Quilters of Whitehorse & Haines | As You See It

Apr 22

Quilters of
Whitehorse & Haines
As You See It

Edge Gallery, May 7 - 29, 2021

Our group of quilters has undertaken a collaborative art quilt project called As You See It. It is a visual reinterpretation inspired by the children's game “telephone”, in which the first person in a line whispers an original message to the next person, who then passes it on to the next person. The message continues down the line until the last person announces the message. It is always surprising to see how a message warps and deviates from its original simple phrase in our telling of it.

Our project is a visual message passed among friends. The first person passed a photo on to the first quilter, who created an art quilt inspired by the photo. That quilter then passed on an image of her quilt to the next person who then created a quilt inspired by the previous quilt. This project began in October 2019 and continued through the line of all nine quilters until September 2020. Each artist had 40 days to complete their quilt. None of us saw each other’s work until the final reveal.

This idea is a spin off from the “World Wide Whispers Challenge” in which quilt artists from five countries participated, one of whom is in our group.

Our project is a dialogue among friends, where we are inspired by our friend’s ideas and are free to add in our own thoughts and musings. At the end, with us respecting each other’s perspectives and adding our own, we see how our conversation is shaped by the flow of ideas.

QUILTERS OF WHITEHORSE & HAINES
We are a group of ten quilters, seven of whom live in Whitehorse, Yukon and three in Haines, Alaska. We are all experienced quilters with decades of quilting experience among us. Some of us teach quilting, show our work in quilting shows, belong to a guild, or operate a quilting business. In addition to regular quilting, we also enjoy making art quilts, which are original pieces, created without a commercial pattern, using a variety of fibre art techniques that may extend beyond quilting. The idea for this project came about in fall of 2019 at our annual retreat in Haines Junction where a large group of quilters meet to work on our projects.

The quilters who have created pieces for this collaborative project are:
Laurie Jacobsen, Whitehorse, quilter, quilt teacher;
Leatha Smith, Whitehorse, quilter;
Gillian McKee, Whitehorse, quilter, quilt teacher;
Faith Lorentz, Haines, quilter;
Danae Moore, Whitehorse, quilter, long arm quilting business;
Wendy White, Whitehorse, quilter;
Laura Clement, Haines, quilter;
Ruth Headley, Whitehorse, quilter, quilt teacher, quilt store owner;
Delayna Doleshal, Haines, quilter;
Melanie Pettefer, Whitehorse, quilter (chose original photo).