“Quilts: Craft in America" at the German American Heritage Center -- August 13.
Sunday, August 13, 2 p.m.
German American Heritage Center, 712 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Held in conjunction with the Davenport venue's current exhibition Los Desconocidos: The Migrant Quilt Project, the "Quilts" episode of PBS' Craft in America will be screened on August 17, offering guests a chance to learn about contemporary quilters from diverse traditions as we celebrate the important role quilts have played in our country’s story.
Quilts hold history, share culture, and tell tales that would otherwise not be told. They are rich with memories, beauty, and emotion. And in the "Quilts" episode of Craft in America, viewers are invited to meet contemporary masters of this surprising and powerful art form, among them Susan Hudson, Victoria Findlay Wolfe, and Emmy Award-winning PBS mainstay Ken Burns.
During the screening, collections curator Carolyn Ducey and executive director Leslie C. Levy will introduce viewers to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the mission is to build a global collection and audience that celebrate the cultural and artistic significance of quilts. The museum has the world’s largest publicly held collection of approximately 6,000 quilts from more than 50 countries, dating from the 1600s to today. As Levy states, “Quilts are the textile pages of our shared history."
Among the featured speakers on "Quilts," Hudson, a Navajo/Diné artist from Sheep Springs, New Mexico, was taught to sew by her mother who was forced to sew at an “assimilation” boarding school. Hudson’s pictorial quilts honor her ancestors and the proud history of the Navajo people using a crossover style inspired by Ledger art. Recounting history through her ledger quilts has made Hudson an activist storyteller, chronicling the hardships endured by her ancestors.
Findlay Wolfe has a fine art degree in painting but found her life’s passion in quilt making. Now a New York-based International Award-Winning quilter, fabric designer, teacher, author and lecturer, Findlay Wolfe is known for making quilts that look difficult to make, then teaching quilters to make them. Each quilt Findlay Wolfe makes pushes boundaries, supporting her premise that creativity requires risk.
And historian and storyteller Burns, a 15-times Emmy winner revered for such documentary miniseries as The Civil War and Jazz, is also a passionate quilt collector who affirms quilts to be the “simplest and most authentic expression of who we are as a people.” Twenty-eight quilts from Burns’ American quilt collection were recently exhibited at the International Quilt Museum, and he views the practical artworks as an essential building block of culture. “This is what human beings are required to do," Burns says, "to take raw materials and transform them into something greater than the sum of their parts. And that’s what a quilt is. That’s what art is.”
Quilts: Crafts in America will be screened at the German American Heritage Center on August 13, and admission to the 55-minute event is free, though space is limited and reservations are recommended. Los Desconocidos will be on display through August 27, and more information is available by calling (563)322-8844 and visiting GAHC.org.
