Fabric becomes art

In an era of pixels and gigabytes, a canvas of fabric honors the artist’s hand with its tactile grace and galaxy of color.

New Mexico unfurls in all its hues, from Jemez Mountain fossils to an old Ford truck.

The Studio Art Quilt Association will open “New Mexico: Unfolding” in the New Mexico Capitol Rotunda Gallery on April 12 with 53 pieces. The fiber artists all used their materials to express their relationship to their home state. The imagery captures landscapes, plants, architecture, animals, insects and birds. Some quilters interpreted New Mexico with abstraction; others dealt with historic, cultural or familial themes.

Cynthia Sanchez, the director of the Capitol Art Foundation, selected the works from 75 submissions, a record number of entries.

The makers of these tactile, often three-dimensional canvases use traditional quilting techniques to create works of art. The artists base their pieces on experience, imagery and ideas rather than the strict dictates of traditional patterns.

The transition from traditional quilting to quilted art came rapidly. Many of the most important advances in the field occurred in the 1970s and ’80s, fueled by feminism and the new craft movements. The Whitney Museum of American Art stamped the movement with formal legitimacy with its 1971 exhibit “Abstract Design in American Quilts.” Their emphasis on color and form reflected the abstract expressionists in bloom at the time, igniting a nationwide quilt craze. The Studio Art Quilt Association formed in 1989.

Some New Mexico quilters work from their own paintings, others from photographs. Some rely on their own memories and imaginative flights. These fiber paintings and sculptures reflect the spatial potential and theatrical dimensions of flat cloth, giving it a dialogue of drama and depth in richly layered migrations of fabric and stitches.

For the Rotunda show, Sanchez focused on craftsmanship, as well as individual vision, in making her gallery selections.

“I was not particularly concerned with trends visually or technically,” she wrote in an email. “I focused more on quality and personal vision: works that were both visually intriguing as well as excellently constructed technically. I approached the works as if they were paintings or mixed-media works.”

Jennifer Day

Jennifer Day’s “Holy Cow” is based on a photograph the artist took of her son and his best friend facing a herd of cattle. Day lives in Santa Fe and owns 110,000 acres “and lots of cows” south of Milagro and on top of Rowe Mesa.

“I put the photo on fabric,” she said. “Then I go about the process of creating the image in thread.”

Working with a sewing machine, Day stitches a rainbow of thread to create the subtle variations in shadow, color and light.

“I have to blend several different colors in one inch to get the blend I want,” she explained.

In some cases, that may mean using 70 different colors. “It’s just layer, layer, layer,” she said of her self-invented technique.

Day got her first sewing machine three years ago. Her membership in the American Society of Interior Designers and goldsmith background are mirrored in her fabric work.

“I know design,” she said. “I know color. I was able to translate it into this kind of quilting.”

The “Holy Cow” image is of her then 8-year-old son Carson and his best friend Josh standing in a pen while a herd of cattle glares at them.

“We just walked down and went in the pen with them,” Day said.”I kept telling them to go closer. They stood there and they literally reached for each other because the cows were starting to move toward them. It was curiosity, fear and adventure all rolled into one. You get 100,000 pounds of cattle running toward you, you’re going to run.”

Rod Daniel

Placitas’ Rod Daniel turns his partner Jim Carnevale’s photographs into fiber art. “Pauline’s Ford” depicts an old Ford truck seemingly abandoned by the side of the road.

“The truck was on Route 66,” he said, “parked in front of a little tepee in Holbrook, Ariz. It’s these old concrete tepees in front of this old motel.”

He turned what could easily be kitsch into a burst of form and color, with the man-made vehicle dissolving into the landscape.

Daniel has been quilting for about three years. He took a class in Monterey, Calif., three years ago, where he learned to use fabrics like paint. Today he prefers to use batiks (a Japanese wax resist dyeing technique) because they blend well.

“Pauline’s Ford” won him an award in the New Mexico State Fair two years ago. The recognition came in honor of a woman named Pauline, hence the title, he said.

Daniel is a musician who works as the band director at Albuquerque’s Taft Middle School.

“I’ve always had my fingers in visual arts one way or another,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve felt a passion in the middle of the night thinking, ‘What can I do next?’ ”

Colleen Konetzni

Rio Rancho’s Colleen Konetzni hand-dyed her own fabric to create “Backyard Vista.” The image shows a lush Rio Grande view through her window.

“We’re up high on a hill,” she said. “Now it looks dry and brown, but in the summer we get to enjoy the greenbelt. I was trying to reproduce that emerald green.

“The trees are cheesecloth,” she explained. “I wanted some texture. When you walk by the river, the light shines through the trees; I was trying to capture that.”

The artist dyes her fabrics (usually cotton or silk) first before deciding how to manipulate them.

“I feel like a mad scientist when I’m doing it,” she said with a laugh. “I have quite a good stash of fabric now.”

The Mimbres designs of “Ancient Flight” came from a childhood spent camping and hunting for fossils and arrowheads with her grandfather.

“Now as an adult I wish I could retrace my steps,” she said. “When I was making that quilt, I enjoyed thinking of him.”

Holly Altman

Holly Altman turned her fascination with fossils into a contemporary wall hanging made of hand-dyed fabric, quilt batting, wire and cheesecloth.

“I’ve been out fossiling in the Jemez Mountains and it’s a lot of fun, and since it was an ancient sea, it was very interesting,” she said from her Santa Fe home. “I thought, ‘There’s a quilt in here’.”

A close look at her gray-toned piece reveals a tangle of crinoids (“They look like little trees”) and brachiopods (“They’re seashells”).

“I wanted to give it a very rock feel,” Altman said. “A lot of it was sewn as I went along.”

She used trapunto (adding dimension by stuffing the fabric) to form ridges.

The tentacles of the crinoids formed when she wrapped wire in thread, then added Crayola Model Magic, a modeling compound.

“I stuffed and sewed it on. It has the indentations of shells.”

“There’s a lot of contrast,” she said. “I used tech magic markers to add detail.

“When you hold a fossil in your hand, it may be dead, but it’s still there. It is a record of life,” she added.

Katie Pasquini Masopust

Internationally known artist and teacher Katie Pasquini Masopust created her “Chamisa Alegre” from a plein air acrylic painting. The wildly abstracted “Cosmic Collisions” began as a watercolor of astronomical origins.

Masopust makes a drawing from the painting, turning that into a template.

“I like the textures and colors,” she said from her Santa Fe home. “It is a lot like painting, only you do it in cloth.

“I’ve been doing it for 30 years,” she said. “I’ve written nine books. I do both, and they inspire each other.”

New Mexico Studio Art Quilt representative Michelle Jackson says the state boasts 82 art quilters. World-wide estimates reach 3,000, she added.

“Obviously, we’ve come a long way since grandma’s quilts,” she said in a phone interview from her Albuquerque home. “Now we’ve gone right up to what I would consider art.”