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First Union Gallery In recent years, the traditional art of quiltmaking has undergone a dramatic and exciting redefinition, as artists from around the world have transformed the genre with new ideas, techniques and expressions. Six Continents of Quilts: The Museum of Arts & Design Collection brought 30 vibrant and colorful examples to the Michener Art Museum, highlighting how contemporary fabric artists from New York to Japan to South Africa are breaking new ground in the genre. Sponsored by Mancuso Show Management, Moyer & Son, Shelly Enterprises, Inc. and Andersen Corporation, the exhibition ran in the Museum's First Union Gallery from April 26 through July 6, 2003. The Michener Art Museum was the first traveling venue for this dynamic exhibition. Curator Ursula Isle-Neuman of the Museum of Arts and Design, who organized the exhibition, says, "Quilts combine the tactility of sculpture, the expressive range of the painter's palette, and the communicative power of photography. These artists share the ability to draw on their personal visions to express ideas that touch everyone." Six Continents of Quilts: The Museum of Arts & Design Collection featured work by award-winning artists from the U.S., Japan, Russia, Brazil, India, New Zealand, Zambia, and other countries. These artists bring a wide range of inventiveness and vitality to the quilt form, revealing both the diversity and the "common threads" that unite artists and people across the globe. For more than two centuries, quilts have represented a popular form of artistic expression for women in the U.S., and while they represent a classic form of American design, today's fabric artists are pushing the field in a variety of exciting and innovative directions. Since the quilting "revival" that began in the 1970s, men and women from all over the world have introduced new techniques and approaches, revitalizing the medium and inspiring critics and audiences alike to take a fresh look at the "art quilt." Utilizing the latest technologies and materials, combined with traditional quilting and fiber-working skills, these artists paint, dye, stamp, print, stitch, fold, layer and join fabrics to create striking personal statements with quilts. Six Continents of Quilts: The Museum of Arts & Design Collection was organized into thematic sections that ranged from the abstract to the narrative and from the symbolic to the political: Color, Light and Form; Tradition and Innovation; Storytelling and Fairytales; Conscience and Outcry; and Landscape and Cityscape.
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