“4 Common Corners,” the current exhibition at the Durango Arts Center, opened last week and continues through June 27. Do not miss it.
Three dozen art quilts are on display. Created by 12 artists who all live in the Four Corners, the works include landscapes, narratives, abstractions and still life. Each is accompanied by a clear artist statement that briefly explains a precipitating idea or image and concludes with technical details. In addition, a table of samples with explanations about various techniques adds immensely to the educational experience.
If you go
WHAT: “4 Common Corners,” an exhibit of art quilts
WHERE: Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave.
WHEN: Through June 27. Hours: Noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday
ADMISSION: Free
MORE INFORMATION: Call 259-2606 or visit www.durangoarts.org
The show is visually beguiling and sometimes challenging with the bonus of well-written educational components. Take your time.
Two extremely different works stand out: “High Plains of New Mexico” and “212 Canyon Road.” Both are by Shannon Conley, but you would never guess the same artist created them. The landscape quilt is really a skyscape that verges on pure abstraction. With subtle gradations, the colors shimmer into one another and drift into an elegant border. Rippled and swirling free machine stitching links everything together. It’s a light-filled mirage that suggests spontaneity – despite then obviously labor-intensive process.
The most unusual work in the exhibit is Conley’s “212 Canyon Road.” Her statement suggests it is a memory piece connected to a childhood in New Mexico. In reality, it is a boldly three-dimensional work that’s a delicate topographical map. Layers of colors float in space. As if seen from above, pale sheathes bloom then cascade to faded blue and gray. “212” stretches the boundaries of art quilts into sculpture and makes a powerful aesthetic statement.
Diana Fox’s more graphic landscape, “The First Quiet Hour,” balances sky and land. With a low horizon, she builds abstract shapes to constitute a dry land and a blazing sky full of light. She substitutes tiny square quilt blocks for human structures. Fox’s “Connections” nearby shows her skill at pure abstraction with interlocking circular forms and free-motion quilting.
Frances Murphy’s unusual still life, “The Ghost of Mexican Rita,” appears to be another memory piece. In her statement, she admits to beginning with an experience, a photo and the apparition of an interior with a still life, a window and a figure beyond the curtain. Using vintage fabrics among many other elements, Murphy has created a poignant reverie that transcends her materials. And that’s what art quilts aspire to – transcending the utilitarian roots of quilt making to enter the realm of imagination, wonder and artistic exploration.
Some works seem to struggle with the transition from idea to completed projects. And a conundrum that tests artists in any medium applies: What medium best serves a creative idea? It’s a discussion worth having when an image or inspiration surfaces. In some 4CC works, there seems to be a disconnect between inspiration and execution. Ask: Would this work have been more successful in water color, oil, acrylic or photography? It’s a question for art lovers to ponder.
“4 Common Corners” is worth a long look and more than one visit.
Late in 2019, Vicki Conley, Studio Art Quilt Associates’ New Mexico Regional representative, organized the 4CC art-quilt group. She invited 11 colleagues who live in the Four Corners to join her, meet monthly and plan annual exhibitions. All belong to SAQA, the prestigious international organization that has been around since 1989. 4CC is an unofficial offshoot of the parent organization, Conley said in a recent interview.
SAQA is a modern version of a medieval guild in European history. Well-organized craft guilds laid the groundwork for the Renaissance, and the concept of standards, apprenticeships and regulations has served the trades and impacted the realm of fine art.
In our time, traditional crafts like woodworking, metal craft, ceramics and textiles, have undergone a seismic change. Even before the technological revolution, utilitarian crafts marched forward to include nonfunctional decoration and symbolic representation. In the 20th century, expressive art, “fine art,” widened its range of practices and media so that now any material, even found objects, serve the artistic impulse.
In 1983, a major exhibition of fabric art, “The Art Quilt,” coined the term that now attaches itself to the practice of putting fiber art on a wall, not just on a bed.
Five years later, art quilters formed the modern guild, SAQA, which now has an international membership above 7,000. Like a medieval guild, it has a structure, president, board, staff, publications, traveling exhibitions and educational components.
Quilting as an art form has come a long way since the arts-and-crafts resurgence in the last century. In 1997, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, established the International Quilt Museum.
In summer 2025, one of SAQA’s traveling shows came to the DAC. Thanks to Amanda Preston Araújo, SAQA’s Colorado representative, “Balance” brought another themed collection to light. Credit Executive Director Beth Lamberson Warren and Ben Dukeminier, director of the Barbara Conrad Gallery and visual arts and education, for continuing to introduce us to forward-looking art.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
