A marvelous exhibition titled “Balance” from the Studio Art Quilt Association, now celebrating its 36th year, is currently on display at Durango Arts Center.
SAQA, though, deserves better.
Squeezed into a corner between water jugs, craft shelves and a storage-unit mashup at DAC, Patty Joy’s elegant art quilts seem an afterthought.
Founded in 1989, when quilting had come of age as a fabric art form with a contemporary sensibility, SAQA now has 7,000 members and organizes traveling exhibitions to six continents. Thanks to Durangoan Amanda Preston Araújo, who is SAQA’s regional representative, a 30-piece exhibit can be seen until the end of the month.
Brimming with avant-garde works from abstractions to pictorials, the exhibit is well worth a visit. Unfortunately, the run-down state of the Barbara Conrad Gallery at DAC is a disappointment.
For decades, the DAC Gallery was known for breathtaking solo and theme shows, juried exhibits of photography, sculpture, painting, fabric art and, most provocatively, conceptual art. The innovative SAQA show forwards that history. Unfortunately, the DAC gallery has deteriorated into a multipurpose garage or storage unit.
If you go
WHAT: “Balance,” a SAQA traveling quilt show.
WHERE: Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave.
WHEN: Through Aug. 30. Hours: noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
ADMISSION: Free.
MORE INFORMATION: Call 259-2606 or visit www.durangoarts.org and www.saqa.com.
In 2019, former DAC Director Brenda Macon reduced exhibit space by turning the gallery into a combination lounge, bar, coffee shop, entertainment center, storage unit and retail sales outlet. Since she abruptly resigned in early 2024, nothing has changed. The gallery still harbors restaurant booths, a corner bar, an upright piano, mismatched sofas and a sales desk loaded with tchotchkes. Exhibit panels are squeezed together in the center. Excess furniture plus a plastic skeleton from a drawing class are jumbled together in a corner.
Why SAQA decided to exhibit at DAC is a mystery. The show would have been better served in the new Durango Creative District Gallery, or better yet, at Fort Lewis College.
That said, the quilts are worth a visit. Besides Joy’s beautifully constructed pair with different takes on the theme of balance, Preston Araújo also has two works: “Paddle Boarding” and “Brazilian Beauties.” Both explore realistic imagery with an intense concentration on design and color. Both reveal the technical nature of raw-edge appliqué and free-motion quilting.
Abstractions zero in on the design concept of balance and range from Elaine Hoffman’s intricate “Claire’s Mosaic” to Diane English’s charming “Still Standing 2,” with its irregular border and psychological intimation of losing balance after the California fires.
The most astonishing pictorial quilt is Cynthia Jarest’s “Wildly Ordered.” Technically challenging, the work combines hand-dyed cotton, silk and muslin with painted fabric plus miscellaneous materials to create an eerily beautiful forest landscape. Inspired by a photo, Jarest’s statement says, it also seems to have been inspired by Impressionism – Claude Monet’s broken-color painting technique so popular in the late 19th century.
That someone would attempt an impressionistic illusion in fabric is astonishing. Stand back then look closely as stitches and fabric pieces coalesce into flowers, trees and grass in a soft atmospheric light.
The grand history of craft quilting, which dates back to the Romans, was bound to enter the realm of modern art at some point. Credit Yvonne Porcella for starting the Studio Art Quilt Association. Gee’s Bend quilters and other cooperatives have also transformed what once was folk art into high art.
The SAQA exhibition deserves a venue without clutter. Perhaps new DAC Executive Director Beth Lamberson Warren will take a hard look at the once spacious Barbara Conrad Gallery and renew its legendary reputation for compelling shows in an atmosphere of light and space.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
