more on quilts and nature

Thanks to Linda, I’m hold­ing in my very hands the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log to the Quilt Visions 2002 show. This is the show that had a bamboo-based quilt design that I really liked. Look­ing through the cat­a­log I found a bunch of other quilts based on nature and things botanical.

It’s beau­ti­ful work, and I thought I’d share some of them with you, along with some of the artist’s com­ments. All the images below are cour­tesy the online exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log at the Ocean­side Museum of Art, where the exhi­bi­tion took place. The words–and fairly impor­tant things like the artists’ names and titles of the works–come from the catalog.

Any bets many of these quilt artists are also gar­den­ers? Enjoy!

Vir­ginia Abrams. In the Jun­gle. 89″ x 48″, hand-dyed cot­tons by the artist, machine pieced, machine quilted.

“The mature dark greens and browns of the jun­gle inter­min­gle with flow­er­ing vines and young shoots intro­duced using impro­vi­sa­tional piec­ing tech­niques. Patches of light fil­ter through to the jun­gle depths.”


Britt Fried­man. Win­ter Tree. 27″ x 34″, printed, painted, machine pieced, direct applique, machine quilted.

“My quilts are meant to con­vey the excite­ment I feel about the nat­ural world. Color, line, and form are used to write a kind of visual poetry describ­ing that experience.”


Robert Leathers. After Angkor. 55″ x 36″, direct applique, machine embell­ished, machine quilted, hand dyed fab­ric by Judy Robertson.

“Angkor Wat tem­ple ruins in Cam­bo­dia are a study in man’s attempt to con­trol nature and nature’s abil­ity to even­tu­ally con­quer. My goal in this quilt is to cap­ture the time­less strug­gle between man and the environment.”


John W. Lefel­hocz. Monet over Money. 50″ x 51″, hand embell­ished, hand quilted, whole cloth.

“What makes a work of art valu­able? Do you look at art dif­fer­ently when you see its dol­lar value? Is art a com­mod­ity? Can the pur­suit of money help or hurt the artist?”


Linda Mac­Don­ald. Stumps to the City. 42″ x 34″, hand quilted, whole top, painted.

“My work is about liv­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia and see­ing and record­ing the changes that are occur­ring due to pop­u­la­tion, liveli­hood, and nat­ural events and dis­as­ters. Log­ging has changed the envi­ron­ment dras­ti­cally. All of the old growth trees are gone except for the few in national parks…The log­ger migrates to an urban area. In this piece, the trees have cre­ated the urban environment.”


Els­beth Nusser-Lampe. Pota­moge­ton. 30″ x 40″, machine pieced, direct applique, machine quilted, machine embroidery.

“In sum­mer­time when you are walk­ing along a stream, you can notice a won­der­ful scene in the water. The run­ning water moves a dense wood of lux­u­ri­ous plants very slowly. When the sun­light is bro­ken at the sur­face, a won­der­ful atmos­phere appears.”


Noriko Endo. Nature in New Zealand. 75″ x 52″, machine embell­ished, small pieces con­vered with tulle.

“When vis­it­ing New Zealand, I was impressed by the beauty of Mother Nature. The sky was so clear and the land was diverse and col­or­ful. The land called out to me. The ver­dant sweep of trees, the wet moss on the tree trunks inspired me to express this in a por­trait of light and shadow… A stroll into the woods with all of its color, light splen­dor, and majesty adds to my well being.”

September 03 2008 04:22 am | Categories: rambles |

2 Responses to “more on quilts and nature”

  1. Greg on 03 Sep 2008 at 7:59 am #

    So glad I remem­bered to visit you from the work com­puter today, so I could get the proper color impres­sions of things.

    WOW!!!! Those are some truly amaz­ing quilt­ing works. I thought the first one was going to be my favorite and then I scrolled down…OMG, the sec­ond one is amaz­ing, like a pho­to­graph from my Adiron­dack days, except for fab­u­lous than any photo.

    Really, these are all incredible…seems like they might have to be life­time achieve­ments, though, for all the work they must have entailed. Thanks for shar­ing these.

    (And has this sim­pli­fied, or com­pli­cated, your ideas about what sort of quilt you and John might like?)

  2. lostlandscape on 04 Sep 2008 at 11:43 am #

    From look­ing at the cat­a­log and online pic­tures I agree with you that the sec­ond is my favorite. It’s hard to believe it’s a quilt! Linda, who shared the cat­a­log with me, actu­ally got to see the show, and the final one ended being one of her faves. She described the gonzo intri­cate tech­niques that went into its con­struc­tion, details that are totally lost in repro­duc­tion. I guess there’s some peace-making in the fact that most of these would be so over-the-top to recre­ate that I’d never inflict their recon­struc­tion on any­one. I think the one I posted on the last quilt post will be a jump­ing off point that’ll lead to inter­est­ing things.

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