Philadelphia, PA - The ArtQuilts at the Sedgwick 2004 volunteer committee is pleased to announce the four awards during the opening weekend festivities. Jurors Ursula Ilse Newman curator Museum of Art & Design, Warren Seelig artist and professor of textiles, and Emily Richardson, quilt artist and teacher, selected Ludmila Uspenskaya’s "Happy Wind" for the Jurors' Choice Award. The Studio Art Quilt Associates is the sponsor of this award.

Uspenskaya has been working in textiles since graduating from the Government Academy of Industrial Arts in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1967. She originated the technique of fabric collage, which has remained an important element in her artwork today. She continues to experiment with different forms of technologies to enhance her artistic endeavors. This poem accompanies “Happy Wind” If the weather is good, If the weather is bad, If the sun is shining, If it rains, If it is warm or cold, If the happy wind blows, Or the unhappy wind blows, Flowers are always blossoming.

Happy Wind 80”h x 60”w 2003 Ludmila Uspenskaya

The third annual Fabric Workshop and Museum’s Surface Design Award was presented to Arle Sklar-Weinstein for "Mount Koyan-San: Ancestors" "Visiting a sacred cemetery atop Mount Koyasan in Japan in the Cherry Blossom spring of 2001, I came upon this wall of faces that touched me profoundly. I wondered what association tied them together. Noting the women in this male oriented society became a subtext. In another garden I found the white barked tree, shaped over decades by master gardeners into this living sculptural form. The showers of Cherry Tree blossom petals everywhere in this landscape spoke to me of beauty and spirit. It was in the merger of these elements that I found substance and imagery."

Mount Koyan-San: Ancestors Arle Sklar-Weinstein

Jumping for Joy Marie L. Jensen

The third annual Heartstring Quilter Guild's Award in memory of Sherri Young Dunbar went to Marie L. Jensen for "Jumping for Joy". She says of her piece, “What a wonderful memory from childhood! Jumping from a swing and being able to experience the flight of imagination for just a moment.” Jensen’s greatest enjoyment from the artwork is getting the viewer to think about fabric (and maybe other things) in a new way.

The second annual Surface Design Association's Award went to Jette Clover for "Singing in the Key of Red" Clover is a journalist, art historian, curator and fiber artist. She was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, has lived 13 years in California and Seattle, WA, then 20 years in the Netherlands and since 2001 in Florida, where she works full time as a fiber artist and teaches design classes.

Singing in the Key of Red Jette Clover

Clover finds a compelling beauty in surfaces showing traces of aging and in the haphazard layering and markings caused by time and the elements. Her artwork is constructed as collage, and it is as much about touch as about vision. Layering of cloth is related to layers of growth and the horizontal lines and stitching to the passing of time. She prefers working in monochromatic themes, and is especially interested in the edges and in implying what is beneath the surface.

“ArtQuilts at the Sedgwick 2004”
Sedgwick Cultural Center
7137 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19119
(215) 248-9229
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©2004 AQATS

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