Contemporary QuiltArt Association: 20th Anniversary [B0255]

2008 PB. 208-pages. The Contemporary QuiltArt Association (CQA) is one of the oldest art quilt groups in the United States. 2007 marked our 20th year. This book of selected recent exhibitions of the CQA quilt artists has been a way to show how we have evolved as a group and as individual artists.

From an Amazon review (abridged): "The Contemporary QuiltArt Association is a prolific group that has held more than 42 juried exhibitions within 20 years. Along with some brief history of the group, this book is a collection of catalogs for five of their exhibitions from the past 10 years. The first is from an exhibition called "Visual Verse", a collaboration between pairs of poets and visual artists working to inspire each other. I can read the poetry and on the opposite page see the quilt that correlates with it. It is interesting to let my mind and eye work back and forth between sets of pages as I think about how the work of one artist influenced the work of the other. The second catalog is for "Quilt. Fiber. Art." Held in Olympia, Washington, it included quilts in warm colors, emphasizing the amazing variety of ways to work in a limited color range. The "Uncommon Thread" exhibit included both two and three-dimensional works at Blue Heron Gallery on Vashon Island, Washington. The 2007 "Coming of Age," exhibit was shown at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, which required work to be framed, so it featured quilts of 36" x 36" or less. Last in the book is the catalog for "Evolution of the Art Quilt". The introduction to this catalog talks more about the many techniques used by contemporary quilt artists, and explains very briefly how the art quilt has its roots in the functional quilts of pioneer times. I like the way the pages in the book are color coded for each catalog and the index is useful for finding all the featured works by an individual artist. While each quilt has the typical artist's statement about the work, it would also have been nice to see a detail of each quilt. This book clearly shows the contribution the Contemporary Quilt Art Association members made to the quilt art movement in the United States from 1998 to 2007."