Nancy Bardach

The pleasure of designing art quilts is experiencing the creative flow of any artist who loses themselves in their work.  My most exciting, successful pieces are those I do quickly, intuitively, chasing an image --- full of light and motion --- and trying to realize its beauty in the final pieced and textured (quilted) work. I delight in colors as well as light and movement. Color is vital to my compositions. It can express more mood and excitement, more quickly, than any other component of a design. And it can add depth of perspective, lighting contrasts, sense of movement, and above all great beauty to a piece.  Whether bright and strong or muted and sophisticated, color in my compositions is both hallmark and joy. My inspirations come from years of art observation, Architectural school and practice, and a constant enjoyment of my visual surroundings.

My recent work is characterized by abstract imagery, brilliant coloring, and curved piecing of cotton fabrics, often in solid colors. For me as a fabric artist, architectural design also inspires many of the massing and perspective choices I make. And the regularity of patterning appeals very directly to me, whether in old quilting designs or in new interpretations of repeating images. Stitching textural lines to add meaning to the piece is the final creative act for a quilt artist.

I like to use certain fundamental processes:  piecing cotton fabrics, freehand curve cutting, and extending traditional quilting approaches to new, original work. The completed, well-constructed, pieced quilt top is a most satisfying aesthetic whole. And to describe the curved cutting I tell people that forming fabric shapes by freehand curve cutting --- evolving from the organic motions of body and hand --- is akin to sketching.  Eye and sweeping arm create a new momentum, as a flywheel with its heavy weights throws more force into a rotation. Lastly, my addition of dynamic quilting lines by machine sketches new shapes and textures over the whole.

Wetlands Meandering: Water moves mysteriously over landforms. Iridescent color slicks the surface. In the depths, biota thrive at their stable, microscopic level. Oozing water textures the wetlands, where worlds meet.