SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL Spring 2013

i nr eview
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
Many quilters spend hours piecing, but the patience in Myers-Newburys work is more in the making and marking of her fabrics. Over the years, those textiles have acquired a distinctive voice. A deliberate progression of shifts in her discoveries of arashi shibori patterning can be seen from year to year. What I love about dye applied to cloth, the artist writes, is the evocative and sumptuous nature of the resultant fabrics. Color is IN the fabric, not on it. While many quilt artists piece fabrics to find dimensionality in their work, MyersNewbury searches forand succeedsin finding depth, light, and dimension through dyeing. When she adds connection and movement through the precise placement of piecing and quilting lines, magic happens. Her often understated but careful stitching follows the shibori patterns of various pieces of fabric, weaving them into compositions that feel whole and complete. In Pentimento (2009), Oil Slick (2012), and Strata (2013), Myers-Newbury flips back and forth between creating rectangular shifts in color through clamping and similar rectangular

Reviewed by Petra Fallaux

Jan Myers-Newbury: Unwrapped

James Gallery
For the die-hard contemporary quilt enthusiast, it is hard not to have come across the work of Jan Myers-Newbury. After all, her pieces have been included in a record 14 Quilt National exhibitionsmore than any other exhibiting quilt artist. Unwrapped, her solo show at James Gallery in Pittsburgh (March 8 May 4, 2013), featured ten of her newest creations. Records aside, what really sets MyersNewbury apart is her dogged pursuit of the possibilities of sheer mark making on fabric through various fabric manipulations. The focus of her experiments are with arashi shibori, but she combines these pole-wrapping techniques with prior and layered bunching, clamping, and folding as well as over dyeing both before and after.

JAN MYERS-NEWBURY Sticks and Bones Shibori dyeing, quilting, piecing, 48.5" x 68", 2013. Shown courtesy of James Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA.
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areas that are the result of precise piecing. This ambiguity has become a recurring motif in her work, almost like a signature. A delightful change is also evident in this exhibits quilts, from the lyrical to the linear, from the natural to the architectural. While Winter Wheat (2010) and Wind Shear (2012) remain vested in naturally occurring shibori curves, Sticks and Bones and Motherboard (both completed in 2013) exhibit a gridlike structure that evokes a more contemporary

JAN MYERS-NEWBURY Wind Shear Shibori dyeing, quilting, piecing, 72" x 56", 2012. Shown courtesy of James Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA.

and industrial vibe. The tiny marks on Sticks and Bones are especially striking, appearing almost like inverted drawings. Their light tips make the dark ground all the more intense. By now, Myers-Newbury should have the stature and renown of a maverick with a monograph to show for it. However, she is one of those artists quietly operating on her own terms, not following trends or pursuing the limelight. It is not in her personality to make a lot of noise, which makes her stunning work all the more sympathetic and remarkable. www.jamesgallery.net
Dutch native Petra Fallaux is a writer, curator, quilt maker, and creative director at Springboard Design, based in Pittsburgh, PA. www.petrafallaux.com

Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.