Work In Progress: Earth

Posted by Erick on March 18, 2025 in Quilt Design, WIP (Work-In-Progress) |

Earth
quilt top completed September 2021
~ 90 x 90 inches
Amish hand quilting pending

Inspired by weaving design.

This quilt is the first in the series New Harmony: Earth, Fire, Water.

How Exiting Social Media for Good is Saving My Life

Posted by Erick on February 11, 2025 in WIP (Work-In-Progress) |

I’ve always had a fraught, ambivalent relationship with social media. I’ve switched platforms, taken extended breaks, but never “broken up” with it for good – until now. So, if you’re reading this you’ve found me in the only place I’m going to be online. I can’t promise how much or how often, because my primary commitment is full engagement with life in the present, the here-and-now. What a beautiful liberty it is to enjoy the serendipity of choices made based on my values, available resources, and desires without having to worry about a constant third rail of an audience. I find myself much more able to live what feels like an authentic life, not a performative one. I highly recommend exiting social media. I encourage current users to question why they’re there, at what cost (both individually and collectively), and how might their experience of life change without it? In spite of what we tell ourselves, social media is built to deliver eyeballs to advertising, further enriching a scant handful of the world’s pathologically wealthiest individuals (none of whom exhibit any inclination towards benevolent aims with their spoils – and not that any amount of charity can justify the scourge of ever expanding income inequality). Can you imagine what would happen if we the people recognized our power and harnessed it to exact a mass exodus off of social media? That would get some attention that might actually matter and make a difference. You do you, no judgment. I’m just sayin, come on in, the waters are fine.

In the meantime, I continue to piece quilts. I also have an ambivalent relationship with my creative practice. It stretches my resources to or beyond the limits, but repeatedly I find I don’t have much choice, I must do this. It goes beyond simple pleasure. It’s survival. It’s all I really know how to do. It’s how I show up. It’s what I’ll be doing on deck while and as the Titanic sinks. Asteroid headed toward planet earth? You’ll find me in my studio sewing. It’s an act of resistance inasmuch as it’s an act of hope.

I have long been fascinated by the pattern of the molded concrete block of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House in Pasadena, California. The recent devastating fires in Los Angeles spurred me to pursue this idea out of the many that await fruition from piles of sketches.

The quilt is made of 144 seven-inch blocks (four-squared cross), 63 of which I have completed as of today. I chose a warm, earthy palette of terra cotta, cranberry reds, and dirt browns – for no particular reason other than it appeals to me. Though, I did realize it’s also the branded palette of Popeyes franchise buildings – a far Cajun cry from Wright’s cerebral masterpiece – but has delivered a good chuckle to a small group (an entrepreneur & sculptor in California; a shepherd in Iowa; my singer-songwriter, single-mom sister in Texas; an ENT nurse practitioner, handquilting, natural dyeing quiltmaker in Maine; and a librarian and quiltmaker in Missouri) I text my work-in-progress to stave off isolation, and sustain my momentum and inspiration.

Mentors Make Us

Posted by Erick on May 14, 2022 in Inspiration, Pillars of My Quilting World, Quilt Design, Writing |

My college education began at a conservative Lutheran pre-seminary program at Concordia College in River Forest, Illinois. After a disappointing experience in high school geometry, I abandoned my dream to be an architect, and my singular focus became what we called “the ministry.” From 2nd to 8th grade, I attended a day school of the same conservative branch of the Lutheran church. It was an overall good experience, with a small tight-knit class, a few with whom I remain friends some 45-plus years later. When I matriculated to the local public high school in 1981, I went from a class that averaged about a dozen to one of over 600. I never adjusted. I did not have a positive high school experience – short of my extraordinary English and German teachers – one of whom sexually assaulted me only a month after my 18th birthday on a visit with him before I left town to attend college.

I started my freshman year of college damaged. I was also dragging along the unprocessed baggage of being separated from my family at 7 months old and raised with a false identity in a family of strangers. My first off-campus job was child care for the Coates family, a typical mid-1980’s upwardly mobile, two-child, one-dog family. They lived on the corner of Chicago and East Avenues in Oak Park, Illinois, in a house designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprentices, just two doors down from Wright’s commission that would spawn his tragically fated affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mention of the family dog Molly in the job posting had piqued my interest in applying for the position. I couldn’t have known that it would lead to meeting the first woman who revealed herself to me as a “birthmother,” a term I’d never heard up to that point. I found my mother just four years later, after over twenty years of separation. The Coates would eventually divorce.

My pre-seminary plans fell apart in one fateful moment in the first and only theology class I would take, Old Testament. I don’t remember the question I asked, just the response from the professor, who all but gathered sticks to burn me alive as a heretic on the spot. That was it, this wasn’t for me. Thankfully, I was simultaneously enrolled in both Art History and later Studio Art, taught by Professor Darlene Fahrenkrog, who glided cheerfully through the lower level of Kretzmann Hall with her hands wrapped around a mug of piping hot water, while declaring mantras of positive persistence. This was when art started saving my life.

I remained actively involved in church youth group throughout high school, advancing to a district leadership position. Along with a limited tenure in Marching Band, one of my few extracurricular activities was Art Club, the staff sponsor of which would later jump to his death from the Quincy Memorial Bridge. He was a rotund man. I’ve since imagined what a horrible splash, his lifeless body drifting downstream to Lock and Dam 21. I didn’t take my first art class until the last semester of my senior year. The Viet Nam war veteran turned art teacher unabashedly discouraged me from attending art school. I’m not sure if his unsolicited advice was based on the sheer impracticality of such a commitment or my lack of talent, but nevertheless I would.

The spring of 1986 was spent plotting my escape from Concordia in my single dorm room, where I kept my spirits up with episodes of Late Night with David Letterman. Sandra Bernhard’s guest appearances were my favorite. I met her on three separate occasions years later, graced with an on-stage kiss at a performance in San Francisco. I started my freshman year with a roommate, Michael Schafstall from Columbus, Indiana. Roommates were paired by the college and encouraged to exchange letters prior to the start of school. As dutiful Lutheran boys, we did. When a wallet-sized senior picture of a handsome blonde with an athletic build and dangerous smile fell out of his letter, my heart fluttered. But things didn’t go so well once we were roommates. Michael snored, talked in his sleep, and was bewilderingly contemptuous of me. Years later I received a letter from him, which included my original letter to him. He explained that he was gay and married to a dentist in Carmel, Indiana. He apologized and described what had been a young man afraid of being outed by his association with me, despite the fact that I had not yet come to terms with my sexuality as a freshman, though my dorm room was beginning to show the signs. It was sparsely decorated with anything I could afford from the flagship Crate & Barrel store on Michigan Avenue, and a Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA poster, prominently featuring his rear end. By May, I was accepted to enroll at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a return to my birthplace. I graduated with honors in May of 1990 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography. My first apartment after I graduated from “Wash U (it’s colloquial moniker) was on the corner of Osage and presciently named Iowa Avenue. I later discovered it was only 10 blocks from the apartment on Virginia Avenue where in 1967-68 my mother and grandmother had done their best to care for me, until they no longer could.

My first teacher was also my first best friend. A retired teacher in her 70’s, she lived across the street from my adoptive family in LaGrange, Missouri. In true small-town southern style, we simply referred to her as Miss Vira, and her sister, Miss Grace. I spent countless hours under her tutelage and watchful eye, expanding my vocabulary with flash cards while eating popsicles from the deep freeze on her back porch. I still have the painted red wooden chair where I sat at a TV tray for my lessons with her, a relic from the rural one-room schoolhouse where she’d taught.

God bless all my teachers past and present.

August 10, 2019 with Darlene Fahrenkrog at her home in Chicago. My quilt One Life is seen in the background (and below). I gave it to her as a thank-you gift.

One Life
2013
92 x 92 inches

Recalibration

Posted by ewquilts on November 12, 2018 in WIP (Work-In-Progress) |

After an intensive year creatively, and personally – it seemed like a good time to take a break and turn back to the roots of what I love most about quilting – color, geometry, and tradition. I am making Recalibration simply for the joy of making it, in hopes that this same joy will be multiplied, transferred through the hands of my quilter, and translated through the eyes of the viewer.

color inspiration: Nicaraguan cigar box

Gifting Smokehaus Rose

Posted by ewquilts on November 12, 2018 in Inspiration, Pillars of My Quilting World |

After returning from my exhibit in France, I decided it was time to retire a few quilts out of my collection and from public exhibition. It is such a thrill to be able to gift these quilts to people who’ve played a formative role in my life, creatively or otherwise. One of these people is my Aunt Alice Solter (my Mom’s oldest sister) – who has shown me favor, kindness, and many remembrances since the day my parents brought me into their home in La Grange, Missouri, February of 1968. She had expressed interest in my quilt “Smokehaus Rose” as her favorite piece. I was particularly honored to present it to her as the quilt was inspired by fond memories of my early years in La Grange, where she lived only a few houses away, and where most of my extended adoptive family lived, including my two sets of grandparents. Every quilt finds its right home, this one is no exception.

September 13-16, 2018, From the Artist’s Collection; Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, France

Posted by ewquilts on November 12, 2018 in Exhibits |

photo credit: Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork

photo credit: Dorothee Schwolgin

I am excited to have been invited to have a solo show at the 24th Annual Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France. I will be exhibiting nine quilts and presenting my video A Piece of Me on Saturday, September 15 at 2pm. It is a great honor and I am looking forward to what will be my first solo show in Europe. Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork takes place throughout five quaint villages in eastern France very near the German border.

As an adopted child, my inner life was full of fantasy and musing about my origins. I loved the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, especially the scene where Charlie blasts through a glass skylight in flight over terracotta rooftops of a German village. The scene stirred my imagination, interest in my own German heritage, and my desire to someday see those very red rooftops myself. In the subsequent 40 years I never made it to Europe, until now. I can’t help but believe that my solo exhibit at Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork is my own fantastic flight, a homecoming, and a childhood dream realized.

DAY ONE
September 8, 2018
Amtrak Mt Pleasant, Iowa to Chicago > scam taxi ride > hotel strike at the Palmer House > relocated to another hotel > dinner at Italian Villages restaurant

DAY TWO
September 9, 2018
Breakfast at Tiera Piano (at the Chicago Art Institute) with my beloved first art professor, Darlene Fahrenkrog (Concordia College, River Forest, Illinois 1985-86) and her husband > Blue Line el(evated) train to O’Hare airport > sleepless overnight flight to Frankfurt, Germany

DAY THREE
September 10, 2018
Arrived in Frankfurt, Germany > 3+-hour ride to La Vancelle, France with our driver, Ramone > greeted at Hotel Elisabeth with a handwritten note taped to the open door of the hotel > walked through the village to the town church that’s dedicated to the infant victims of WWI and WWII from La Vancelle > ended the very long day with one (of many) of the best meals of my life at the hotel’s restaurant, where the staff treated us like family

DAY FOUR
September 11, 2018
Met Lysianne Held, Exhibit Manager I’ve worked with only by email for a year > drove in villages clearly platted before cars were invented (wonderful!) > hung my show in 8 hours with the help of my partner > came “home” to the hotel dog > had picnic dinner in park just up the hill from the village chapel at 9:00PM with food purchased from what became our favorite grocery store, the Super U, in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines

DAY FIVE
September 12, 2018
Left early and stopped at a boulangerie in Ste-Marie-aux-Mines for the most amazing plum tart en route to Reims (about 4 hours by car, during which we passed through the fields of Verdun and saw many WWI memorials along the roadside) > visited the truly awe-inspiring Reims Cathedral > ate lunch at an outdoor cafe with cathedral facade only yards away > safely back home to the bucolic view out of the hotel window > ended the day with another picnic dinner from the Super U

DAY SIX
September 13, 2018
Opening day for of Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, my exhibition was hosted in the beautiful town of Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines >only exhibit I’ve ever had with a beer/wine/pretzel tent and other wonderful food vendors > was blown away by the attendance (20,000 people) met folks from France, USA, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Kenya, Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Finland, and Russia > an enthusiastic, sophisticated, and appreciative audience all-around

DAY SEVEN
September 14, 2018
A misty morning in Val d’Argent (Silver Valley) > more throngs of people at the exhibit > took the autobahn, and got to practice my European parking skills on a day trip to Baden Baden, Germany to relax in the waters of the Friedrichsbad Roman/Irish baths > came back to hotel for a delightful dinner (had my first escargot!) with my longtime friend and “Auntie Mame” (Jacquie Rickman) and her friend Suzi who came to see the show from Chicago

DAY EIGHT
September 15, 2018
Gave my presentation, “A Piece of Me,” to a small but mighty gathering > reunited with a dear friend from Germany, Dorothee Schwolgin, who I hadn’t seen since 1983, when she was an exchange student at my high school (Quincy, Illinois) > made new friends from Australia (Linda Collins) and Belgium (Martine Poehlman) > ended the day with another wondeful dinner in Colmar, France with Doro, her friend Barbara, Jacquie, and Suzi

photo credit: Dorothee Schwolgin

DAY NINE
September 16, 2018
Last day of the exhibit > took some time to wander around Ste-Croix-aux-Mines, meet a few other artists, and see their work > featured in a regional newspaper article > was bid a fond “au revoir” by the lovely volunteer pages who staffed the exhibit hall, all in tourism studies > until next time, beautiful Alsace…

Final thoughts

I am so glad to have had this experience. It was one of the best in my life. So many dreams were realized in just this one trip – which was full of surprises and delight. I was so impressed by the French people’s kindness and their laid-back approach to problems. To meet first- and second-generation children of parents who suffered the horrors of WWII was very moving, along with traveling through Verdun and seeing the roadside WWI memorials. War is not the abstraction for Europeans that it is for most Americans. It gave me a deep appreciation for what they suffered, for the strength of their culture as expressed in food and kindness, and for their enduring appreciation of the common good. The food was beyond words and made with so much love and care that I could taste in every bite. I am so thankful to the Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork staff, and the staff of the Hotel Elisabeth who made us feel like family. I only wish I’d had more time to explore the area…so until next time…

photo credit: Dorothee Schwolgin

What We Keep (pattern), Magic Patch, Les Éditions de Saxe (France), Fall 2018

Posted by ewquilts on September 4, 2018 in Publications |

Les Éditions de Saxe featured a pattern of my quilt

What We Keep (2008) in the Fall 2018 edition

Poor Man’s Damask: A Hymn in Four Part Harmony

Posted by ewquilts on August 1, 2018 in Inspiration, WIP (Work-In-Progress) |

Re-imagined weaving patterns provide endless inspiration.

Can hardly wait to start this series!

Soprano

Bass

Tenor

Alto

Monsoon

Posted by ewquilts on July 19, 2018 in WIP (Work-In-Progress) |

I recently had the pleasure of accepting and completing a commissioned piece for a couple of Kansas City art collectors and friends of mine. I am typically hesitant to accept commissions, but was honored by this one. The piece is titled Monsoon and was inspired by my experience of Arizona monsoon rains while visiting in the summer of 2017 for my 50th birthday.