Quilt National 2015 Prize Winners

Quilt National 2015 Prize Winners

The whole collection is documented in Quilt National 2015: The Best of Contemporary Quilts, published by The Dairy Barn Arts Center. There were 689 quilts submitted by 378 artists from 44 states and 19 countries including 3 Canadian provinces. Jurors Rosalie Dace, Ann Johnston and Judy Schwender selected 84 quilts by 84 artists. The exhibitors represented 33 states and 8 foreign countries. In this exhibition 30 percent of the exhibitors are first time Quilt National artists. There were 14 awards granted. In addition, the People’s Choice award will be chosen by the visitors to the show.

Best of Show

Schulz_GirlintheCitywithBlueHair_32x51
Karen Schulz
Girl in the City With Blue Hair ©KS
32 by 59
Cotton, dye, rayon ribbon, wool batting. Dyed, machine pieced and quilted. machine couched.

Artist’s Statement: “Action and reaction. My artistic process is often an interesting combination of the two. After finishing a series of pieces working with bright colors I felt drawn to work in a severely limited palette. I narrowed the value range. My work is primarily concerned with the formal considerations of composition. The quilted line and the thicker couched line, both an integral part of my current efforts, grow out of the underlying structure. The title appeared.”

Quilts Japan Prize

Kirpich_ConflictNo6Mugging
Judy Kirpich
Conflict No. 6/Mugging ©JK
77 by 60
Hand dyed cotton. Machine pieced and quilted.

Artist’s Statement: I think the title of my piece says it all.

Award of Excellence

Siebels_Head7_48x45
Diane Siebels
Head 7 ©DS
48 by 45
Cotton velveteen, commercial cotton, fusible web, black batting, pearl cotton thread. Machine pieced, back, cut, hand stitched.

Artist’s Statement: Human beings are merging with the constant influx of data that has become so much a part of our lives.

Most Innovative Use of the Medium

Busby_Tribute_65x20x18
Betty Busby
Tribute ©BB
60 by 20 by 18
Linen, oil paintsticks, armature, fabric paint. Hand painted, stenciled, machine quilted, hand stitched.

Artist’s Statement: I majored in ceramics and spent almost 20 years operating my own business. I am revisiting the classical pottery forms of the past, this time in fiber, using the medium to push the traditional shapes in new directions. The title refers to the traditional Chinese ginger jar shape that inspired this work.

Lynn Goodwin Borgman Award for Surface Design

Watler_RedSunatNight
Barbara W. Watler
Red Sun at Night ©BWW
34 by 39
Cotton, cotton/poly, perle cotton thread. Hand stitched with random running stitches.

Artist’s Statement: “Red suns at night is a fisherman’s delight” refers to sunlight shining thru a high concentration of dust particles. This indicates high pressure approaching and bringing good weather. As the wife of an avid salt water fisherman, we always wished for good weather and good fishing.

McCarthy Memorial Award

Vincent_Chaos3_59x59
Kit Vincent
Chaos 3 ©KV
59 by 59
Cotton, silk, dye, cotton batting, cotton and silk thread, cotton backing. Nine 20″ panels, machine pieced, appliquéd, machine quilted.

Artist’s Statement: In 1972, Edward Lorenz asked: does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Chaos theory describes systems that are predictable for a while and then appear to become random. The flapping butterfly wing represents a very small change in a pattern of behaviour initially…however this can cause a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wing at that time, the systematic pattern might have been very different.
For those of us who work improvisationally, when a meaningful prediction cannot be made…is the pattern random?

Cathy Rasmussen Emerging Artist Memorial Award

sponsored by Studio Art Quilt Associates
Probst_BlueVeil_53x55
Kathleen Probst
Blue Veil ©KP
53 by 55
Cotton, dye, cotton batting, embroidery thread. Machine pieced and stitched.

Artist’s Statement: I have taken another leap further into minimalism.
Clean design and simplicity are my beacons, which is why I’m utterly drawn to midcentury modern furniture and architecture. This attraction is a clue to the path I’m on. In Blue Veil, large expanses of space have claimed a voice of their own with simple quilt lines scaffolding bold composition.

Heartland Award

Loomis_Entropy_71x86
Kathleen Loomis
Entropy ©KL
71 by 85
Commercial cotton, felt. machine pieced, machine quilted by M J Kinman

Artist’s Statement: My work is about our complex society, many disparate pieces held together by fragile bonds. We may think things are under control, but order naturally yields to disorder, solidarity becomes fractured, things start to fray around the edges.

Hilary Morrow Fletcher “Persistence Pays” Award

Kastles_LegislatingLove_48x49
Kathleen Kastles
Legislating Love ©KK
48 by 49
Kona cotton, acrylic ink, aloe vera gel, acrylic paint, oil paintstik, metallic thread, polyester thread, batting, muslin.
Hand painted, machine-appliquéd, machine quilted.

Artist’s Statement: This quilt illustrates the Chinese government’s September 2012 Filial Piety Act, wherein children are now legally required to care for their aging parents. Before the Communist Revolution, elders were revered as national treasures; afterward, many were abused and neglected. China’s history since the 1949 Communist Revolution is filled with attempts at social engineering. Their 1980 One-Child policy appears to have reaped unintended consequences for China’s capital market reforms, thus making this ironic law necessary.

Hilary Morrow Fletcher “Persistence Pays” Award

Frost_RockyTrail_38x27
Randy Frost
Rocky Trail ©RF
38 by 27
Cottons, stretch cotton, paint, dye, discharge, papers (mulberry, rice, etc.), cotton backing, cotton batting, cotton canvas, cotton thread, polyester thread, monofilament. Dyed, raw-edge machine appliquéd, machine embroidered, folded, hand-stitched, machine quilted.

Artist’s Statement: Rocky Trail is part of my Journeys series. A journey can be real or imaginary, the distance, any length. Choose any destination. All means of transportation are possible, from one’s own feet to spaceships. In this quilt, I explore rocky terrain, its variety of color, texture and scale, its visual and tactile properties, and their emotional and physical impact on the traveler along the way.

Quilt Surface Design Symposium Award of Excellence

Nunez_CrossSection_34x34
Diane Núñez
Cross Section ©DN
34 by 34 by 1
Cotton, fusible stiff interfacing, ink, grommets, rubber o-rings, aluminum tubing, wooden tinkertoys. Whole cloth quilted, dry and wet ink techniques.

Artist’s Statement: As a landscape architect I think three dimensionally while drawing and designing two dimensionally. This work takes it one step further and is literally a small cross section. Instead of drawing lines on paper I am using fabric strips as my medium. The fabric strips are creating my line drawing and graphically represent the bright texture of our earth’s subgrade. To me it is just like doodling.

Juror’s Award of Merit

Carney_Chasms22_33x45
Beth Carney
Chasms 22 ©BC
33 by 45
Cotton, dye, thread, silk batting, polyester neon thread. Machine pieced and machine quilted.

Artist’s Statement: Texture, light and color all play a part in discovering the essential lines needed to flow across the stage with a sense of freedom. They disappear and reappear sometimes connecting, other times not.

Juror’s Award of Merit

by Pamela Fitzsimons

by Pamela Fitzsimons

Pamela Fitzsimons
Imposing the Grid #6 ©PF
38 by 30
Silk, silk and cotton threads, wool batting. Plant dyed, layered, machine stitched, hand stitched.Artist’s Statement: The ancient and weathered Australian landscape. 240 years of European settlement overlaid on more than 40,000 years of a continuous culture.

Juror’s Award of Merit

Art Quilt - 2014, 36x58 inches

Art Quilt – 2014, 36×58 inches

Jean Renli Jurgenson
Roofs of Mumbai ©JJ
37 by 57
Cotton, synthetic fabrics, decorator samples of unknown fiber content, felt, batting, fabric stiffener, cotton thread, upholstery thread. Fused, quilted, soaked.Artist’s Statement: The graphic images of these communities inspired this piece, but the people who live there moved into my mind and heart as I worked. When the piece emerged, clean and crisp, it felt so “right”. In its pristine state, I consider this piece a tribute to those who live there. Under difficult circumstances, they live and love and raise their families. They work and dream and strive to make their dreams happen.

People’s Choice Award


Hartman_AutumnAfternoon_43x45

Barbara Oliver Hartman
Autumn Afternoon ©BOH
43 by 45
Cotton, cotton batting, cotton backing, cotton, silk, polyester, and nylon threads. Raw edge, free motion appliquéd, small bits and pieces of fabric are scattered on the surface and then sewn in place using a free motion zig-zag stitch. Only a small area can be worked on at a time because the small pieces are loose. Artist’s Statement:It is very gratifying to create something new from materials that could easily be thrown away. Many years ago I realized how much of the fabric left from other projects was being discarded and began making quilts in this series. The small pieces are separated by color and then cut into smaller bits and pieces and this becomes me paint and used like a painter.

 

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