Yvonne Porcella: Bold Strokes

Yvonne Porcella, Dick and Jane

Yvonne Porcella, Monkey Sighting

The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textile Arts will exhibit a retrospective of Yvonne Porcella's work from November 16 through January 30, 2011.  Yvonne Porcella: Bold Strokes spans 25 years of her quilts and garments. The opening reception is Sunday, November 21 from 2-4 pm at the Museum in San Jose, California.

Here's a photo of Yvonne at Quilt Market a few weeks ago.

Yvonne Porcella, Flash

She's been getting treatment for cancer this past year, something she's been handling exactly as one would expect a surgical nurse/artist to do---in practical/whimsical fashion.

Yvonne's a proflific artist. Check her webpage gallery to see an amazing amount of quality work.

http://yvonne.porcella.ws/
And her blog:
http://yvonneporcella.blogspot.com/

I love her little pieces, sort of sketches like the self-portrait above. They are so deft and fresh. Like many really good artists, she makes it look easy (Fact: It's not.)  The house below is one of the small quilts she made for the benefit for the Alliance for American Quilts "Put a Roof Over Our Heads" last year.

Yvonne Porcella, Cover Us

Yvonne will be giving a gallery talk A Life in the Arts on Sunday, November 21st from 1-1:45pm, immediately before the Opening Reception at the San Jose Museum on Sunday, November 21. She'll be discussing her artistic development and creative path. $15. general, $10. members and students. Reservations are required. Click here: https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=051c54 

Here's the webpage for the Museum: http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org/ 

 

Yvonne Porcella, Masquerade, 1982

Yvonne's actually been making quilts longer than 25 years.

In 1983 Chris Wolf Edmonds and I curated an exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art called Influences: Traditional and Contemporary Quilts, in which we invited cutting edge textile artists to show a recent piece and a traditional quilt that influenced their work. I've never forgotten Yvonne's contribution. She paired Masquerade above with what she called her Halloween Quilt below.

Halloween Quilt, about 1940

Patterns for these postage stamp designs

 were published mid-20th-century

 as "Rainbow Round the World" and "Aunt Jen's Stamp Quilt." 

Here's what Yvonne wrote at the time:

"In the Halloween Quilt a one-inch postage stamp is used as the pattern for piecing calico print fabrics. To further enhance the composition, the quiltmaker outlined the diagonal planes with two dominant colors, orange and black. Borders on the quilt are also intense in the orange and black color scheme. Prairie points (folded triangles) edge the quilt.

My current interest in quilt design is to explore the possibilities of designing with color, vertical lines, triangles and half-inch and one-inch quares. From the Halloween Quilt came the idea for Masquerade. The new quilt was designed in blocks using the nine-patch tradition. I used the two strong colors from the Halloween Quilt, subsitutuing red for orange. Many vertical strips were sewn together using the postage stamp or one-inch square to accent the verticals. The triangles from the edge of the Halloween Quilt were scattered throughout the new quilt surface. As in the Halloween Quilt, many different fabrics were used in the Masquerade quilt, although the emphasis is on solid-color fabrics rather than small calico prints."

Twenty-eight years later we can still see the influence.

She's also a prolific author, sharing her ideas and techniques in print form. Below is a selection of her work: