Elvehjem quilt exhibition to cap SoHE centennial year

In the normal course of events, you probably wouldn’t see a stenciled quilt.

The one you will encounter at the exhibition “Quilts: Artistry in Pattern” is one of only about 30 stenciled bedcovers known to exist.

The way that the artist, identified on the quilt as “BCL” from New York, worked out the piece makes it doubly rare, says Mary Ann Fitzgerald, director of UW–Madison’s Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection and curator of the Elvehjem Museum of Art exhibition.

“The artist chose to stencil many motifs, piece the sashing and quilt the piece,” Fitzgerald says, noting that stenciling was popular in the United States between about 1810-40. This quilt dates from the 1830s.

The exhibition will open with a public reception on Friday, June 4, at 5:30 p.m. and run through Sunday, Aug. 15.

It will close the yearlong centennial celebration of the School of Human Ecology, where the Helen Louise Allen collection is housed. More than two dozen historic quilts, half of which have never been exhibited before, will be on display. All the pieces in the exhibition come from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.

Fitzgerald says that gallery-goers will find it fascinating to compare different quilt genres and styles from different parts of the country and world. For example, Japanese art displayed at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 inspired crazy quilts, popular between 1880-1910, Fitzgerald says.

“Crazy quilts broke away from the strict boundaries of traditional geometric patchwork,” she says.

The exhibition will feature a crazy quilt made in Wausau during the 1880s and depicting a logging scene from the area. Log cabin quilts, dating from the 1860s, use a central core, often red, to represent the cabin’s hearth. Rectangular pieces of light and dark fabric, signifying the cabin’s hand-hewn logs surround the core.

Other quilts, such as the Amish sunshine and shadow pattern or sujani quilts from India, emphasize the designs the stitches make.

Contemporary quilt artists also will be represented in the exhibition, which will span 1800 to 1997.

For more information: 263-2246 or http://www.lvm.wisc.edu.