Nancy Crow at Festival of Quilts
Exciting news from The Festival of Quilts!
The organisers of The Festival of Quilts are thrilled to announce that US artist and quilt maker Nancy Crow will be headlining the Festival’s Quilt Galleries this year with an exhibition of 75 “quilted drawings.”
The news comes hot on the heels of the previous news that the historic 1718 Silk Coverlet will go on display at the festival.
“75 drawings: Explorations in mono-printing” will be the largest exhibition of the artist’s work ever staged in the UK and will occupy 350 square metres of Festival space.
In the exhibition, Nancy showcases the results of her determination to learn the art of mono-printing using Procion MX thickened dyes on cotton cloth. After first learning how to mono-print in a class taught by UK artist Claire Benn, Nancy acted on a long-held desire to commence ‘drawing’ on fabric. She had taught drawing (on paper) while in graduate school and understood that it had an immediacy that could be exhilarating.
The art, the process
After years of machine-piecing – her preferred approach to quilt making – she found it laborious and wanted to experience a more intense, immediate result while creating. To start the process of understanding the intricacies of mono-printing, she set up parameters for herself on how to approach this new medium that included both a very set 9am-8pm daily studio schedule and abstinence from computers and phones. She drilled into herself that only the mono-printing could absorb her 24/7 and that there would be no focus on anything else during each two-month time allocation.