JOE CUNNINGHAM AT THE FESTIVAL OF QUILTS
Joe Cunningham is a quilt artist and author from San Francisco. His exhibition, Quilts From Life, is at The Festival of Quilts for its 20th Anniversary at the NEC Birmingham from 3-6 August 2023. Joe will also be hosting a two day Creative Design Masterclass on Tuesday 1 and Wednesday 2 August and a talk and show on his Life in Quilts on Thursday 3 August.
Image: Joe Cunningham headshot © Henrik Kam 2017. Image above: Joe Cunningham, Mariupol 1 outlined © Joe Cunningham.
Joe, thank you for joining us today. You've chosen a wonderful year for your first major exhibition in the UK - The Festival of Quilts' 20th anniversary! We're so looking forward to seeing your Quilts From Life. You've been making quilts for more than 40 years; can you tell us a little about the quilts you've selected for your gallery and why you've chosen them?
Thanks to the Festival’s organisers for inviting me! It’s an honour to be able to show quilts here in the country where much of my inspiration comes from. My quilts often begin as a response to something in the world about which I have strong feelings. Sometimes, however, I make quilts from a more playful starting point, just to amuse myself. For this exhibition I wanted to show some of each. The Mariupol quilts, for example, resulted from my outrage at the Russian war on Ukraine. I conceived of them as a triptych with a sort of narrative through line. The Molecular Structure of Job’s Tears, however, began when I happened to read the book of Job in the Bible and realized that I thought the traditional pattern called “Job’s Tears” was not up to the task of conveying the horror show to which Job was subjected. So it was more of a simple reimagining of what the traditional title implied. “Lone Star,” similarly, was my way of making a more realistic looking star than the eight-pointed star in the traditional pattern. For this gallery I wanted to show the several ways I find a path to creativity.
Image: Joe Cunningham, NY Beauty © Joe Cunningham.
Quilt artists from the U.S. have a special place in our hearts here at The Festival of Quilts. Over the last 20 years, we've been honoured to welcome Michael A. Cummings, Sheila Frampton-Cooper, Michael James, Bonnie J, Smith, Nancy Crow, Susan Shie and of course our friends at the International Quilt Museum Nebraska, whose historic collections our visitors really enjoy. What role do you think the American quilting tradition has played, and continues to play, in influencing quilters and quilting in other parts of the world, including here in the UK and in Europe?
The way I see it, Americans took the idea of the quilted bed covering from English and European sources, primarily, and kept only the techniques, eventually to develop an entirely new approach to the idea of a quilt. Whereas quilted items had a long history of being commercially made by tailors and quilters in England, in the colonies it became solely about bed coverings made by women as gifts. Consequently, there resulted a Big Bang of creativity that spread across the culture, almost universally practiced by American women in the early 19th century. Their new techniques, patterns and construction strategies have waxed and waned in popularity in the last 200 years, but during the last 50 years they have enjoyed a renaissance with a world-wide influence. As other countries and regions have adopted the practice of quilt making, they have inevitably developed new styles and techniques, completing the circle of influence............................
Image: Joe Cunningham headshot © Henrik Kam 2017. Image above: Joe Cunningham, Mariupol 1 outlined © Joe Cunningham.
Joe, thank you for joining us today. You've chosen a wonderful year for your first major exhibition in the UK - The Festival of Quilts' 20th anniversary! We're so looking forward to seeing your Quilts From Life. You've been making quilts for more than 40 years; can you tell us a little about the quilts you've selected for your gallery and why you've chosen them?
Thanks to the Festival’s organisers for inviting me! It’s an honour to be able to show quilts here in the country where much of my inspiration comes from. My quilts often begin as a response to something in the world about which I have strong feelings. Sometimes, however, I make quilts from a more playful starting point, just to amuse myself. For this exhibition I wanted to show some of each. The Mariupol quilts, for example, resulted from my outrage at the Russian war on Ukraine. I conceived of them as a triptych with a sort of narrative through line. The Molecular Structure of Job’s Tears, however, began when I happened to read the book of Job in the Bible and realized that I thought the traditional pattern called “Job’s Tears” was not up to the task of conveying the horror show to which Job was subjected. So it was more of a simple reimagining of what the traditional title implied. “Lone Star,” similarly, was my way of making a more realistic looking star than the eight-pointed star in the traditional pattern. For this gallery I wanted to show the several ways I find a path to creativity.
Image: Joe Cunningham, NY Beauty © Joe Cunningham.
Quilt artists from the U.S. have a special place in our hearts here at The Festival of Quilts. Over the last 20 years, we've been honoured to welcome Michael A. Cummings, Sheila Frampton-Cooper, Michael James, Bonnie J, Smith, Nancy Crow, Susan Shie and of course our friends at the International Quilt Museum Nebraska, whose historic collections our visitors really enjoy. What role do you think the American quilting tradition has played, and continues to play, in influencing quilters and quilting in other parts of the world, including here in the UK and in Europe?
The way I see it, Americans took the idea of the quilted bed covering from English and European sources, primarily, and kept only the techniques, eventually to develop an entirely new approach to the idea of a quilt. Whereas quilted items had a long history of being commercially made by tailors and quilters in England, in the colonies it became solely about bed coverings made by women as gifts. Consequently, there resulted a Big Bang of creativity that spread across the culture, almost universally practiced by American women in the early 19th century. Their new techniques, patterns and construction strategies have waxed and waned in popularity in the last 200 years, but during the last 50 years they have enjoyed a renaissance with a world-wide influence. As other countries and regions have adopted the practice of quilt making, they have inevitably developed new styles and techniques, completing the circle of influence............................
Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog.
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT
OR...to continue reading….
*Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.*
*Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.*