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Quilting is the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. An array of stitches is passed through all layers of the fabric to create a three-dimensional padded surface. The three layers are typically referred to as the top fabric or quilt top, batting or insulating material, and the backing.
A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of two or more layers of fabric or fiber. Commonly three layers are used with a filler material. These layers traditionally include a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding, and a woven back combined using the techniques of quilting. This is the process of sewing on the face of the fabric, and not just the edges, to combine the three layers together to reinforce the material. Stitching patterns can be a decorative element. A single piece of fabric can be used for the top of a quilt, but in many cases the top is created from smaller fabric pieces joined, or patchwork. The pattern and color of these pieces creates the design. Quilts may contain valuable historical information about their creators, "visualizing particular segments of history in tangible, textured ways".
African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
Faith Ringgold was an American painter, author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Harriet Powers was an American folk artist and quilter born into slavery in rural northeast Georgia. Powers used traditional appliqué techniques to make quilts that expressed local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events. Powers married young and had a large family. After the American Civil War and emancipation, she and her husband became landowners by the 1880s, but lost their land due to financial problems.
Quilt art, sometimes known as art quilting, mixed media art quilts or fiber art quilts, is an art form that uses both modern and traditional quilting techniques to create art objects. Practitioners of quilt art create it based on their experiences, imagery, and ideas, rather than traditional patterns. Quilt art generally has more in common with the fine arts than it does with traditional quilting. Quilt art is typically hung or mounted.
The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River.
Rosemarie Beck was an American abstract expressionist, figurative expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She was married to the writer and editor Robert Phelps.
Kyra E. Hicks is an author, quilter and quilt historian. She writes about African-American quilt history and encouraging quilt documentation. She has created story quilts, such as Black Barbie, which is in the permanent collection of the Fenimore Art Museum in New York City.
Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form.
Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an American curator, quilter, author, art historian, and aerospace engineer. She is a strong advocate for presenting and documenting African-American-made quilts. Her own quilts are designed to tell complex stories around African-American heritage and contemporary experiences.
Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN) is a national organization dedicated to preserving African American quiltmaking.
Dindga McCannon is an African-American artist, fiber artist, muralist, teacher, author, and illustrator. She co-founded the collective Where We At, Black Women Artists in 1971.
Martha Neill Upton was a watercolorist, sculptor and studio quilt artist. Her quilted tapestries helped quilts become seen as fine art, rather than craft work, during the early 1970s. Her quilts were shown in the first major museum exhibition of non-traditional quilts, The New American Quilt at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, then called the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in 1976.
Gwendolyn (Gwen) Ann Magee was an African-American fiber artist. Learning to quilt in the middle of her life, Magee quickly became known in the world of fiber art for her abstract and narrative quilts depicting the African-American experience. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Museum of Mississippi History, the Michigan State University Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and has been exhibited internationally.
Cecelia Tapplette Pedescleaux, also known as Cely, is an African-American quilter of traditional and art quilts, inspired by historians, other African-American quilters, and quilt designs used during the Underground Railroad to communicate messages to slaves seeking freedom. Her quilts have been shown in China, France, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and in other locations in the United States. A solo show of 75 of her quilts were shown at the Le Musée de Free People of Color in New Orleans (2013–2014).
Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods—which create quilts that look like paintings—have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Her works now count among the permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami and about a dozen other art museums nationwide. She has also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and many other venues. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and its "100 Women of the Year" issue. With a multi-year wait list for private commissions, one of Butler's quilts sold at auction in 2021 for $75,000 USD.
Susan Hoffman is an American quilt artist.
Yvonne Wells is an African-American folk artist and quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is best known for her self-taught style and her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the International Quilt Museum.
Viola Canady was an African American quiltmaker. Canady discovered her passion for quilting through exposure to its processes as a child. She was the co-founder of the Daughters of Dorcas and Sons Quilting Guild of Washington, D.C. Canady created a wall hanging for the Charles Sumner school and it is exhibited at the Sumner museum. One of Canady's most notable pieces is the Cathedral Window Quilt.
References
- ↑ Roland Freeman, A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories, Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996, pp. 166–68.
- ↑ Interview with Peggie Hartwell Archives of American Art, retrieved 10 July 2002.
- ↑ Hartwell Collection Museum of Arts and Design
- ↑ Kyra E. Hicks, Black Threads: An African American Quilting Sourcebook, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003, p. 101.
- ↑ Close Ties Mountain Express, retrieved March 29, 2000.
- ↑ African American Visual Artist Database, Artist Bibliography
- ↑ Quilted Conscience to be shown on NET, The Independent, retrieved Saturday, June 8, 2013.
- ↑ Black Threads, p. 103.
- ↑ The Carousel, PBS Reading Rainbow, 1997.
