Quilt crazy

Lowell celebrates patchwork with three varied shows

by Leon Nigrosh

SECOND IMPRESSIONS: QUILTERS CELEBRATE COCHECO FABRICS

At the American Textile History Museum, 491 Dutton Street, Lowell, through December 31.

QUILT 21: ART QUILTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

At the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through October 22.

THE SPIRIT OF A MILLTOWN: NEQM QUILTS

At the New England Quilt Museum, 18 Shattuck Street, Lowell, through October 15.

In the past two decades, there has been a massive resurgence of interest in quilting, with statistics now claiming more than 15 million quilters in the United States alone. And right now the city of Lowell is hosting, not one, but three important American quilt exhibitions documenting the changes that have taken place in design and construction since the colonists brought their warm-and-snuglies to these shores in the 1600s.

The New England Quilt Museum's "The Spirit of a Milltown," offers the historical aspect with a display of 30 domestic quilts from the museum's permanent collection. The American Textile History Museum's "Second Impressions" is an interesting transitional exhibit for which the curators challenged contemporary quilters to create new works based on traditional 19th-century fabric patterns. And for the Brush Art Gallery's "Quilt 21," contemporary American quilters have thrown tradition to the wind.

As we view the rarely seen quilts from the NEQM's collection, we are reminded that Lowell was once the heart of America's textile industry. At its height, a dozen Lowell mills employed 10,000 workers and turned out a million yards of cloth a week. Many of the workers were immigrants from the Azores and, like Theresa Mello, took mill scraps home to make bedclothes for her family. Several of Mello's quilts are on display. They aren't fancy -- and technically not quilts because the pieces are tied and not quilt stitched -- but they not only serve as early examples of local utilitarian work, but exemplify the democracy of quilting. As curator Jennifer Gilbert puts it, "Everyone from slave women to their mistresses made quilts."

Early quilts, like the Princess Charlotte Commemorative, made around 1820, retained rug-like European compositional elements, with a central image surrounded by expanding rectangular borders. With the advent of the quilting bee, an approved and popular social activity for women, the concept of separate and repeated block designs became common because the scheme allowed an individual quilter to work on a portion of a quilt at her own pace. Later the pieces would be stitched together to form a single, large quilt, such as the pink and white "signature quilt," from 1848, on display at NEQM. Nina Shrock's large 1930s quilt, Butterflies, is an example of how the block method was adeptly employed by a single quilter.

Other quilts, such as the 1920 Blue Hawaiian, a pale, blue tree shadow on a white stitched background, and an 1886 "crazy quilt" made of non-matching squares and produced by members of the North Egremont Ladies Aid Society, are displayed in authentic bedroom settings. These historical pieces and others in NEQM's collection have inspired RJR Fashion Fabrics to create four new reproduction fabric collections adapted from 41 original pattern designs.

As if further proof is needed to show the spike in interest in quiltmaking, another fabric company, P&B Textiles of California, issued a nationwide challenge to quilters to use the company's line of 1880s Cocheco reproduction prints to create new works. Thirty-four outstanding entries currently grace the gallery walls of the American Textile History Museum. Given that each artist had to use some, if not all, of these 37 specific patterns and colors in at least 75 percent of their overall design, you might expect to see a lot of similarities between the entries. But such is not the case.

Some quilters, such as Kansan Jill Stearns, chose to stay with traditional patterns with her "snail's trail" design in pale green, yellow, and brown. Others, such as Marianne Wise from Ohio, used a computer to create her Lucky Clover, Indeed quilt by combining two blocks -- clover and palm -- into a colorful complement of geometric pattern of warm and cool hues.

Prizewinner Margo Huckabay Hicks, from Smithfield, Rhode Island, managed to incorporate all 37 fabrics into her composition, Gearworks, a colorful complex of swirling pinwheels and spirals floating over a red striped floral background -- a contemporary impression of Victorian quilting sensibilities.

Worcester's own fabric artist Carlotta Miller entered a further variation of her "Grace" quilt series wherein she has hidden her five-year-old daughter's name produced in geometric tangrams. Because she was required to use the Cocheco prints, it's harder than ever to find the child's name -- but once you do, it seems like a great victory. That quilt is hung so that we can see the backing, Miller's hand-screened print of Grace's delightful "Blueberry Pal."

Meanwhile, over at the Brush Art Gallery, they've thrown away all preconceptions about quilts by redefining the medium as anything with three layers fastened together. In the inaugural "Quilt 21" of what is to be a biennial, traveling, juried exhibition, 43 artists culled from 342 nationwide entries show their stuff. The gallery is awash with a riot of color, pattern, and design executed with remnants of dyed, painted, and stained fabric, augmented by photo-transfers, beads, yarn, lace, and other unrecognizable bits and pieces.

Surprisingly, with the amount of leeway afforded these artists by re-defining what constitutes a quilt, no one really has taken advantage of the tremendous three-dimensional capabilities inherent in the quilting medium. Be that as it may, many of those represented have created what amount to abstract impressionist compositions in cloth. Illinois artist Melody Johnson offers us a soft-focus semi-cubist color arrangement in Face Paint while Kansan Phil D. Jones presents us with 5/4, a composition of tiny varicolored rectangles he equates with jazz.

Pennsylvania quilter Eliza Brewster directly credits abstract impressionist painter Robert Rauchenberg's "combine-paintings" as the major influence for her mixed-media quilt Lift Here. Combining photo-transfers, colored markers, stencils, and hand-appliqué fragments, Brewster has taken unrelated elements and juxtaposed them to produce a dark, enigmatic presentation that requires audience participation. We are urged to raise a flap of fabric, which uncovers a photo face that seems very familiar, except try as we might we can't put a name to it, all of which serves to deepen the mystery.

Prizewinner Laura Cater-Woods from Billings, Montana, came to quilting through painting. She finds that the reality of fabric texture and physical dimensionality add greatly to her abstract compositions. Her radiantly colored Flare appears as a picture within a picture that reveals the forces of nature through imagery pertaining to fossils, rocks, and landscape elements.

Produced in conjunction with last weekend's highly successful Lowell Quilt Festival, these three shows provide ample opportunity for viewers to appreciate the scope encompassed by American quiltmaking through some of the finest historical and contemporary examples available today. There's a lot to look at, so pace yourself.

The New England Quilt Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call (978) 452-4207.

The American Textile History Museum is open on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (978) 441-0400.

The Brush Art Gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call (978) 459-7819.