Fiber artists showing their creations in the “Beyond the Canvas” exhibit this month have found a way to express themselves as accomplished sewers and artists.
The free exhibit can be seen through Saturday, April 4 at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498 Espola Road.
Participants are members of the Southern California/Nevada region of Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. The international nonprofit’s mission is to promote the art quilt as a creative visual work that is layered and stitched with a vision that the art quilt be universally respected as a fine art medium.
SAQA has grown into an active community of more than 4,000 artists, curators, collectors and art professionals, according to the PCPA’s website. Of those, 35 members are showcasing their work in Poway.
SAQA member Kathleen McCabe of Coronado said without the show having a theme, the artists had the freedom to create unique designs for exhibition. Included are a variety of abstract, representational, landscapes, seascapes and whimsical pieces, some of which have a specific meaning, McCabe said.
“We want to promote the quilt as a fine art medium recognized as art,” said McCabe, who is displaying two quilts that show a great blue heron and an egret getting ready to fly. “Instead of crafts, paint or clay, we use fabric and thread.”
Courtesy Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.
Barbara Danzi made this modern design quilt titled “Orange Crush.” (Courtesy Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.)
Among the show’s artists are part-time Rancho Bernardo resident Mary Tabar, who also lives in Chicago, and Rancho Penasquitos resident Kathy Piper.
Tabar said she’s considered herself an artist since she won her first art award in kindergarten.
“I’ve had a pencil or a needle in my hand for as long as I can remember,” said Tabar, who learned to sew as a child from her mom, Ruth Wood. “She sold sewing machines for Singer so she was very into sewing. She sewed all of our clothes.”
Tabar began quilting 30 years ago after taking a continuing education class in the craft at Palomar College. Five years later, the teacher retired and Tabar ended up teaching it for the next 10 years, she said.
“I absolutely love it,” Tabar said. “My teacher used very bright colors and made a kind of modern quilt. I had never seen that before. I had only seen my grandmother’s traditional handmade quilts. I didn’t know they could be modern and hung on the wall. That really attracted me.”
Inspired to create her own art with textiles, Tabar said she quickly transitioned from making traditional large wedding quilts for beds to smaller, more artistic pieces. Her work on display at the PCPA includes a modern design titled “Jan’s X-Block,” an abstract titled “Sunrise” and a design on bleached fabric depicting a tree in a garden titled “Eden’s Garden.”
Tabar is simultaneously showing 10 of her pieces at the Garden Apartment Gallery in Chicago, she said.
Since her stockpile of quilts quickly accumulates, Tabar said she makes quilts for friends and family members and lets them choose what they like. She also sometimes sells her quilts.
Her preferred fabric is cotton, which she either bleaches or dyes depending on the artwork.
“I find cotton is nicer to work with,” Tabar said. “I’m a fabric dyer so I dye a lot of my own material, which is the opposite of bleaching.”
Piper said she has been quilting about as long as Tabar, having started in 1996.
Her journey began when she majored in painting and minored in sculpture at the University of Michigan in the class of 1969. She became a painter using different mediums including oil pastels and acrylics and also created drawings. Other than making fiber or textile art she also paints portraits.
Piper said she began making art by working with fiber in 2008. She recalled being introduced to working with fabrics as a young child like other artists who grew up “making doll clothes with our mothers.”
“Artists use any kind of medium to make their art and fiber is one of them,” Piper said, adding that she loves sharing her art. “We use fiber and thread to make our art instead of oil paints or acrylics or any other medium.”
Piper’s entry in the SAQA show is a seascape titled “Kefalonia on My Mind.”
Courtesy Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.
Rancho Penasquitos resident Kathy Piper made this seascape quilt titled “Kefalonia on My Mind.” (Courtesy Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.)
Like traditional artwork, Piper said her quilts are not made to be utilized, but to hang on a wall like an oil painting would hang.
“Whether you want to express your feelings in an abstract or realistic way or show beauty, it works the same way with every artist,” she said. “Every artist expresses their work individually.
“There are fiber artists who make three-dimensional work like sculptures that you can stand and walk around that are made out of fabric,” she added.
McCabe said the process of creating quilts can take longer than paintings, particularly when the artists dye their own fabric, cut the fabric and assemble it in imaginative and creative ways.
“This exhibit has artists in our organization of all skill levels, but all of them are exemplary,” McCabe said. “Even those who have not exhibited before have done exceptional work.”
The “Beyond the Canvas” exhibit is free to viewers and some of the quilts are for sale.
Exhibit viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and 1 to 6 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. An artists reception open to the public is 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15. While parking is free, parking passes are required on weekdays and can be picked up in the main office within the PCPA lobby. For details, call 858-748-0505.