lorre M Weidlich, in the Spring 1996 (vol. 6, #9) Newsletter of the Studio Art Quilt Associates, uses Carol Gilligan
's theory of the differences between male and female values to reject Michael James's call for stronger art in the quilt art world. She says that "the male, Jamesian model of 'quilt art' violates the very qualities that initially attracted women to quilting and reinforce their continuing pursuit of it. It feel[s], to a great many of them, alien. The imposition of a male model on a women's expressive form leaves in a position of discomfort the very people who are the life blood of the expressive form." Weidlich p 9. Weidlich argues that quilts emphasize relationship and connection, and that James would remove those association to conform to male standards of the artist as idiosyncratic and subversive.
Another controversy involves the work and people in the isolated Alabama hamlet of Gee's Bend
. In the early 21st century, the Gee's Bend quilters, "discovered" by folk art collectors Bill and Matt Arnett, became celebrated as artists and toured the U.S. widely, carrying their "piece quilts" to innumerable communities where they gave talks about their lives and work. Coffee table books showed the work and lives of the Gee's Bend artists; items used domestically began to appear, bearing their designs. A lawsuit arose over whether the women's work was legally obtained and licensed by the Arnetts, who apparently sold the rights to the design for use in home dec designs. U.S. District Judge Callie Granade of Mobile dismissed the suits.
Most of these controversies have become muted as the fine arts have opened up to a vast variety of materials and methods. The materials and structures assembled by quilt artists have gone beyond or negated many of the older connotations of the quilt. Nevertheless many questions and concerns remain and are hotly debated.
, Lynn Setterington, Dorothy Caldwell, Diana Harrison, Tracey Emin, Clare Plug, Anna Von Mertens, Linda Macdonald, M.Joan Lintault, Susan Shie, Terrie Mangat, and Jo Budd
.
Quilting
Quilting is a sewing method done to join two or more layers of material together to make a thicker padded material. A quilter is the name given to someone who works at quilting. Quilting can be done by hand, by sewing machine, or by a specialist longarm quilting system.The process of quilting uses...
techniques to create art objects. Practitioners of quilt art create it based on their experiences, imagery, and ideas rather than traditional patterns. Quilt art generally has more in common with the fine arts than it does with traditional quilting
Quilt
A quilt is a type of bed cover, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber: a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding and a woven back, combined using the technique of quilting. “Quilting” refers to the technique of joining at least two fabric layers by stitches or ties...
. This art is generally either wall hung or mounted as sculpture, though exceptions exist.
Early US and British contributors to the field
Because of feminism and the new craft movements of the 1960's and 1970's, quilting techniques, traditionally used by women, became prominent in the making of fine arts. The transition from tradition quilting through art quilts to quilted art was rapid; many of the most important advances in the field came in the 1970's and 1980's.Jean Ray Laury is cited by Robert Shaw as the "most prominent and influential of [the] early modern [American] quiltmakers." Laury is an "academically trained artist and designer who encouraged women to create their own new designs based on their own experiences, surroundings and ideas rather than traditional patterns." Laury wrote, "There are no rules in stitchery -- no single 'right' way of working."
Pauline Burbidge, a British artist, first saw old quilts in Portobello Road in London and 30 years later is still working in the medium. (McMorris p. 48)
Radka Donnell, as a former painter, used her training in her quilted works. Donnell is a feminist who eschews the "art scene" in order to explore quilts as liberating creativity for women. As of 1996 she was still teaching in the field with a course on the history, theory, and techniques of quilting at Simmons College and Westfield State College in Massachusetts.
Charles and Rubynelle Counts, after studying at Berea College and elsewhere, started a crafts center. Charles Counts designed tops which were then quilted by local artisans. Rising Fawn, the crafts center, continued to produce quilts into the mid-1970s; the designs are little known today but are still distinctive.(Shaw, p.49–50)
Joan Lintault produced original textile and quilted art before quilting or quilt art became a national pastime. She and Therese May, as well as the Counts, had work that was first published by Jean Ray Laury in Quilts and Coverlets: A Contemporary Approach, 1970. While Lintault often makes openwork tops, May is known for her embellished and painted quilts, using private symbols and figures.
Beth Gutcheon and Michael James were quilting instructors, beginning a trend which still allows quilting artists to earn income from a pursuit close to their art. Gutcheon published The Perfect Patchwork Primer in 1973. James' book, The Quiltmaker's Handbook: a Guide to Design and Construction (1978) was more technical. These two books are often cited as the place where contemporary quilt artists began. James' follow-up book, published in 1981, The Second Quiltmaker's Handbook: Creative Approaches to Contemporary Quilt Design showed his work as well as photos and analyses of art by Nancy Halpern, Beth Gutcheon, Radka Donnell, Nancy Crow, Francoise Barnes, Katie Pasquini, among others. (Shaw, p. 54)
By 2010 Gutcheon had established herself as a successful novelist based in New York City. James currently serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Textiles, Clothing & Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is closely associated with the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. He teaches courses in textile design and quilt studies.
Nancy Crow, another influential teacher and writer of books, was instrumental in freeing quilting artists from certain preconceptions about rules. Her 1995 exhibit, Improvisational Quilts, was the first solo exhibition of art quilts done by the Renwick Gallery.(Shaw, p. 66)
Two other quilt artists, Molly Upton and Susan Hoffman, exhibited with Radka Donnell in 1975 at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building actually built by Le Corbusier in the United States, and one of only two in the Americas...
at Harvard University. Also in 1975 Upton and Hoffman exhibited at the Kornblee Gallery on 57th Street in New York City. In doing so, they brought quilt art to the forefront as comparable to other forms of contemporary art. According to Robert Shaw, "Where other quilters were moving away from the traditional quilt one step at a time, seeing how far they could push the quilt format while still remaining connected to historical precedent, Hoffman and Upton largely ignored the rules and the assumed limitations of traditional quilting and simply leapt forward." (Shaw, p. 60)
Other quilt artists working in the 1970s include Terrie Hancock Mangat, Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade, Nancy Clearwater Herman (http://www.nancyherman.com/www.nancyherman.com/HOME.html), Jan Myers-Newbury, Pamela Studstill, Joan Schultz, Yvonne Porcella, Ruth McDowell, and Rise Nagin. (McMorris, Shaw)
The Quilters Hall of Fame (QHF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to the world of quilting and quilted art. Many of the quilt artists discussed here appear in their list of honorees. The organization's list of honorees can be found on its website; early in their history, they had many honorees; now it appears that they generally honor only one and sometimes no quilt artists for their list.
Important early exhibits in the U.S.
Although many quilts made and displayed prior to the 1970s can now be defined as art, the form was most importantly recognized as legitimate art in the 1971 WhitneyWhitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
exhibit, Abstract Design in American quilts. That exhibit of pieced quilts from the 19th and early 20th centuries, organized by Jonathan Holstein, presented the quilts on stark white walls with simple gallery labels. Holstein organized the exhibit so that each piece could "be seen both as an isolated object and as part of a balanced flow of objects." This type of visual presentation marked a break from the traditional crowded hanging of quilts in county fairs and guild shows that had predominated throughout earlier displays. The exhibit was widely reviewed, including a glowing report by the New York Times art critic, Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
.
The presentation of pieced quilts, with their emphasis on color and geometric forms, fit perfectly into the art modes of the time. The abstract expressionists, like Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
and Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...
, who used large swaths of color on canvas, had had their moment in the 1950s. They were followed in the 1960s by such hard edge abstractionists as Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
. Thus the public had already been prepared for highly colored abstract art work; the pieced quilts in the Whitney exhibit fit into the current art scene. The Whitney's pieced art exhibit toured the country and was followed by a quilt craze, which reached a culmination in the Bicentennial events of 1976. Many quilts were made for that event and a revival of interest in quilting techniques and materials started giving artists expanded work potential. In addition the feminist movement of the late 60s and 70s produced a new interest in women who worked in the arts as well as formerly neglected women's work that could now be seen as art. Quilts, exhibited in galleries and museums, fit into the country's cultural and social concerns.
Other exhibits in the 1970s presented the "new type of quilt, one markedly different from its tradition-inspired counterparts." "The Art Quilt" was a traveling exhibit, sponsored by the Art Museum Association of America, debuting at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery on October 1, 1986. Two other exhibits were "The New American Quilt" at The Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City in 1976 and "Quilt National
Quilt National
Quilt National is a juried biennial exhibition of quilt art, first held in 1979. The exhibition is held at the Dairy Barn Art Center in Athens, Ohio in odd-numbered years, and is both the largest and one of the most prestigious shows of its kind....
" in 1979, the first of the still existing biennial exhibits spotlighting contemporary, generally original, designs. It too is a traveling exhibit.
Other important exhibits of the 1970s include "Bed and Board", DeCordova Museum
DeCordova Museum
The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a sculpture park and art museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts focused on modern and contemporary art, and holds a collection focused on work in all media, especially works by artists with connections to New England...
(a museum of twentieth-century American art), Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1975; "Quilts for 76", the Boston Center for the Arts, 1975; and "Quilted Tapestries," Kornblee Gallery, New York City, 1975. Many annual venues now exist in which quilt art is exhibited; these include the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, and elsewhere, and Quilt Visions, in Oceanside, California.
Art quilts are now part of collections in museums such as the:
- American Craft Museum, New York, New York
- Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, Montana
- Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
, Los Angeles, California - High Museum of ArtHigh Museum of ArtThe High Museum of Art , located in Atlanta, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. Located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district, the High is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.-History:The Museum was...
, Atlanta, Georgia - Muse ArtColle, Sergines, France
- Museum of the State of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
- Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- International Quilt Study Center & Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska http://www.quiltstudy.org
- Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
- The Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, North Carolina
- The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
- Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, Nebraska
- The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, Golden, Colorado
- The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
- The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Museum of the American Quilters' Society, Paducah, Kentucky
- Ball State University Gallery of Art, Muncie, Indiana
Quilted art outside the U.S. has flourished in the UK, France, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and possibly elsewhere. More information about the art in these countries needs added to this site.
Professional organizations
The professional organization for quilt artists in the U.S. and elsewhere is Studio Art Quilt Associates, founded in 1989. SAQA's membership overlaps with other professional organizations, such as the Surface Design Association and the International Machine Quilter. Major exhibitions involving only quilt art are at Quilt National,in Athens, Ohio,and at Quilt Visions in San Diego, California. Art using quilting techniques are appropriate for all fine art venues. Many mixed media and collage art exhibitions are especially appropriate.Making quilt art
A quilted work of art is generally defined as two layers of cloth held together by stitching. In most cases, a middle batting layer made of polyester, cotton, wool or silk is also incorporated.Although quilt art originated in traditional quilting techniques, quilt artists now may use many different processes to create their artwork, including painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, dyeing
Dyeing
Dyeing is the process of adding color to textile products like fibers, yarns, and fabrics. Dyeing is normally done in a special solution containing dyes and particular chemical material. After dyeing, dye molecules have uncut Chemical bond with fiber molecules. The temperature and time controlling...
, stamping, piecing, collage, printing (often incorporating a photograph printed onto fabric), applique, and other complex cloth processes.
Controversies in quilt art in the U.S.
In a field that straddles craft and art, the controversies can arise rather quickly. Jonathan Holstein recounts being accosted by traditional quilters who were confused by the quilts in the Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
exhibit, "which represented everything the traditional rules of the craft told them to avoid: sloppy work and assembly, bizarre color combinations, nasty materials.... Quilt makers had kept the craft alive and in a relatively pure state, the latter largely because no czars of culture had bothered to look closely at it....They made beautifully crafted quilts....The issue was hot for a long time, until enough exhibitions with orientations similar to the Whitney's had been seen across the country, and a constituency for new visual considerations in quilts had emerged." Holstein, p. 57.
Holstein was also criticized for divorcing the quilts from their historical context, for applying a traditional male-dominated sense of aesthetic value to a woman's art, for dismissing applique quilts as artistically inferior to pieced example, and for his apparent lack of concern as a collector for the stories of the women who made the quilts, "thereby marginalizing the makers by denying them their personal identities." Shaw, p 54
Some of these controversies continue to the present day. Lorre M Weidlich, in the Spring 1996 (vol. 6, #9) Newsletter of the Studio Art Quilt Associates, uses Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
's theory of the differences between male and female values to reject Michael James's call for stronger art in the quilt art world. She says that "the male, Jamesian model of 'quilt art' violates the very qualities that initially attracted women to quilting and reinforce their continuing pursuit of it. It feel[s], to a great many of them, alien. The imposition of a male model on a women's expressive form leaves in a position of discomfort the very people who are the life blood of the expressive form." Weidlich p 9. Weidlich argues that quilts emphasize relationship and connection, and that James would remove those association to conform to male standards of the artist as idiosyncratic and subversive.
Another controversy involves the work and people in the isolated Alabama hamlet of Gee's Bend
Gee's Bend, Alabama
Boykin, also known as Gee's Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama. As of the 2010 census, its population was 275...
. In the early 21st century, the Gee's Bend quilters, "discovered" by folk art collectors Bill and Matt Arnett, became celebrated as artists and toured the U.S. widely, carrying their "piece quilts" to innumerable communities where they gave talks about their lives and work. Coffee table books showed the work and lives of the Gee's Bend artists; items used domestically began to appear, bearing their designs. A lawsuit arose over whether the women's work was legally obtained and licensed by the Arnetts, who apparently sold the rights to the design for use in home dec designs. U.S. District Judge Callie Granade of Mobile dismissed the suits.
Most of these controversies have become muted as the fine arts have opened up to a vast variety of materials and methods. The materials and structures assembled by quilt artists have gone beyond or negated many of the older connotations of the quilt. Nevertheless many questions and concerns remain and are hotly debated.
Contemporary quilt artists
Most quilt artists work in the area of the fine arts, specifically the visual arts. Their works are not generally functional in nature, although there are exceptions.The primary professional English-speaking organization of artists using quilting materials and techniques is the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), the members of which all count themselves as fine artists. SAQA has almost 3000 members. A number of contemporary fine artists employ quilting techniques in their work. In the Fall, 2010 issue of the "Surface Design Association Journal", Michael James names the following as contemporary fine artists working with quilting techniques: Michael Cummings, Ursula Rauch, Ai KijimaAi Kijima
Ai Kijima, born in 1970 in Tokyo, Japan, is a contemporary artist currently residing in New York City. She is noted for her use of traditional quilting techniques to create colorful fabric collages from found materials such as bed sheets, vintage kimonos, t-shirts, curtains, and dishtowels.-Life...
, Lynn Setterington, Dorothy Caldwell, Diana Harrison, Tracey Emin, Clare Plug, Anna Von Mertens, Linda Macdonald, M.Joan Lintault, Susan Shie, Terrie Mangat, and Jo Budd
Jo Budd
Jo Budd is an English artist specialising in creating art from textiles. Trained as a Fine Artist her work could be described as Quilt Art, but frequently contains both collage and/or printing.-Biography:...
.
External links
- Quilters Hall of FameQuilters Hall of FameThe Quilters Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to the world of quilting....
- A History of the Art Quilt
- Studio Art Quilt Associates
- Quilt National
- Quilt Visions
- Michael James Studio Quilts http://www.unl.edu/mjames_quilts/
- Photo Art Quilts
- Patchwork Srbija
- Surface Design Association
- International Machine Quilters