Gallery of Magical Quilts

Room 12

Home Page Down


Click for larger image

After the Gold Rush
© Linda Gass

Linda paints as well as makes art quilts and wearable art. Her work has appeared in various exhibitions, including Quilt National 1999. The inspiration for this quilt comes from a photograph by Ray Atkeson, courtesy of the Ray Atkeson Image Archive.

Linda says:

"I grew up in California and have spent countless hours exploring the beauty of its mountains and deserts. In this quilt I have tried to beautify an unnatural landscape through a play of color and texture on silk. The landscape is I-5, a major transportation artery, crossing the California Aqueduct, the man-made river that moves water from north to south and irrigates farm fields in what once was a desert. This is the second mining of California and hence the name of the quilt."



 

 



Click for larger image

Pyrotechnics
© Carol Anne Grotrian

Carol Anne is a quilter and a dyer. Her art combines West and East, American quilting and Japanese shibori dyeing, to create an illusion of light and a content that expresses the natural world. As she works on these "breathing spaces," she is conscious of American landscape painting and Asian traditions of landscape as meditation. Her stepfather was a professional magician.

Carol Anne says:

"I've loved fireworks since childhood, as soon as I was old enough not to be afraid of the noise. It doesn't get any better than fireworks over the Charles River, the traditional July 4th Boston celebration, recreated here."


 

 




Click for larger image

Summer Queen
© Kim Ritter

Kim uses blind contour stitching and dye painting to create sophisticated wallhangings and quilts. She is the author of Quick Quilting.

Kim says:

"Part of my City and Guilds student exhibition, this quilt depicts a beautiful Celtic Queen, decked in flowers during the summer solstice to insure the fertility of the land. When the female form emerges in my work, she is strong, and vibrant, a force of nature, someone to be reckoned with. She is often a creature of myth, and sometimes she appears as the Mother, the Maid, or the Crone. In all her manifestations, my 'Quilted Goddesses' are my attempt to tap into that powerful spirit inside me."

 

 






Click for larger image

Portrait of a Reptile
© Clare Smith

Clare enjoys showing people new ways to look at lesser-known, but very beautiful animals. She has had quilts selected for many shows in New Zealand and has a piece in the touring Quilt National '97 show as well as the "Made in New Zealand" traveling exhibition.

Clare says:

"The Tuatara is a lizard which has remained unchanged since the time of the dinosaur. It is now confined to a few isolated islands off the coast of New Zealand."





 




Click for larger image

Relic Vessels
© Patricia Mink

Patricia earned an M.F.A. from Eastern Michigan University and has had quilts in a number of juried and invitational exhibitions. This quilt was included in Quilt National '95.









Click for larger image

The Harmony of Crisis
© Gerry Shelhamer

Gerry made this quilt as a symbol of her thoughts about consciousness, which she sees as her personal identity--the conglomerate of every thought she has accepted. She believes that change does not always need to be a crisis, but change is always preceded by a change of thinking.

Gerry says:

"Every thought is part of a 'family of thoughts'. They are connected/related to similar thoughts. When a Crisis/Change takes place, I re-evaluate my thinking. As I release one thought, its companions must leave also. Sometimes however, I only release one part of the thought...for now. There is a single block, on the right hand side of the blocks. It had been surrounded by others (thoughts). That was its identity. It is made up of something different, something free. It does not need color to make itself distinguished. It does not need brilliance, to draw attention to itself. Its greatness is subtle. Its Perfect Identity is all that it needs. It simply...Is. "





 

Home Page Up