Free and open to the public

Exhibition Opening:
Thursday, October 2
5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Free and open to everyone, no reservations required

About the Exhibition

The exhibition opening will be held from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 2, in the Museum’s main first floor gallery. The event is free and open to everyone. No reservations are required.

“Rooted in Tradition,” curated by Judith Trager, chronicles the history of the art quilt movement from 1980 through the present and brings the quilt from the bed to the wall. The quilts in this collection reflect the change from the traditional craft of quilt-making based on the repeated block to the free-spirited art form of today.

The showing at the Massillon Museum is part of a 10-city national tour during a two-and-a-half-year period. All 64 quilts are on loan from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado. The tour was developed and is managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, based in Kansas City, Missouri.

What You'll See

The quilts are divided into decades and broken into three sections. The first section, “Rooted in Tradition,” begins with M. Joan Lintault’s 1980 quilt, “Heavenly Bodies,” a daring quilt that was the forerunner of the digital and image-transfer work that would appear two decades later. Other artists in this section include pioneers Marilyn Chaffee, Radka Donnell, Tafi Brown, Joan Schulze, Yvonne Porcella, Therese May, and Janet Page-Kessler.

The second section, “Art Quilts of the 1990s: The Watershed Years,” catalogues the growth of the movement and exhibits the enormous energy of the medium. The quilts in this part of the exhibition are familiar, yet powerful. This decade was one of experimentation, energy, and enthusiasm. It was a time when quilting materials were changing. Cotton gave way to silk, paper, and Mylar. Surface design and embellishment techniques created depth and artists felt free to explore themes previously avoided such as political and humanitarian issues. Artists like Nancy Erickson and Fran Skiles painted their quilts, while Wendy Huhn used a copy machine to produce fabric for her creations. Although repeated blocks are still in evidence in Marta Amundson’s “The New Holocaust” and Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka’s “Terazzo: Lapis,” this part of the exhibition shows a wide range of styles and materials.

The quilts in the third section, “The New Century: Confluence and Creation,” show the art quilt in its maturity and diversity. Male quilt artists are prominent: Michael James, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, Duncan Slade, J. Bruce Wilcox, and Phil D. Jones. African American artists are represented by Carolyn Mazloomi and Virginia Harris. The exhibition embraces upcoming younger art quilters like Lisa Call and Molly Anderson. Two of the quilts were created using fabric that was generated digitally.

The quilts in this exhibition reflect not only the movement of the quilt from bed to wall, but a lively new spin on traditional form. All of the artists represented continue to work in the art quilt medium.

Two of the quilts have particularly piqued the interest of the Massillon Museum staff. Jane Dunnewold’s “Baby Quilt,” a 1994 work created of silk, synthetics, photo transfers, gold foil, and birthday candles, includes at its center a reproduction of a photograph by Nell Dorr. Dorr, who rose to international fame as a fine art photographer, grew up and learned photography just a block from the Massillon Museum, where her family lived and operated a portrait studio. Yvonne Porcella’s 1986 “Kimonos in My Kimono House” will be prominently displayed in anticipation of the Canton Museum of Art’s 2009 “Kimono” exhibition.

About the Exhibit Catalog

The exhibition is supported by a full-color, 160-page catalog, Rooted in Tradition: Art Quilts from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, which will be available in the Massillon Museum shop.
A limited number of catalogs are available. Orders may be placed over the phone (Visa or Mastercard) or in person (cash, check, Visa, Mastercard).

Visiting the Museum

The exhibition may be seen at the Massillon Museum through November 30th during regular Museum hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Ample free parking is available on adjacent streets and in nearby city lots. A visit to the Massillon Museum is always free.

The Massillon Museum is located at 121 Lincoln Way East (Ohio Route 172) in the heart of downtown Massillon. For more information, contact the Museum at 330-833-4061 or visit www.massillonmuseum.org.

For more information, call the Massillon Museum at 330-833-4061.

Do you need help planning a trip to the Massillon Museum? Click here for visitor information.

Photo Identification:
"Nosegay," Molly Anderson, 2001
"Tetrad I," Marilyn Chaffee, 1981
"Baby Quilt," Jane Dunnewold, 1994
"Kimonos in My Kimono House," Yvonne Porcella, 1986
"Abstraction/Diffraction," Judith Tomlinson Trager, 1994