Kentuck Art Center is proud to present Stitching Stories, an exhibition featuring the works of select quilting artists from Alabama. Stitching Stories will be on display in Kentuck's Museum and Teer galleries from June 6, 2024 – July 28, 2024.
Quilts have served as functional items, heirlooms, and expressions of personal and communal identity, documenting history, conveying social messages, protest, and fostering community among women who often gathered to quilt together. “Stitching Stories” not only highlights the technical prowess and creativity of contemporary quilters but also pays homage to the resilience and artistic expression of women who have kept this art form alive.
The quilters featured in Stitching Stories create with different goals, techniques, and styles; however, each quilt tells a unique story and contributes to the rich artistic history of Alabama.
Exhibiting Artists and their work:
(click to enlarge images)
Please call Kentuck Art Center at 205-758-1257 or email mnelko@kentuck.org to inquire about purchasing any available works.
Ana Schuber (click to enlarge images)
Anna has been a crafter since the age of 4. When her daughter was born she decided to learn how to quilt.
"One of my favorite memories was sitting on grandma's bed and pointing to the squares on a quilt and hearing the stories"
Anna had no sewing machine and hand stitched all of her quilts for 30 years! She had an impactful meeting with the Gees Bend quilters that changed her approach to quilting. After that meeting she started allowing her quilts to tell her what they wanted to be. Both of her quilts in this show are directly related to the Tuscaloosa tornado in April of 2011.
Paula Barnett (click to enlarge image)
Paula is a member of the West Alabama Quilters Guild and the pattern for her submission in Stitching Stories is called Diamond Log Cabin. The technique is foundation paper piecing and features hand quilting. The piece measures 21 inches square and has over 800 pieces.
Becky Brown (click to enlarge image)
Becky is a member of the West Alabama Quilters Guild and she is a group of seven of who get together each month and quilt together. They call themselves “Sisters of the Cloth”. Her addition to Stitching Stories uses flamingos to represent this group. Each flamingo represents one of them as they are off to quilt shops, quilt shows and quilting beach retreats. It is appliqué and free motion quilted in her Juki domestic machine. This quilt won 1st Place at the 2021 challenge in Small Wall hanging Division and 3rd Place in the Wall hanging Division of the WAQG 2022 Quilt Show.
Sarah Marshall (click to enlarge images)
Sarah Marshall is a visual artist interested in language, history, science, and the natural world. Using printmaking, photography, and drawing, she blends observable reality with belief, imaginary stories, and memory. Processes such as repetition, reversal, layering, and transfer serve as metaphors for our daily sensory and mental experiences, and our relationships with ourselves and with each other.
Sarah earned a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, then an MA and MFA from The University of Iowa. She lives and works in Tuscaloosa, where she coordinates the printmaking program at The University of Alabama.
Hallie H. O’Kelley (click to enlarge images)
Hallie H. O’Kelley is a native of Iowa who moved to Tuscaloosa in 1951. Her degrees at Iowa State were in Home Economics Education and Textile Design. Her use of screen printing was limited for a number of years to printing only on paper. The paint available was not suitable for cloth.
"Quilting was something I always thought I would do"
The development of a water based textile paint in the 1970’s gave her the idea of printing original designs on cloth and hand quilting around the images. This became a passion that continues today along with hand dying the cloth she prints on.
Through the years she has entered many national quilt shows and received awards in some. She has a quilt in the permanent collection at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah Kentucky. She has also been designing the Kentuck Festival quilts and posters since 1983.
Gee’s Bend Quilters (click to enlarge images)
Participating quilters: Tinnie Pettway, Lorette Bennett, Qunnie Pettway, Marlene Bennett Jones, Joeann Pettway West, Mensie Lee Pettway, and Andrea Pettway Williams
Gee's Bend, also known as Boykin, is a small, isolated town in southwest Alabama known internationally for their incredible patchwork creations and their role in the Civil Rights Movement. The quilting tradition dates back to the 19th century and continues today.
Hailed by the New York Times as "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced," Gee's Bend quilts constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art. Several Gee's Bend Quilters have been featured in national and international museums and have worked in collaboration with brands such as Greg Lauren, Chloe, and Marfa Stance. Those collaborations have been featured at the Met Gala, Academy Awards, and Paris Fashion Week and were written about in publications such as British Vogue. In 2024, Target's Black History Month collection featured a collection of Gee's Bend designs.
The March Quilts (click to enlarge images)
In 2014, Bib & Tucker Sew-Op partnered with UAB’s Department of Art & Art History and the Birmingham Museum of Art to launch a community art project to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches. Through open sewing sessions conducted between 2014 and 2015 in partnership with more than a dozen hosting sites, the project yielded 461 quilt blocks. Sew-Op members stitched the blocks together and made three quilts, which hung at the Selma Public Library and the Alabama Department of Archives in Montgomery during the anniversary week in March 2015. Due to the positive response from partners, The March Quilts became an annual project. During the 9 years of the March Quilts, Bib & Tucker members have facilitated and assembled 16 quilts from over 1480 blocks submitted by community participants. In 2023, The March Quilts became its own nonprofit in order to formalize the quilt collection. 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of The March Quilts and to that end, the year will be filled with community sewing sessions that will reach across all 67 counties in Alabama.
Rene Kastinas (click to enlarge images)
Rene, also known as Dr. K, had only made 2 quilts prior to 2019. When Covid hit and the University was not allowing people on campus she started cutting quilts. Being without a sewing machine she adopted a quilt as you go technique. This is a quilting technique that involves quilting smaller pieces of a quilt as you piece it together. The basic idea is to sandwich quilt blocks or rows with batting and backing, quilt them, and then join the blocks together. This technique allows you to work with more manageable pieces and can be especially useful for large quilts that might not fit in your sewing machine.
Rene also took advantage of the West Alabama Quilter Guild for fellowship and learning.
Martha Beadle (click to enlarge image)
Born and raised in Florence, Alabama, artist Martha Beadle has been creating her fiber art for more than 20 years. Her strong connection with family, community, church, and the music of Muscle Shoals have profoundly influenced her work.
Beadle began to create artistically while she was at home with her children in 2000. A needle pointer by hobby, Beadle used her time at home to explore her voice as an artist.
Beadle has cultivated a distinctive style of her folk art fiber creations. Typically, a quotation is stitched to the background with a central figure, typically a person or animal, in the foreground. Accented with various buttons, jewelry, and knickknacks, Beadle’s needlework comes to life with her unique techniques.
Martha’s one-of-a-kind creations range from inspirational to inspired by pop culture and current events. Martha has shown at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art, the Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts, and more. Her work resides in private collections across the United States and internationally.
Nanette Glaus (click to enlarge images)
Nanette Sue Glaus grew up in Missouri, under quilts that her mother hand-quilted, literally! Her father built her mother 4 stands that she could pin the quilt to wrapped 2 by 4’s and roll it towards the center as the quilting along the edges was finished. The quilts took up most of the living room space so family would need to crawl under them to get from the bedrooms and bathrooms to the kitchen! Nanette swore she would never quilt in her lifetime!
But fast forward 20 years, Nanette went to her very first West Alabama Quilter’s Guild quilt show when she moved to Tuscaloosa around 1995 and discovered art quilts!
Nanette likes to make one-of-a-kind art quilts that “you can’t buy at Wal-Mart! She uses all types of things for inspiration, such as scroll saw patterns, photos taken on her camera or phone, the WAQG holds a challenge every year, so she tries to make something “out of the box”. Recent inspirations were making a quilt based off a pun, Olympic inspired quilts, favorite movies like The Christmas Story, quilt sculptures such as an outhouse, castle, log cabin, and recently, the historical Tuscaloosa State Capitol Building.
Mary Burke (click to enlarge images)
"After many years of making bed quilts for my grandkids I became interested in miniature work. I learned it was possible to take any quilt pattern and make a small version. This snail trail pattern is a favorite.
I love experimenting with new techniques. So when I learned about “ inchie” quilts I was intrigued. Inchies are actual quilts … three layers, quilted, cut into one inch squares and bound. Then the fun begins as these tiny quilts can then be embellished. The completed inchies can be used in many ways from brooches made of a single inchie to assembled designs of many inchies."
"My mother was a quilter but sadly I was never interested in learning while she was alive to teach me! But every time I quilt I think of her."
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This exhibition is a part of Kentuck’s 2024 season, “Repurposed,” which lifts up women’s voices in art and community through visual art exhibitions, music, and a series of speakers and is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Kentuck's Gallery Shop is open Monday through Friday 9:00am-5:00pm and Saturday and Sunday 12:00pm-4:00pm.
Please call Kentuck Art Center at 205-758-1257 or email mnelko@kentuck.org to inquire about purchasing any available works.
