At the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky, January is usually a cold and somewhat slow month as can be expected with the conclusion of month after month of holidays from October to December. As the temperatures began to drop, the Arts Center turned its focus to a warmer form of art – quilts. All of the exhibits during the month featured the work of some of Danville and Boyle County’s finest quilters with work from the Crazy Quilters Guild and Dolores Fegan.
The Crazy Quilters Guild (a group of quilters who do not necessarily make the more free-form stylized “Crazy Quilts”) exhibited in two of the Arts Center’s three galleries. The Grand Hall mainly featured “Challenge Quilts” and the smaller Studio 2 gallery featured a variety of work by this group. As the group doesn’t focus on creating “crazy quilts,” I suppose that their name somehow reflects their emotional state. I have met these ladies and wouldn’t consider them to be crazy at all; rather they are very dedicated artists to their field. It seems that the group really enjoys the company of one another and that they have had a very successful start since beginning in 2006 as a part of the Boyle County Homemakers. Their exhibit featured work from very experienced quilters as well as at least one artist who was displaying the first quilt that she has ever created.
The Crazy Quilters exhibit in the Grand Hall featured what the group calls “Challenge Quilts.” These quilts are created within the group by a set of rules established by a group member. Challenges from both 2006 and 2007 were on display. The 2006 challenge was to create a fish-themed quilt. It is apparent that the group enjoyed the challenge and came up with a variety of creative spins to put on the theme. One quilt, Woodland Fish, by Teresa Martin featured a woodland scene created with very simple geometric designs that featured a log cabin, trees, and a small pond with several fish within its borders. Maybe it’s the limits of my generation, but this quilt reminded me of early computer games such as the Oregon Trail. Quite popular back in the true floppy disk days (when the disks were actually floppy), there was one part of the adventure where the player got the opportunity hunt pixelated wildlife of the western plains among a similarly styled geometric landscape. This quilt features the same angle of view, an almost three quarters birds eye view of the scene. Another fish challenge quilt, Something’s Fishy, by Katie Fowler features several button-eyed fish in profile, with three dimensional fins that “flap” off of the surface, and what appear to be actual small fly fishing lures dangling before the open mouths of the fish. In 2007, the Crazy Quilters were challenged to create a quilt using a specific lime green patterned fabric. This fabric was not the most subtle color, so the results of this challenge tend to be very bright and lively. A piece by Suzanne Brown, Froggie Chaos (pictured below), features a handmade checkerboard pattern that gives the illusion of three dimensions while frogs cut from patterned fabric spill onto a psychedelic blend of shapes and color, making me wonder if the supposed mind altering effects of licking toads might be a reference point for this work.
Froggie Chaos by Suzanne Brown
Now I’m not saying that the Crazy Quilters go around popping frogs in their mouths, it was just a reference that came to mind when viewing the work. Another work that made good use of the patterned fabric was Kentucky Challenge by Audrey Cameron. This piece was one of the more subtle uses of the bright green fabric and featured a nice palette of color that complimented the challenge fabric without drawing too much obvious attention to it. In Studio 2, the Crazy Quilters got a chance to show what they can do outside of the limitations of the Challenge Quilts. Work in this gallery ranged from contemporary landscape themed quilts, to a quilted jacket, to a quilt built on a Civil War era pattern.
The Gallery upstairs featured work by Dolores Fegan, a quilter specializing in art quilts, quilts that aren’t necessarily intended to be used as bed coverings in the traditional sense. Art Quilts are meant to be displayed and viewed as art much like a painting on a wall, except instead of paintings on a canvas, they are made of fabric. Art quilts have become quite a spectacle recently as more quilters are becoming known as artists. I think that it is important that all quilters are known as artists in the sense that they are contributing to the culture with their work. The design and concept of art quilts, and the fact that most quilt artists use no specific pre-existing patterns make art quilts stand out more as an individualistic art form whereas traditional quilts often reflect a sense of time and place among a group of artists.
The sheer amount of work that Dolores puts into each quilt makes an immediate impression on the viewer. If each quilt only consisted of white fabric and white thread, the amount of care and labor put into the layout of the stitches and sections of cloth would be enough for them to work as a great piece of art. Luckily, for the viewer Dolores’ work contains a great variety of both color and pattern to make each section of a quilt stand out among the others. For example, a quilt featuring a landscape would feature green, densely patterned fabric to look as if it were grass or brush, while loosely patterned brown earth tones would be used to represent sections of dirt in the quilt. One such quilt, “Melody of the Plains,” the artist even goes as far as to use a larger textured pattern near the foreground of the quilt, while the background uses a tighter pattern to give the illusion of atmospheric perspective – the appearance that the objects in the background fade into the distance. One of the most impressive aspects of Dolores’ work is that rather than taking the easy way out, she isn’t afraid to do a lot of hard work to make the quilts stand out. For example, in the quilt featuring dancing chickens “Poultry in Motion,” she stitches metallic thread onto a patterned fabric that already resembles chicken wire. The result is astounding in that the thread catches and reflects the light to look exactly like chicken wire should. The centerpiece of Fegan’s exhibit was a very large quilt installation, “Women of the Bible.”
This quilt features sixteen small art quilts featuring various women of the Bible chained together to form a massive fourteen by seven foot installation. Each of the smaller quilts features a haiku about the biblical character. If the viewer has difficulty in figuring out the character being referenced, they can scan the surface of the quilt for what I call a “cheat.” The name of the woman is stitched into the canvas in a very inconspicuous place. You have to really look closely in order to find some of the names. Finding the names of the women becomes almost like a game of hidden objects to the viewer. At the center of the installation is a large, shapely representation of a woman. A heart is stitched onto her chest, and the names of nearly all of the women in the Bible form a hand-stitched trail around the figure, starting with Eve at the center of the heart. Just the figure of the woman would be sufficient to stand alone as one of those, “Wow, look at that” moments.
Women of the Bible by Dolores Fegan.
Other details are sometimes more subtle. In preparation for what is perhaps the most traditional quilt in her exhibit, “Fruit of the Spirit,” Dolores studied papercutting here at the Community Arts Center. Studying with Debbie Baird, a local artist specializing in cut paper art, Dolores learned how to create repeating patterns on paper. By adapting this knowledge to fabric, she was able to create very dramatic designs cut into a single piece of cloth. To explain it doesn’t sound very exciting, but to see this technique in person is amazing. Pictured below, the quilt features black designs over colorful fabrics. The undulating black patterns are the sections that are cut from a single piece of cloth. Other details may have completely passed by the casual viewer. For example, a fish quilt was stitched with glow in the dark threads on the scales of large, three-dimensional koi to make their scales glow under the right lighting conditions. It is Dolores’ dedication to exploring new media and her willingness to take on the most difficult challenges that make her work so interesting.
Fruit of the Spirit by Dolores Fegan
The quilt exhibits were a great addition to our winter lineup of shows. With so many talented quilters in our region, we had great attendance with many enthusiastic viewers. Many visitors made their first visits to the Arts Center to check out the work of these artists. As I hoped and suspected, these exhibits drew a new audience to the center.
Thanks for reading,
Brandon Long
Executive Director, Community Arts Center
Tags: Art exhibits, art quilts, kentucky artists, quilts
