THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505120072
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
QUILTS HAVEN'T always been respected as significant art. Until the 1970s, hand-sewn and appliqued and embroidered quilts were taken for granted as the homespun products of mostly rural housewives.
Now, we crave them. Since women became too busy to make them, we learned what they are to us. Quilts represent comfort, home, family, love.
Mother, grandmother.
And they can be so beautiful. A high-profile exhibit on quilts, ``Full Deck Art Quilts,'' opens Thursday at The Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museums.
Virginia Beach fiber artist Lynne Sward is among the 54 top American quilters who were assigned a playing card and asked to use it as the basis for their design. Sward, who tackled the Queen of Diamonds, will give a talk at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Arts Center, housed in Portsmouth's 1846 Courthouse at Court and High streets.
A reception follows from 6 to 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, although a $3 donation for non-members is suggested.
This is the second stop of a two-year national tour. The show opened in March at the prestigious Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. ``Full Deck'' was organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Maryland quilter Sue Pierce.
Each of the quilts measures 28 inches by 18 inches. The scale ensures the works will be taken out of the realm of bed cover and seen more readily as art.
The images and techniques go further to enhance the quilts' interest. Content often is provocative or humorous, and the manner of piecing and working the fabric bends traditions of method and pattern.
Sward leans toward light satire in her quilts. Her Queen of Diamonds quilt includes photo transfer images of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra - a genuine queen of diamonds. You can also find queen bees and Queen Elizabeth scattered like spring flower petals throughout her design, which has an overall pattern suggestive of a shattered windshield.
A fiber artist for two decades, Sward's national credits are building fast. Her Queen of Diamonds quilt is among a dozen chosen for the ``Full Deck Art Quilts'' calendar. She also will be exhibited in Holland in June at the International Quilt Market-Euro show.
Sward also is among 600 quilters (chosen from 6,000 entrants) whose work will be published in October in an international design book, ``Fibre Arts Design, Book Five.''
Internationally known art quilter Judi Warren will give workshops at the center June 8, 9 and 10. The deadline for registration is May 27. The fee per workshop is $50, $40 for museum members. Call 393-8983.
Also premiering Thursday night at The Arts Center is a complementary juried exhibit, ``Playing With a Full Deck,'' organized by the Tidewater Artists Association.
Area artists in various media were invited to submit art that interpreted the notion of a playing card, with its insinuations of fate, luck and chance. Awards will be given out that evening.
``Full Deck Art Quilts'' continues through July 4, while the Tidewater Artists exhibit ends June 18. The center is at Court and High streets. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $1. 393-8983. ILLUSTRATION: The ``Eight of Clubs'' is among quilted works on display
starting Thursday at The Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museums.
by CNB