April Issue 2002
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Features Quilt Exhibitions
The handiwork of a century and a half of North Carolina quilters will be on exhibit at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center Apr. 12 through June 23, 2002. The exhibitions are 150 Years of North Carolina Quilts, from the permanent collection of North Carolina State University, and Rowan County Quilters: Yesterday and Today, works on loan from Rowan County quilters and collectors.
Quilts are great symbols of cultural history as works of art and as records of family and community life. The work personifies tradition but still reflects the individual's creativity. Though pieced together from household scraps of material, the striking graphics of the improvised designs of one hundred years ago look remarkably contemporary to viewers today. Labors of love, quilts are purposeful and extravagant gifts to family and friends, one stitch after another into the thousands, binding memory to fabric and one generation to another.
Quilts from the collection of the Gallery of Art and Design, North Carolina State University, were selected from more than 100 pieces given to the University in 2001 by Dr. A. Everette James, Jr. and his wife Dr. Nancy Farmer in memory of his mother, Pattie Royster James. The gift to the university and to the state represents their love of quilts and the North Carolina people who made them. For the most part, these pieces are "working quilts" which have covered beds and warmed families going back to the mid-1800s. Filled with patience, hope, humor and imagination, many of the quilts are worn from use but still radiate the indomitable spirit of the makers,. With names such as Rob Peter to Pay Paul, Drunkard's Path, Hill and Hollow,and Crazy Quilt, the quiltmaker's slight-of-hand creates magic out of the everyday.
Rowan County Quilters: Today and Yesterday, features new work by quilters Joyce Heilig, Nancy Isenhour, Karen Morgan, Rachel Sechler, Suzanne Walters, and Brenda Zimmerman. As contemporary artisans, these quilters reference patterns and techniques that have been used for over a hundred years. They have combined quilting history with 21st century choices of design, color, fabric, and tools, resulting in bold and dynamic work recognized today as one-of-a-kind pieces that are at home hanging as wall art.
The grand centerpiece of the entire exhibition will be a crazy quilt, The Barnyard, created in Rowan County in 1920 by Mary Mittie Belle Agner Barrier. This stunning piece was inspired by the animals, birds, and flowers found, for the most part, on the family farm. Barrier gave the quilt to her granddaughter, Rowan resident Catherine Shoe in 1973. The quilt is pictured in several national catalogs, most notably as one of the twentieth century's best American quilts in the book, Celebrating 100 Years of Quiltmaking, edited by Mary Leman Austin, and North Carolina Quilts, a selection of 100 quilts chosen out of more than 10,000 recorded during a statewide documentation project. Waterworks is pleased to host the viewing of this remarkable work of art which is seldom on public display.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the center at 704/636-1882.
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