Mendofleur

In 2003 I attended a symposium Wild by Design in conjunction with the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I purchased this book by Janet Catherine Berlo and Patricia Cox Crews, subtitled Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts. It was the first time I had the chance to meet and talk to Radka Donnell and see her quilts on exhibit instead of a picture in a book. She gave a talk, and I recall being a little disoriented by her words and the slides of her quilts. It seemed too close to my own thoughts, my own struggles as a woman. Could this be? I think this was the tenor of her remarkable message. She understood how to express the deepest thoughts of our psyche through the tactile quality and imagery of her quilts.

I do not have a photo to share, due to copyright issues, but at the New England Quilt Museum there is an exhibit of her quilts, “The Work of Touch” from April 23 – July 12, 2009. She is described as “one of the most important and influential quiltmakers of the past forty years and the first academically trained artists to adopt the quilt as her medium…” She began making quilts in 1965 and has created more than 500 quilts in the past 43 years. For more information check this site.

Michael James, Department Chair and Professor of Textiles, Clothing, and Design at the University of Nebraska succinctly describes Radka’s quilts: “They become embodiments of the struggle across time and generations, across gender, across race and ethnicity, to map out a pathway for the self that is compassionate, loving, inclusive, and deeply human”.

Radka Donnell has a book that is now out of print, Quilts As Women’s Art: A Quilt Poetics.