FOR MEDIA ONLY: The media is invited to meet quilters Judy Langille and Diane Savona who will be at NJN Studios in Trenton on Wednesday, February 21 at 1:00 pm to tape program breaks for the NJN March broadcasts of The Art of Quilting. The art quilters will share samples of their work and offer quilting tips to NJN viewers. Please contact Laura Novia to set up interviews or photo opps or if you would like us to set up a phone interview for you.
Trenton, NJ – Talented and creative New Jersey quilters Judy Langille of Glen Ridge, Joy Saville of Princeton, and Diane Savona of Passaic demonstrate their skills in The Art of Quilting, a new PBS documentary on NJN Saturday, March 3 at 4:30 pm, Tuesday, March 6 at 9:30 pm, and Sunday, March 11 at 2:30 pm. The Art of Quilting, honors the artistry and diverse techniques of America’s contemporary art quilters by visiting art quilt exhibitions across the country and through personal interviews with nationally and internationally noted fabric artists. The program highlights the quilts and artists of Quilt National – a biennial show held for nearly 30 years at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio – the premier exhibition of contemporary art quilts in the country.
The boundaries of traditional American quilt making have expanded to an art form that now adorns the walls of exhibit halls and art galleries worldwide. Quilts are a familiar part of America’s past. Almost everyone can recall a family member or friend who made these decorative bed coverings. Today, art quilters have expanded that traditional form of quilting in an effort to express their personal visions in unique and imaginative ways. In doing so, they have created a respected contemporary fabric medium.
The many artists and quilts highlighted in The Art of Quilting offer insight into how traditional quilting has evolved in new and different ways. Through their visions, and unique and varied techniques, contemporary quilters have developed an art form that has become appreciated and esteemed worldwide. In addition to the three New Jersey quilters, viewers will meet:
• Featured artist Jane Burch Cochran at her home in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, where she demonstrates her unique beading and embellishment techniques. Cochran, who began making small bead and fabric collages in 1978, created her first large quilt in 1985. She describes her passion for art quilting as a combination of her training in painting and her love of fabric and the tradition of American quilting.
• Bob Adams, a traditional artist and art teacher, who explains how his art quilts begin with a vision that evolves as he produces an expression of that mental image with fabric and thread rather than paint.
• Chicago School of Fusing’s Laura Wasilowski and Melody Johnson in their home studios. Both are innovative art quilters and garment artists who create their art quilts by using a quick fuse method.
• Pam Rupert at her studio in Springfield, Missouri, where she is in the process of creating her latest “cartoon quilt” featuring her alter ego PaMdora and talks about her unconventional approach to quilting –– an entertaining one that appeals to a wide range of tastes.
• In Philadelphia, at the biannual Art Quilts Philadelphia exhibition, The Art of Quilting visits several artists, including Pat Kroth, whose abstract art quilts have a collage quality that she achieves by arranging small bits of fiber fragments and paper in a random fashion.
• Carol Krueger, a former hairdresser and makeup artist, is using her knowledge of design, color and balance to expand her artistic expressions in fabric. Krueger’s extraordinary art quilts are created through computer-digitized machine embroidery.
In addition to appearing in the program, New Jersey quilters Langille and Savona will share samples of their work and offer quilting tips to NJN viewers during the program breaks. Langille uses fabric as her palette for design and describes her technique. “My work explores a variety of surface design techniques to create art cloth and fabric collages. I use thermofax screens, silk screens, mono printing, and torn paper resist, in conjunction with thickened dyes and discharge paste, to create fabrics which are distinctive in their design. It is often the removal of color that creates the depth, richness and mysteriousness of the forms that emerge from the black fabric I start with. Some of my work is constructed with a collage technique while others are created from a single piece of printed fabric. Machine stitching, like freehand drawing, provides the detail embellishing these pieces,” states Langille.
Savona goes hunting on Saturdays to find treasures from which to create her quilts. Some of her quilts are portraits, incorporating the work, tools and information of one woman. Others are cooperative efforts, with contributions from many different women. “Every Saturday, another old lady will have a lifetime of embroidery and crochet sold off at an estate sale. In dusty attics and old sewing baskets, I gather up the bits of handwork, the crochet hooks and spools of thread - but more, I gather the stories. Who made this? When was she born? Emptying out a button tin, I find a 1939 Worlds Fair pin, a rosary, and an old girdle snap. Like an amateur archeologist, I piece together the jumbled clues, and try to understand each woman through her work. When the linens have all been carefully washed, I sew them into quilts. Textile arts have a long history of preserving ancient images, and this history strongly influences my work: the personal story of each woman is sewn into the longer tale of women’s textile traditions. My grandmother emigrated from Poland, and I am devoted to finding, saving, and honoring the rapidly vanishing hoards of old handworker linens from the women of her generation,” explains Savona.
The Art of Quilting is closed captioned and airs on NJN Public Television Saturday, March 3 at 4:30 pm, Tuesday, March 6 at 9:30 pm, and Sunday, March 11 at 2:30 pm. For more information on The Art of Quilting or other NJN programming, visit njn.net.
Funding for this program has been provided by the Alberta Kimball Foundation, Public Television Viewers and PBS.
Producer/presenter: Wisconsin Public Television. Executive producer: Gary Mills. Producer/director/writer: Laurie A. Gorman. Videographer/editor: Frank Boll. Sound recordist: Kerman Eckes. Format: CC Stereo. Online: pbs.org
NJN is available on all New Jersey cable systems and satellite systems,
on Comcast Digital Cable in New Jersey, and on Time Warner Cable Channel 750 in NYC.
NJN – Uniquely New Jersey
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