In this new showcase I’m featuring four Modern Quilters that you will love!
Anthony Bowman
I grew up in Ohio and have lived in Chicago, DC, and Shanghai and Qiqihar, China. I started quilting in 2016, shortly after moving to New York City. I rented a spare bedroom from the sister of a close friend. This spare bedroom served as her quilting studio, and I was fascinated by all the colors, patterns, and texture that surrounded me. Before I made the move, I had already decided I wanted to make a quilt and thought (foolishly) at the time that I would make one and be done. I had no idea I would get as hooked as I did. My roommate/friend/first teacher provided me with some fabric to start, and taught me the basics – cutting, piecing, walking foot quilting, finishing, and an intro color theory.
Why do I quilt? I’ve always felt creative, and despite viewing my work as community organizer and coalition builder as a creative endeavor in the way it challenges me to bring people together under a common cause, I never had a more traditional artistic outlet for my creativity. I love quilting because it has given me such an outlet. I enjoy playing with elements of modern traditionalism in my quilts, using bold, geometric patterns, and exploring color and value through gradations that create an ombre-like effect. Most recently I have begun to explore how to incorporate this aesthetic with symbolic representations of community, togetherness, and inclusiveness.
Sara Luna
I am a visual artist and illustrator with a specialization in textile art. My studio is located in the beautiful mountains of Salt Lake City, in a small community called Suncrest. I enjoy walking with my dog on the amazing mountain trails all around me and watching the different kinds of birds that come to our feeders.
Throughout the course of my studies, I experimented with a variety of materials, from watercolors to digital tools until I found my niche with punch needle in 2017. I started making punch needle portraits in my last year of college. I found this technique while researching materials for my degree project. I fell in love with it right away, but my teachers didn’t like it. They suggested I return to photography, so I put away my yarns and needles and came back to an ordinary project.
I grew up in Chile surrounded by weavers and craft makers and I’ve been working with fibers since I can remember. After moving to the US in 2018, I started feeling homesick and a way for me to feel more at home was to return to the yarns. My family has always been very crafty, and one of my favorite memories is sitting with my mom, aunts, and grandma around a table full of sweet treats and tea and knitting until our hands hurt. So it was then that I rediscovered the technique and honed my skill.
Using my two degrees, I mix the digital and the analogous to create unique pieces. I try to make my work as unique as possible, using beautiful gradients and punch needles that I make myself. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with spinning my own yarn, and it’s like a new world of possibilities opened up.
My mom owns a lamp factory and uses all kinds of materials and fabrics to create unique lamps. The fabric I use for my portraits is the same as she uses in her bestseller lamp. So, for me, coming back to the punch needle was the best remedy for my homesickness. Every time I work on a project surrounded by these very familiar materials I feel at home.
Growing up in Chile as an artist taught me one thing: don’t buy anything that you can make yourself. I started making my own punch needles after I bought one online in 2018 and felt so robbed when it finally arrived – such a horrendous piece of plastic and bad quality pipe. So I started the process of making my own needles. That journey was extremely challenging, but I just fell in love with it. Each needle was better and better – which still happens to this day – and I couldn’t stop making them. I never thought of making my punch needles into a business, but after a while, people started asking me for the prices, and slowly this fun project became my source of income.
As for the concept of my work, there are a couple of things that inspire me the most.
The multiverse theory is one. I love to get deep into wondering what a different version of me is doing, and how taking the other path changed her life. Using this concept and ideas I created “Multiverse” a collection of doubts about the choices we make.
Nature also makes my head, heart, and hands create. “The secrets of the woods” is a collection filled with magic and fantasy. What if we live in a world where fairies, gnomes, and elves exist; a world where the trees in the forest have a soul and memory and they know everything? Every time I walk on the trails that go through the forest I think of this, and I like to pretend all these things exist.
I entered the world of spinning not too long ago, and it changed my life view and art forever. “Soft and twisted” is a collection of sensations. Starting with the same white roving each time, I dye, spin, and create a wide variety of yarn and textures, which I use to create my pieces. It intrigues me, the idea of the “twist” in the world of spinning. The more you draft and twist the fiber, the stronger and harder to the touch it gets. This idea reminds me of growing up, and how difficult times make us tougher and stronger.
In all my collections I use the same subject: the portrait. I believe that we all carry a story with us, a secret that we try to hide from the world, but our expression works against us, giving us away. Eyes and looks inspire me so much; with each piece I try to get deeper into what that look is hiding, and hopefully uncover those secrets.
Susan Brubaker
My name is Susan Brubaker Knapp. I am an artist, author, photographer, teacher, host of “Quilting Arts TV,” and co-host of the Quilting Arts Podcast.
Quilting is in my genes; I have a great-grandmother and two grandmothers who quilted. My mother, a home economics teacher, was a terrific quilter, and taught me sewing basics when I was about 10 years old. I started out as a traditional quilter (and still love traditional hand quilting and needleturn appliqué), but embraced innovative machine and surface design techniques and started making art quilts in 2005.
Now, I teach nationally and internationally, and my work is in private and public collections, including the International Quilt Museum (Lincoln, NE) and International Quilt Festival Collection (Houston, Texas). I have produced five video workshops with Quilting Arts on the topics of free-motion machine quilting, thread sketching, wholecloth painting, and finishing techniques. And I have written two books (a needleturn applique pattern pack, and “Point, Click, Quilt!”, about how to turn your photos into fiber art).
As host of “Quilting Arts TV,” which runs on Public TV in the U.S. (and is also available digitally through subscription), I love introducing viewers to outstanding art quilters, who share their work, techniques, and insights.
Much of the art I create is my way of celebrating and documenting the deep mysteries of the world that are to be experienced only by close inspection of the miraculous details of nature. I find great joy in creating works that draw people closer and invite them to savor color, texture and form.
My work often starts with photos I take on my morning walks (and share on Instagram under #BeautyOnMyMorningWalk). I create fiber art based on these photos, or from my ink drawings based on them, using two primary techniques – wholecloth painting, and fused appliqué – and often heavily free-motion thread sketch the surface before quilting. A recent exhibition featured work based on plants native to North Carolina, where I live. Environmental, social justice and political concerns also are a focus.
Adrienne Lee
My name is Adrienne Lee (she/her) and I’m a textile artist based out of Chicago, IL, originally from a small town in South Carolina. I began weaving in February of 2020, after a friend and fellow weaver gave me a few weaving lessons, something I had requested of her after she made me a beautiful tapestry that now hangs in my bedroom. As a yarn enthusiast and knitter, I knew that I would enjoy weaving, but I didn’t expect to fall in love with it as quickly as I did.
My style has evolved over time, but one thing that has remained constant is my love of color and nature. My work is inspired by moments in time: watching a burning sunset descend behind the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains, or catching the dawn breaking over the marshes in the Carolina lowcountry.
These are the moments in my own life that I come back to often, the memories I love to weave, and I capture them with plush wools, textured cottons, and any other fiber that I can get my hands on. I love creating pieces that showcase the juxtaposition of earthy, landscope tones with the bright, bold colors of our skies. Weaving with a lot of color brings me so much joy, but there is something about working with the color blue that always gives me a sense of peace. I love getting lost in the puffy, dream worlds that I create, and I hope you are able to get lost in them too.
