Gillilan explains that she and the other artists focused on aesthetics as much as they did in achieving intricate consistency and excellence in their sewing and stitching techniques. It is worth emphasizing that these quilts are not created as utilitarian forms but as art pieces to hang on gallery walls. Based on her studies with fiber artist Nancy Crow, she incorporates techniques of free-form and commercial and hand-dyed cotton fabrics. She employs asymmetrical design, improvisational piecing, and bold colors in dynamic contrasts. Hodson-Rosier’s work was more improvisational in approach than the other two artists.

Her choice of textiles included remnants and upcycled materials, such as silk, velvet, kimono and upholstery pieces. Bartel also dyed, stamped and painted her fabrics, while working on sketches of tree shapes that she then fused onto the background. Bartel incorporates aesthetic influences from Western and Eastern art and philosophies, producing fantasy-like images of trees that twist, curve, bend and soar toward the skies, while achieving backgrounds in straight lines and colors that pop. She used hand-dyed, kimono marbled cotton and silk fabrics.īartel expands her imagination with tree shapes while Hodson-Rosier is captivated by urban architectural styles, towers and ladders. She was able to leverage numerous possibilities with the old quit block pattern known as Drunkard’s Path, which is a quarter circle in a square and can easily be rearranged into different patterns. Gillilan enjoys aerial views of farmers’ fields with their abstract geometric shapes representing the spaces allocated for planting specific crops. The exhibition culminates in a surprisingly broad spectrum of representing the contemporary imprint on the landscapes and each artist’s vision. Each of us had a different style so we were able to riff off different perspectives.” The three artists have quilted together for 25 years, This led to us thinking about how we could translate the idea of land markings into quilts. “We were ruminating on the fact that many peoples since time began looked upon land as a canvas to make art,” Gillilan says, adding, “yes, but we make quilts and we discussed how we would make our own mark. Although the library is not hosting programs from this year’s festival, the institution normally opens an exhibition to coincide with the UAF event. 1 in the City Library’s Lower Urban Room. Sheryl Gillilan, one of the three artists in Geoglyphs: Quilts by Roxanne Bartel, Sheryl Gillilan and Sondra Hodson-Rosier says in an interview with The Utah Review that the quote epitomizes the project that she and her fellow artists conceived of nearly four years ago when they visited the petroglyphs outside of Moab, Utah. Sewing is a way to mark our existence on cloth: pattterning our place in the world voicing our identity, sharing something of ourselves with others and leaving the indelible evidence of our presence in stitches held fast by our touch.” Lives expressed not just through images but through texture and color, different kinds of stitches, the various processes of piecing, patching, recycling, quilting to more clearly articulate the different layers of our humanity and manifest the fabric of our lives. “Fabric and thread can convey.a prayer, trace out a map, proclaim a manifesto send out a warning, bestow a blessing, celebrate a culture and commemorate lives lived and lost. For the new exhibition in the City Library which coincides with the Utah Arts Festival, a quote from Clare Hunter’s 2019 book Threads of Life is fitting for what it conveys.

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