Sally Ride Science

Les Éditions de Saxe featured a pattern of my quilt What We Keep (2008) in the Fall 2018 edition

Re-imagined weaving patterns provide endless inspiration.   Can hardly wait to start this series! Soprano Bass Tenor Alto

I recently had the pleasure of accepting and completing a commissioned piece for a couple of Kansas City art collectors and friends of mine.  I am typically hesitant to accept commissions, but was honored by this one.  The piece is titled Monsoon and was inspired by my experience of Arizona monsoon rains while visiting in the summer of 2017 for my 50th birthday.        Monsoon required learning how to complete inside corner miter binding   Monsoon 

original sketch, completed on December 10, 2017 I began working on the piece May 1, 2018 in Ellensburg, Washington two of the foundational checkerboard squares front and back of one the diagonal squares my progress as of the end of June 2018 (1/4 of the finished top, lower right corner) As of August 5, 2018, this quilt is halfway complete at 4,050 pieces. Top completed on September 1, 2018.  90 x 90 inches, 8,100 pieces.

Prelude   Only recently have I come to full terms with the church's role in my spiritual life as well as my life as an artist.  Growing up, the church was one of my first and only consistent encounters with aesthetic beauty - the order and seasonal colors of the liturgy, the banners, the stained glass windows, and the rich musical history, dating all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach and beyond.  So it makes  sense that as an adult, my creative medium is quilt-making, the elements of which are fabric, piecing, color, and composition. In 1998, the same year I started my first quilt while living in Yountville, California, I returned to the Midwest after an eight year post-collegiate stint living west of the Missouri River.  I landed at my parents' house in a small college town in west central Illinois.  It was a far cry from the Napa Valley, but with the proximity of the college, I succumbed to both internal and external pressures to achieve a full-fledged conventional career

On a bitterly cold day in February of 2013, I had the pleasure of meeting Krisitin Congdon at the Iowa State Museum in Des Moines, Iowa.  She was accompanied by Teresa Hollingsworth, my friend and co-curator of the show on view at the museum,  The Sum of Many Parts,  after it's year-long tour throughout China.  The exhibit had taken Teresa and me, along with four others, to Shanghai only a year earlier.  Teresa had mentioned my work to author Kristin Congdon, who later chose me, along with 3 other artists, for ethnographic chapters in her book,  The Making of An Artist: Desire, Courage, and Commitment .  My chapter is featured as part of Congdon's exploration of commitment as it plays out in the lives of various artists, and is based on her in-depth interview with me in my Iowa City studio. The book is a delightful and informative read.  It gave me welcome insight into the personal lives and struggles of some of my favorite artists.  Congdon's book transformed many of the q

A nice feature in Quilt Country Les Éditions de Saxe ,  which includes a pattern of Smokehaus Rose (2010).

photo credit:  Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork I am excited to have been invited to have a solo show at the 24th Annual  Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork  in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France.  I will be exhibiting nine quilts and presenting my video A Piece of Me on Saturday, September 15 at 2pm.  It is a great honor and I am looking forward to what will be my first solo show in Europe.   Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork  takes place throughout five quaint villages in eastern France very near the German border. As an adopted child, my inner life was full of fantasy and musing about my origins.  I loved the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory , especially the scene where Charlie blasts through a glass skylight in flight over terracotta rooftops of a German village.  The scene stirred my imagination, interest in my own German heritage, and my desire to someday see those very red rooftops myself.  In the subsequent 40 years I never made it to Europe, until now.  I can't

A year ago, or so, I started envisioning architectural installation quilts - deconstructing and subverting the notion of what a quilt is, while simultaneously celebrating the convention of a quilt as comfort and shelter.  I believe place has an inevitable and indelible imprint on creativity and the forms of its expression.  I grew up surrounded the utility buildings that support Midwestern agriculture and I'm still inspired by those clean, no-nonsense shapes and lines.   I hope to someday realize my Gewandhaus (cloth hall).   

Erick Wolfmeyer roots his work in the conventions of traditional quilt-making while he expands the visual and conceptual boundaries of the medium with each new piece.    The work celebrates the excavation of the soul through the work of his hands .   EXHIBITIONS 2018 From the Artist's Collection  (solo),  Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork in   Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France 2017   Rerum Novarum (solo), Pearson Lakes Art Center in Lake Okoboji, Iowa   Quilted Expressions , Blanden Art Museum in Ft Dodge, Iowa   Art Quilts of the Midwest      Iowa Quilt Museum in Winterset, Iowa   2016    National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky      International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska 2015 Sum of Many Parts: Quiltmakers in Contemporary America      Crealde’ School of Art in Winter Park, Florida      The Foundry Art Centre in St Charles, Missouri      Jones-Carter Gallery in Lake City, South Carolina 2014    Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska      Argenta Branch Library

2018 Monsoon - Bill & Marilyn VanKeppel, Kansas City, MO Face of a Stranger  - Blanden Art Museum, Ft. Dodge, IA 2017 Humans Race  - Ronna De La Vergne, Everett, WA 2014 Map of the World  - St Ambrose University, Davenport, IA 2013 Swim  - Dr Joseph & Kineret Zabner, Iowa City, IA 2012 Venus Transit  - Steve Kotsines & John Hecht, St Louis, MO 2011 Portmanteau  - State Historical Museum of Iowa, Des Moines, IA 2010 Lincoln Log Cabin  - Mary Blythe, Williamsburg, IA Sink  - Stephanie Brandenburg, Fairfax, IA Rapture  - University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Iowa City, IA 2009 Ellsworth  - Terri Brady, Chicago  Dogwood  - private collection Kirichigae  - Terri Brady, Chicago, IL Apogee  - Frankie Holt & Michael Higgins, Los Angeles, CA 2008 Postlude  - Patty Walsh-Bailey, Marengo, IA Segue  - private collection 2007 Home Sweet Home 3  - commission, private collection Indian Spring  - commission, Mary Sherwood Holt, Newport News, VA Rain or Shine  - private collection