Pirated River by Joe Cunningham
It's a Continuum by Joe Cunningham
Memo To Lucy by Joe Cunningham
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Like many people, I have been moved, frightened, and energized by witnessing the speed at which our world is changing as the climate warms. As a quilt artist I know I only have a small voice to use, but with these quilts I have tried to make manifest my feelings and observations about the end of the current climate age. I believe that just as we need to remain open to new ideas, new realities, we need also to be open to the new ways of life we will need to adopt as we find ourselves in this new world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Joe Cunningham has been a professional quilt artist since 1979. He has written essays on the subject for museum catalogues, books and magazines. His book, Men and the Art of Quiltmaking, was the first book on its subject. In 2004 he received a $30,000 Shulte Grant from the Fort Mason Foundation. In 2009 he received a grant to study with the Gees Bend quilters in Alabama. In 2010 he was artist in residence at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, which purchased one of his quilts for its permanent collection. Joe travels throughout the country to give lectures and workshops on quiltmaking. His ten books on quiltmaking include the first biography of a living quilter, the first book on men who make quilts, and a definitive book on marking quilts for quilting called Quilting with Style, published by AQS. He has been seen on the Peabody Award-winning PBS series Craft in America, the HGTV series Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson, as well as The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson, and others. Cunningham has performed his musical quilt show, Joe the Quilter, for guilds and theaters nationwide. His latest book is Man Made Quilts: Civil War to the Present, a catalogue for the show of the same name at the Shelburne Museum.
His quilts are in the permanent collections of the DeYoung museum, the Shelburne Museum, the Newark Museum, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and many private collections.
Joe Cunningham has been invited to give lectures in museums and colleges including the DeYoung Museum, University of Michigan, the Chicago Art Institute, the Shelburne Museum, the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, The National Quilt Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.
“I learned to make quilts from Mary Schafer and Gwen Marston in 1979, studying over the next few years with every quilter I could find. So I learned how to make and use a quilting frame, how to use the rocking stitch for fine hand quilting stitches and how to piece and applique quilt tops from the raw fabric all the way through the binding of the finished quilt. Today I am still fairly conservative in my techniques, but have developed my own peculiar aesthetic, my own language of quiltmaking. What I am trying to do is to make human size blankets that can warm you against the coldness of the universe while also looking right at home on the walls of any major museum.”
EXHIBITION GALLERY
