" Dancing Sisters", 2009, 30"x38", Oil on canvas
Portrait of Bill Reid, 2009, 14"x 18", Oil on canvas 
Portrait of Maria Jones, 14"x18", Oil on canvas
Artists choosing fabric as a medium (and surprising alternative materials) and sewing as a technique is spreading throughout the contemporary art world. A Stitch in Our Time, organized by fiber artist Ann Baddeley Keister, Grand Valley State University Professor of Art, Allendale, Michigan, includes more than 30 objects by 11 artists that reveal the diversity of approaches to stitching and sewing as part of a studio art practice. The artists are Ilze Aviks, Susan Brandeis, Lindsay Ketterer Gates, Jan Hopkins, Mary Anne Jordan, Ann Keister, Kay Khan, Tom Lundberg, Anne McKenzie Nickolson, Carol Shinn, and Anna Torma. All of them acknowledge a debt to the traditions of crafting objects with techniques related to cloth and sewing, but your grandmother's quilts these are not! The creations of these nationally known artists exemplify the transcendence that occurs when artists of vision combine traditional textile techniques with other mediums such as digital imaging, new methods of dyeing, use of the sewing machine, painting and printing cloth, and incorporating non-traditional materials. That the works selected for the exhibition are exquisitely made is part of their appeal. It is also the individual voices of these gifted artists that instill the objects with magic and visual poetry.
