EARLVILLE – The next EOH Art Happening is in collaboration with Earlville Community Day on Saturday. This Free Family Event from noon to 3 p.m. engages all ages in the arts in a youth-friendly environment. KidsART activities, refreshments and music accompany three exhibits of Contemporary Quilts with two group shows and a solo exhibit of quilts by Nancy Bales. Music from noon-3 p.m. will be performed by Dove Creek with an eclectic Americana mix of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and more on mandolin and guitar. Stop in and take a listen! Have a cookie!
Contemporary quilts are things of beauty. In the East Gallery, a striking assemblage of twelve quilts was chosen by each of six artists to best represent their work. The artists are Shelley Baird of Columbus, OH; Cynthia Corbin of Woodinville, WA; Jennifer Day of Sante Fe, NM; Sally Dutko of Ithaca; Nancy Hicks of East Rochester, and Kathleen Loomis of Louisville, KY.
The works show various techniques by modern quilt artists. Many of the artists in this collection use surface manipulation of the fabric. All of the fabrics in Cynthia Corbin’s works are of her own creation using dyes and paints before she cuts and pieces the quilts together. Shelly Baird uses a whole cloth approach with images that are superimposed on cloth by screen-printing, painting and drawing with dyes, paint and bleaching agents in processes both directed and serendipitous. She expands on her work “The word ‘fabricate’ means to concoct, dream up, assemble and create… Once I discovered surface design on fabric, all of the separate pieces of my puzzle fell into place.”
For Sally Dutko, former graphic designer and art director at Cornell University, “My passion for surface design led to creating fabric collages and mixed media wall hangings…and addresses my chosen topics or subjects through relationships among colors, textures, line, type, and pattern.”
Other quilts show techniques that dramatically highlight thread play. Shelly Baird’s whole cloth quilts are heavily quilted to highlight color changes. However, heavy as Baird’s quilting is, the detailed portrait works by Jennifer Day are so heavy with machine quilting that one easily weighs ten pounds. “My art incorporates between one and three million stitches in the finished art quilt. I have used as many as 4200 yards of thread in a single art quilt. My style of thread painting is very intense and the projects may take as long as 150 hours to complete.”
