About the Quilts and their Artists

We are grateful to and appreciative of the quiltmakers, quilt artists, and quilt collectors who have allowed us to display the various images of their contemporary and antique quilts throughout our website. We have included some brief information about these quiltmakers who have allowed us to be inspired by their work.

Caryl Bryer Fallert

Artist Statement

For as long as I can remember, I have expressed myself through artwork. My formal training was primarily in design, drawing, and studio painting. After many years of painting, sewing, and experimenting with other media, I discovered that fabric, as an artistic medium, best expressed my personal vision.

I love the tactile qualities of cloth, and the unlimited color range made possible by hand dyeing, and other surface design techniques. Virtually all of my quilts begin with white, 100% cotton fabric. The fabric is dyed, painted and printed to create the palette of colors and visual texture used in piecing and appliquéing my images. In addition to continuing an ongoing series of colorful fantasy works, I have recently become very interested in images scanned and manipulated in the computer and printed directly on fabric with archival jet inks.

The focus of my work is on the qualities of color, line, and texture, which will engage the spirit and emotions of the viewer, evoking a sense of mystery, excitement, or joy. Illusions of movement, depth, and luminosity are common to most of my work.

Both my geometric color studies, and my more organic two dimensional abstracts are inspired by visual impressions, collected in my travels, in my everyday life, and in my imagination. My work is usually about seeing, experiencing, and imagining, rather than pictorial representation of any specific object or species. When recognizable objects appear, they represent the emotions and flights of fantasy evoked by those objects.

I intend for my quilts to be seen and enjoyed by others. It is my hope that they will lift the spirits and delight the eyes of those who see them.

Michael James

Artist Statement

My interest in color and its interplay with visual movements and with illusory space have been consistent concerns throughout my development as a quiltmaker. While the work has taken various forms over the years and has responded in various ways to different techniques and materials, those formal concerns have governed much of my studio activities.

The work has always embodied metaphorical value as well, and I feel that is as important a dimension of what I do as are the formal issues. The building of piece to piece to achieve an integrated whole, the assemblage of disparate colors and fabrics to realize an artistic Unity, the rhythmic working through of the process with the final goal always in mind, are dimensions of this craft not unlike the assemblage of bits and pieces of experience to make up a life.

I make quilts because I have a long-standing and sincere interest in the form itself and because I love fabric - I love to feel it and to handle it and I enjoy the sewing processes with which fabrics are secured together. Most of my paternal and maternal grandparents and great-grandparents were textile mill workers, so there is a familial connection to textiles, albeit a humble one. My formal art training has certainly influenced my thinking about what might happen on a quilt's surface, but my study of the history of quilts and the metamorphosis of quilt patterns and design, especially of Amish quilts, has had an equivalent influence on the development of my work.

My imagery has been rooted in many sources: the sky and sky spaces and phenomena; the physics of movement and the patterns of natural movements (whirlpools, waterfalls, etc.); energy and its visual analogues; other art, both two- and three-dimensional, both so-called "fine" art as well as decorative art (the Delaunays, Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse, Kelly, Nevelson, African textiles, Gothic architecture, Art Deco fabrics, Bauhaus design, and more recently, Russian icons, to cite a few influences that have come into play at various stages); and music and dance.

Work completed between 1992 and mid-1996 continued my involvement with stripes and with the strip-piecing technique which over the years has afforded me a straightforward way to organize a broad color palette and manipulate it in a fluid and flexible fashion.

These works were about various tensions as well: the tension between the stripes/strip-piecing process and the surface imagery; the tension between the impulse toward order and the potential for chaos; the tension inherent in metamorphosing forms that were neither fully geometric nor biomorphic. Out of a system of parallel stripes I attempted to create a world of forms and movements and interactions that were as many and varied as those system in nature, in physics, and in music for which they function as visual analogues.

Since mid-1996 I've been developing a new body of work that returns to simpler geometric pattern structures and in which the palette is pared down to a smaller number of colors straightforwardly juxtaposed. For the time being my most important concern is to clear the stage for meditative dialogues between small handfuls of colors, letting them find a resonance that is too easily sacrificed when many dozens of colors are given free rein. Part of this exploration has involved work with stark black/white or black/color juxtapositions, as in Crash Site and Yellow Brick Road. In Parallel Conversations, I was meditating on the coexistence of the disparate in just about every aspect of the physical and the psychic worlds. The nature of harmony has less to do with seeing eye-to-eye than with balancing contrasts.

The introduction of hand-painted fabrics in the most recent pieces signals a move to a more organic aesthetic, a counterpoint to the minimalist geometric compositions. In quilts such as Allanbank Caravan, Red Crosses/Black Bars, Orange/Blue and Venetian, these fabrics leave evidence that hints at ongoing natural processes of change and decomposition.

Nancy Crow

Artist Statement

I have made over 300 quilts.

The purpose of my quilts is to make something beautiful for me but at the same time they are a means of expression representing my deepest feelings and my life experiences. In addition, my quilts are all about how I see color and color relationships; how I see shapes; and how I see line and linear movements. They are also about complexity, sadness, and hope.

My style of quiltmaking is contemporary in that I want to express my experiences now and not copy old quilts. They are traditional only in that they pieced and hand-quilted.

I work in a 2400 square foot studio that is attached (by an enclosed walkthrough) to my house on an 83 acre farm east of Columbus, Ohio. The studio represents the environment in which I want to be in that I have large open spaces, large walls on which to work, many, many tables, high ceilings, excellent lighting that is color-corrected, a great stereo system, wood floors, enough large windows to give me a sense of the out-of-doors, wonderful storage for finished quilts, a bathroom, several different offices, an archival storage room for photography and collected textiles.

When I work on a quilt, I put away all thoughts that are not helpful and channel my energies toward relaxing and becoming one with my fabrics. Since I work intuitively, this is absolutely important. I begin to see shapes in my head and think about how to cut them out of my huge palette of colors that I have hand-dyed in my basement dye studio. Never, ever do I think about what others expect or want or what will sell, but rather I look at my time in my studio as a process of discovery. I love being inside my brain and pushing myself to think in ever more complex ways because I know the ideas are there for the taking. It's all about being focused and disciplined and making use of one's abilities. And about being alone, in solitude, so one can think and feel deeply without interruption. I have definitely grown far closer to myself rather than to others because I see my quiltmaking as my experience which has nothing to do with other people.

I identify who I am with my art work...in other words, I love the work, the experience of making each quilt. It's my life, my life's work! I feel lost not doing art, unsatisfied, anxious, bored. Everything else in comparison seems not terribly important. That is not to say I don't love my two sons or my husband.

I love them dearly but I cannot live through other human beings but rather I feel I can live only through using the talents or gifts I was given and to that end, I have always had a sense of time running out.

I believe in just doing it and not looking for excuses because who really cares in the end?

No one but oneself.

Yvonne Porcella

BIOGRAPHY:

Yvonne Porcella, an artist specializing in wearables and art quilts, began in 1962 by making unique garments, wall hangings and quilts. Currently her work is featured in major exhibitions, art galleries and museums.

Her work is a vibrant expression of an artist who knows how to handle color with an apparently endless palette. She hand paints fabrics to achieve a soft pastel watercolor effect and uses a variety of these fabrics to create her art. In addition to these subtle pieces, Porcella produces work that is bold and vibrant, using pure color in contrasting and synchronous relationships to convey a cumulative dynamic effect.

Her work has toured in national and international shows of contemporary American quilt makers and is actively collected by individuals and corporations.