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Found/Made is receiving more attention as we get closer to its opening on July 11. Textile is more! was kind enough to feature the exhibition.
“The ongoing dialogue between artists and quiltmakers continues: the exhibition FOUND/MADE explores borrowed strategies and aesthetics, experimentation and risk-taking, and unusual and quirky materials.”
Ben Venom, I Carry the Flame, 2013,Harley Davidson t-shirts, leather, and denim, hand-made quilt, 15" x 19." Collection of Matt Gonzalez.
I am delighted to share that Hi-Fructose has done a feature on the upcoming exhibition Found/Made at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Hi-Fructose highlights the work done by contemporary art and quiltmakers in the exhibition such as Joe Cunningham, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Luke Haynes, Clay Lohmann, Therese May, Sarah Nishiura, and Ben Venom. I'm excited to see their work together with others in July.
Read the article in Hi-Fructose.
Found/Made will be at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles from July 11 to November 1, 2015.
Renowned quilt authority and collector Roderick Kiracofe hangs some quilts Wednesday as part of an exhibit at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Image: Robbi Pengelly of Sonoma Index-Tribune.
The exhibition also titled Unconventional & Unexpected is finally up at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. The Sonoma Index-Tribune did a beautiful piece on the exhibition. They came with great questions.
Read more in the Sonoma Index-Tribune.
U&U is being exhibited simultaneously with Shaker Stories from the Collection of Benjamin H. Rose III. The Sonma Index-Tribune put together a beautiful gallery of images from both exhibitions.
“Why quilts?”
“How would 1950s and ’60s homemakers be so influenced by the modern art movement? I don’t recall June Cleaver hanging many Neo-Dadaist pieces in the living room.”
“How do the uses of color and pattern play out in this ‘below the radar’ modern art?”
Unconventional & Unexpected, the exhibition, runs from February 14 until May 17, 2015 at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.
The Sonoma Valley Sun featured the simultaneous shows at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art:
The shows run through May 16. The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, located at 551 Broadway, is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. $5, children and members free. 939.7862
“Presenting American crafts and craftsmanship as examples of fine art and design, quilts and Shaker furniture are featured in separate exhibitions at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. ‘Unconventional and Unexpected: Quilts Below the Radar, 1950-2000’ and ‘Shaker Stories from the collection of Benjamin H. Rose, III.’”
Images courtesy of SVMA.org
My quilts and words were featured amidst this conversation, "Reassessing the Revival," about the quilt revival in Antiques and The Arts Weekly. Here is an excerpt from Kate Eagen Johnson's depth article:
“Unconventional & Unexpected is dedicated to quilts of more recent vintage. About ten years ago, long-time quilt dealer Kiracofe literally woke up one day and thought ‘What were the ‘everyday quilts’ made from the 1950s to the end of the Twentieth Century like? And where they even made?’ He had ended his historical survey The American Quilt, 1993, with quilts from the 1940s because quilt dogma held that no good quilts were made after 1950.
Kiracofe began checking out quilts of a more recent vintage. Many, of course, were traditional in style and technique, but there were also ‘maverick’ quilts whose makers reveled in breaking the rules and in improvisation. The latter were the ones that appealed to him and he began buying them on eBay and through other means. Perhaps to the chagrin of Arts and Crafts purists, the makers of these objects did not always fashion quality, natural materials by hand. Many unabashedly delighted in polyester and rayon that they ornamented via machine stitching and appliqué. Some of these quilts did not even have straight sides!”
Thank you to Nifty Quilts for your beautiful blog post this morning. It's exciting to hear about how so many quiltmakers have been inspired by quilts in Unconventional & Unexpected to make one based on a certain quilt or to just be "more free and unrestricted" with their own quilts. The quilt Nifty Quilts is making is inspired from page 56.
“There’s a tiny sliver of red and white. How’d that get in there?
Did I really put a scrap of bark cloth in this? I like it!
Now I really don’t care how the quilt looks overall.
It’s the stories, the connections to sweet friends,
the memories of the design process that matter.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced this.
It’s one of the greatest joys of quilt-making—
working closely with our fabrics and remembering the stories behind them.”
She writes about her process so poetically.
It's so exciting to find Unconventional & Unexpected out in the world! Friends have been sending me images of the book in so many different places. Thank you for sharing, and please keep sending them!
At the de Young in San Francisco. Thanks to Kristin Shields for the image. The de Young has carried every book I have done since The Quilt Digest.
U&U at the de Young. Image courtesy of Leah Thomason Bromberg.
U&U in the gift shop at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Image courtesy of Leslie Levy, Executive Director at the IQSCM.
Having a new book is too much fun. Image courtesy of Luana Rubin.
I found U&U on the new arrivals table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City!
Amazing company for U&U. Note Janneken Smucker's excellent book, Amish Quilts: Creating an American Icon -- I highly recommend it. Gift shop at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Image courtesy of Leslie Levy, Executive Director at the IQSCM.
Ames Gallery booth at prestigious San Francisco Fall Antiques Show
Cooperfield's Books in Napa, CA. A thank you to Tony Spleen for this image!
Autographed copies of U&U at the booth for Julie Silber's The Quilt Complex, #937 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Thanks to Deborah Turner Ursell for the image!
Mary Kay Davis of The Quilt Show sent this picture from Houston Quilt Festival
While I was traveling in New York this last month, Victoria Findlay Wolfe graciously hosted a book launch party for Unconventional & Unexpected.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY RODERICK KIRACOFE
